“You hear about a lot of nonprofit work and people doing good, but being in such a small place, it’s really personal,” said Justin Cooper, one of the owners of the new Circle Thrift & Art Space. “You can help a group of people face to face, and you can see it happening, and you can see change.”
“You hear about a lot of nonprofit work and people doing good, but being in such a small place, it’s really personal,” said Justin Cooper, one of the owners of the new Circle Thrift & Art Space. “You can help a group of people face to face, and you can see it happening, and you can see change.”
Circle Thrift & Art Space is one of the newest thrift stores on Broad Street, and it was started by Chris Maloney, Justin Cooper, and Brendan Ginsburg. Since moving to the Richmond area, all three have worked a number of odd jobs that eventually led to them working in the nonprofit world. Since discovering that line of work, Maloney, Cooper, and Ginsburg have been intensely committed to nonprofit work in the Richmond area. Their desire to offer nonprofit aid to the Richmond community is what led them to open up their latest store.
The three originally came together to work for Books, Bikes, and Beyond, a non-profit thrift store located at the same address where Circle Thrift & Art Space is currently located. Books, Bikes, and Beyond was open for about 5 years, but closed down last October. Before opening Circle Thrift, the three briefly ran Feedback, a vintage shop next door to their current location that closed last December due to robberies and other complications.
The owners of Circle Thrift are making a serious effort to make their store an art space as well as a retail outlet. This is born out of a desire to help Richmond’s artistic community. “It’s kind of tough to watch it be discouraging for your friends or other artists try to find a place to put their art up, and deal with waiting lists or set standards,” said Maloney. “In a broad sense, the art world isn’t as open to new artists as I first thought it was. I’ve watched some of my friends go through the struggle, and not quit, but not do as much as they want to with it.” To hear the owners tell it, Circle Thrift is completely open to any local artist who needs a creative outlet in the city.
While the shop is a thrift store and art space first and foremost, the owners are doing everything they can to give back to their community by opening the space up to a variety of nonprofit, community oriented activities. Maloney, Cooper, and Ginsburg are adamant about their intent to offer their retail space to any nonprofit in the area, and they have already done so successfully through a collaboration with a special needs school, Northstar Academy. The owners of Circle Thrift bring students from the education academy in and offer job training. Maloney, Ginsburg, and Cooper show the students how to interact with customers, how to use a cash register, and how to manage a store. They’ve also opened a section of their store to Animal Motel and Angel Dogs, two animal rescue and adoption programs, where they run puppy adoptions.
In addition to the nonprofit collaborations, Circle Thrift offers more community-oriented projects, like the art wall that exhibits the work of a rotating list of featured artists, the trunk sitting outside the store that is always filled with free books, the free art classes that are offered at the store, and the recyclable goods collections that Cooper, Maloney, and Ginsburg offer to the surrounding businesses and apartments.
The recycling project was born when the three noticed that Richmond city lacks any form of recycling pickup for commercial businesses. At that point, the owners of Circle Thrift took it upon themselves to help their neighbors on Broad Street. “A big aspect to this is the idea of recycling and upcycling,” said Ginsburg. “Weo have a little recycling program that we’re running, cardboard and metal, where businesses bring their stuff and we recycle it. So just about everything we do is re-purposing or disposing of things in a more responsible way.”
The decision to make the space a thrift store was no coincidence either. “In a lot of weird ways, the thrift store itself helps people out,” said Maloney. “Just having access to cheap goods. Like, I don’t know how many people I’ve watched come through the door like, ‘I need a black shirt, I gotta be at work, I’m gonna lose my job.’ And they get like a dollar black shirt and their whole day is all of a sudden back to normal.”
For the owners of Circle Thrift, just giving someone the ability to buy useful goods at a low cost is a way to have a profound impact on the community. And it is also the gateway to everything else they are able to do. As Cooper pointed out, “The thrift store is really the engine that funds us to do pretty much anything. If something comes our way and it’s cool and we want to invest in it, we can do it. Because we don’t really have any set mission statement, except to do cool stuff and help out the area.”
Circle Thrift & Art Space is located at 7 W. Broad St, and is open Mon-Fri 10 AM-6 PM, and Sat-Sun 11 AM-6 PM. Check them out online at facebook.com/CircleRVA.
