Gifford ’26 launches Friartown’s Closet with help from Providence College
By Cara Daltwas ’25
Mary Gifford ’26 has taken significant steps in establishing her own small business, Friartown’s Closet, at Providence College. Gifford is a social science major with minors in sociology and business and innovation and possesses a strong entrepreneurial spirit with lots of creativity. She noticed how frequently those around her were buying new clothes and throwing out ones that weren’t trending anymore, and from there she took action. With her hard work and determination, along with support from different corners of campus, including the business school, Friartown’s Closet, an on-campus consignment store, will hold its grand opening on Wednesday, April 3.
About midway through Gifford’s first year, she met Kelly Stone, director of the Ryan Incubator for Entrepreneurship in the Arts and Sciences. Gifford and Stone worked together with other faculty on the committee and started working on what is now Friartown’s Closet. Along with Stone, Gifford also received help from the Entrepreneurship Society and the college’s sustainability committee to make an on-campus thrift store a reality. The sustainability committee on campus had previously organized clothing drives on campus, so Gifford collaborated with them to hold a clothing drive at the end of the 2022-2023 school year and that became the foundation of Friartown’s Closet. After the drive concluded, Gifford had nearly 100 bags of clothes to sort through.
During that time, Gifford and Stone also began applying for one of the college’s summer undergraduate research grants programs. “I applied for it to develop a viable business model that could then be presented to the school. I also wanted to get more knowledge on the second-hand clothing industry and dedicate my time to understanding it” Gifford said. She received the grant in May 2023.
Through her research, she found that numerous schools had similar second-hand clothing initiatives and shadowed the owner of a local consignment store in her town. As the fall 2023 semester neared, Gifford moved back onto Providence College a few weeks early to sort through the clothes that were donated in the spring.
As the school year began, the process of Friartown’s Closet picked up. In September, Gifford was chosen as a finalist for a grant from the Providentia Endowed Fund, which supports projects that promote, empower, and amplify women of all ages. After presenting at the finalist showcase, she was awarded $9,000.
Gifford was soon assigned a space for her store in the Feinstein Academic Center, and she began to recognize the importance of promoting the store and her brand more on social media. With the help of Gifford teamed up with Ashley Meeker ’24, a digital marketing consultant in the Benjamin Family Social Media fellowship, to create a social media plan to grow the platform. After establishing a well-defined brand voice, they started to develop content that catered to the specific audiences of Friartown’s Closet as well as following the brand agenda. Meeker and Gifford meet biweekly to brainstorm potential marketing activation strategies to raise awareness of Friartown’s Closet across campus and the PC community.
Gifford stays true to the brand of Friartown’s Closet through her social media and uses her platforms to spread the importance of secondhand shopping. When asked about her motivations behind the brand, Gifford said she felt passionate about the idea, because she knew there was a need on campus, watching her friends constantly giving away and trading clothes.
“Fast fashion is such a big problem in my eyes on campus, and one that could be easily mitigated through some kind of store or organized process. I knew that students had a lot of clothes that were only one-time use, seasonal, or simply fell out of style for them,” Gifford said.
Towards the end of the fall semester, Kelly and Gifford started reaching out to students and began to organize the processes for the store opening in the spring. Over winter break, the two bought fixtures for the store, which were installed once they returned to campus for the next semester.
She also won first place in the Ryan incubator’s Elevator Pitch Competition. In addition to the $5,000 prize as well as the $500 audience choice award, Gifford represented Providence College at the BIG EAST Startup Challenge in February. “While I did not place, felt so grateful and honored to have represented Providence College and continued to grow exposure to the business,” Gifford said.
In addition to the grand opening. Gifford has exciting plans in the future to host events in the neighboring communities to donate clothing, create a board or club on campus to further involve students, and overall create a space on campus for students to feel welcome and heard. Gifford hopes that Friartown’s Closet will create conversation about sustainable fashion and equal access to clothing across campus.
