Uptown Cheapskate to open near campus

Students and residents alike will soon be able to make cash off of their gently used clothes and accessories while finding affordable and sustainable fashion. This is thanks to the new Uptown Cheapskate location, which is aiming to open in Logan within the next few months. 

The store will be at 70 E 400 N #130 in Logan, next door to Kid to Kid, owned by the same franchise. Staff hopes to be open to shop in late February or early March but is planning to be able to buy used items in early January. They will buy clothing, shoes and accessories. 

BaseCamp Franchising owns Kid to Kid and Uptown Cheapskate, which both buy and sell gently used clothing items with an emphasis on affordability and sustainability. Amy Lofgreen, who has worked for BaseCamp since 2012, will manage Uptown Cheapskate’s Logan location. One of her biggest fantasies has been to own a store. 

“This has been more than a decade of dreaming, hoping and trying to figure out how to make it all work,” Lofgreen said. 

To open in February or March, the store will require 900 different people to sell to them. 

“Usually once people start selling to us, they’ve been saving up for a long time, and I’ve had enough people asking me and stopping in that I think I’ll be able to fill the store nicely, but I have to have 900 before headquarters will let me, which is the same number as somebody in Atlanta has to have,” Lofgreen said. “That’s the thing I’m most nervous about — that this small community — it’s going to be hard to get 900.” 

Stephanie Lenhart, Lofgreen’s daughter, will be helping her mom manage the store. 

“We really hope to have a lot of university students come. We hope that they will come and share their fashion ideas with us and help us get to know what they want, but we hope that more than just the university will come too. Cache Valley has grown so much,” Lenhart said. 

According to their website, Uptown Cheapskate aims to make selling clothes to their locations simple. All sellers need to do is bring their items and the trained buyers will go through them and choose which ones they think are a good fit for the store. Any items they don’t wish to buy from the seller, they offer to donate to other local thrift stores. 

“We want to make sure every time somebody comes to sell to us that they feel appreciated. One thing that we plan on doing is, if people come to sell to us, you get 25% more in-store credit than cash if you do store credit. If there’s a situation where we can’t take anything that they’ve got, we will hope that they’ll be able to get a store discount for shopping. Even when it doesn’t work out, they’re the lifeblood of our store,” Lenhart said. 

This business model is similar to other stores in Logan, such as Plato’s Closet. 

“What really differentiates us from Plato’s Closet is that we really want to make sure that it’s a curated experience for people when they shop. Our buyers are trained every season on what are the new colors and the new trends that are happening so we can keep our racks on trend,” Lofgreen said. “We like to buy some of the quirky, cool things also so that people can have their own unique way of representing themselves.” 

Sustainability is incredibly important to Uptown Cheapskate. While working for BaseCamp Franchising, Lenhart shared they paid for a soda fountain and reusable cups for employees so soda cans weren’t wasted. Every Wednesday, an employee would do the dishes from weekly team meals so they weren’t using disposable cutlery or plates. 

Because of the importance of sustainability, they will be buying fast fashion in addition to higher quality pieces. 

“I do a bit of both because I’d rather it not go into the landfill. The first thing we do is look over and make sure that everything we generally buy are like-new condition that would have been in the mall in the last two years,” Lofgreen said. 

However, there are exceptions to the rule on buying recently-made clothing. 

“When you’re four years out on something that is not as good of a quality it just doesn’t wear well. I will buy things that are on trend, no matter how old they are if they’re really great quality. I will always have a section that is just those amazing finds that you hope that you’ll be able to find whenever you’re going thrifting,” Lofgreen said. 

The target demographic for Uptown Cheapskate is from high school age to 40 with masculine and feminine clothing. In addition to used clothing items, Lofgreen hopes to sell hand-made items from local artisans to help uplift the local community.