Reluctant Consignment Shop Visit Leads to Career Reboot

One day, stay-at-home mom Jennifer Frisch was invited to go shopping at Plato’s Closet, a consignment store in Deptford. Not really thinking this was her thing, she tried politely backing out of the trip. In spite of that, she found herself going along for the ride.

And she thanked her lucky stars she did.

“I just fell in love with the concept,” Frisch, 39, says. “When I started shopping, I was mesmerized. I didn’t feel like I was shopping in a secondhand store.”

As soon as the Mount Laurel resident came home she told her husband, Evan, “I want to open one of these stores.”  

She checked out the company online, discovered they offered franchise opportunities, and completed an application immediately. 

Within a week, she was on a flight to the corporate headquarters, Winmark Corporation, in Minneapolis. 

The company also owns Play It Again Sports and Music Go Round consignment stores.

“Everything moved so fast,” Frisch recalls. 

When she returned to South Jersey, she scouted locations and opened her own Plato’s Closet, located across from the Moorestown Mall on Lenola Road on the fringe of Maple Shade. That was in 2008. 

Two years later, Frisch opened her second consignment outlet nearby, a Once Upon A Child franchise geared to infants up to size 16. The store also carries games, toys, and baby furniture and equipment, like bouncy seats, high chairs and strollers. 

Frisch says Once Upon a Child is the largest national chain specializing in resale clothing for kids. And Plato’s Closet is the only store of its kind, catering to teens and young adults. 

“I wanted to get back in the job market,” says Frisch, who was a graphic designer for 10 years before she had her daughters, Cameron and Makenzie, now 11 and 9.

“And I also thought, what a great idea this would have been when I was growing up. My parents didn’t always have the money to buy us the latest trends,” says Frisch, who grew up in East Brunswick, one of three girls.

The  format of the stores is easy. 

Cartfuls of cast-off clothes and kid gear are brought in by mothers, and sometimes by teenage girls, who learn a valuable life lesson about re-use. 

Trained sales associates sort through each item, enter them into an inventory tracking system, and hand cash over to the waiting customers.

“It’s a whole recycling process,” Frisch says.

The stores buy only clothes and objects deemed to be "gently used." They will also turn away clothing that’s too dated. And they’ve also had to refuse items because of an unusually high inventory on a particular style—but not often.

For those in doubt of buying, let alone wearing, pre-owned clothing, Plato’s Closet stocks top brands like Abercombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Juicy Couture and Urban Outfitters.

Clothes bearing labels from Carter’s, Baby Gap and The Children’s Place are found hanging on racks in Once Upon a Child.

The best news of all: Everything is sold for a fraction of department store prices. 

Frisch admits both stores required sizable cash outlays to get started. According to Winmark Corporation’s website, franchises for Plato’s Closet start at $178,500 and $193,900 for Once Upon A Child. 

No question, owning her own business has been a lot of hard work, long hours and unbending fortitude. 

“I’m an early riser,” Frisch says, “which is good, because sometimes I’m in one of the stores at the crack of dawn.”