Operator of Arizona Buying and selling Co. demonstrates on 30 decades of marketing applied clothing in Lawrence | News, Sporting activities, Jobs


In this 2005 Journal-Planet file picture, Rosemary O’Malley, an eighth-grader at Central Junior Substantial School, shops at Arizona Buying and selling Co.

When Jennifer McKnight started out Arizona Buying and selling Co. at the age of 22, she did not have much over and above the employed apparel she was marketing, but seemingly that was plenty of.
McKnight stated the store experienced no screen shelves and did not even have a checkout counter at very first until eventually an aged wooden a single was dragged up from the basement of a close by store. She hung her choices from the fall ceilings of the shop alongside with a disco ball, and that seemed to be all customers necessary.
“Everybody was into it and supported us, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it,” McKnight explained. “And the initial day we were opened, I compensated hire for the overall thirty day period.”
Alongside with the disco ball, McKnight claimed she set up a very little increase box as the shop’s “sound process.” She recalled her former striped and polka-dotted awning and that a single of her early employees users wore roller skates to get the job done, zipping around the old tile flooring.
At first, McKnight’s plan had been to invest a couple of yrs making revenue, then go back to faculty to finish her art background degree at the University of Kansas. But 30 many years later, Arizona Buying and selling Co. has grow to be a fixture of Massachusetts Street.
McKnight mentioned she obtained the notion for the shop right after performing at a identical keep in Tucson, Arizona, which is exactly where the Lawrence store gets its title. She mentioned that even though there was a large amount to determine out about jogging a enterprise, once the shop was open up she felt like she had identified her matter. She explained she seriously favored the concept of a purchase-sell-trade shop, not only for the reason that she liked apparel, but due to the fact she noticed it as a enjoyment and energetic business with environmental and neighborhood rewards.
“Instead of just performing regular retail, the place it’s just purely consumerism, with this you are having a squandered useful resource, basically everybody’s outdated dresses, and either assisting people today by paying out them for their applied dresses or by furnishing an uncomplicated, universally available way to alter out your wardrobe,” McKnight claimed.
The shop has also weathered issues together the way. McKnight explained that in the 1990s, two workers members left her retail store to start a competing obtain-offer-trade apparel retail outlet downtown, which she mentioned left her experience betrayed as very well as concerned that downtown couldn’t aid both of those businesses. And like other company house owners, she’s worried about the rise of world wide web revenue — and, much more lately, the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
But the shop has manufactured it as a result of. Soon after about 5 decades, the other shop closed, and even though a different made use of garments shop, Wild Gentleman Classic, subsequently took its put, McKnight said she noticed Wild Man and her shop as compatible. And although world wide web product sales have certainly challenged merchants, McKnight reported she thinks the store is helped by the actuality that it delivers a assistance that is superior in man or woman.
“There is certainly a treasure hunt factor to what we do, and which is some thing you just can’t actually replicate on the net,” McKnight mentioned.
When it will come to the pandemic, McKnight has been one particular of a couple of shops who have voiced concerns about the city’s options to think about a lasting variation of the downtown parklet system, which makes it possible for businesses to expand into the parking stalls straight in entrance of or together with their storefront. Numerous dining establishments and bars have applied the system, and when she and other vendors have recognized the need for the system on a non permanent foundation, she claimed she hoped the city would also just take into account the requires of downtown suppliers as it considers what a a lot more extensive-phrase software will appear like.
Through it all, the store has developed. In its early times, McKnight believed that the store operated with about 5 racks and maybe 3,000 parts of apparel. Now, she stated the shop has about 60,000 items of apparel on any specified working day, and that it turns about a retailer and a half of clothing about each month.
Nevertheless the disco ball and the polka-dot awning are no more, the shop has not automatically dropped its off-defeat vibe, and McKnight reported she nonetheless has the target of attempting to present some thing for absolutely everyone. Reflecting on the accomplishment of 30 many years in business enterprise, McKnight explained she felt gratitude to Lawrence for offering the shop its start and sticking with it over the yrs.
“I just feel so satisfied and so gratified that I constructed some thing that our community enjoys so a lot and supports the way that it does,” McKnight said.
In addition to the downtown store, which is situated at 736 Massachusetts St., McKnight runs yet another retailer in Kansas Town, Mo., with the assistance of her business enterprise companion, Venus Nichols.





