Inside the soft blue 3,000 square-foot warehouse, aisles that ran the length of the shop held numerous customers. Sarah Goff, co-founder and co-owner of the project, was the first to catch my attention. She asked if I needed help. We cordially talked for a minute until Mike Myers, the other co-founder and co-owner, could manage a break from the hustle and bustle.
Goff described the Repurpose Project as a “creative reuse center” and said its main goal is to divert stuff away from landfills. The shop, at 519 S. Main St., opened in January 2012, and as Myers would later say, the community response has been nothing short of excellent. Each week, they continue to see it grow.
“What we’re striving to incorporate,” Myers said, “is stuff that would be normally thrown away, and then the re-purposing process usually involving an artist to make something else out of it.”
Many of the finished works are displayed in a gallery.
“Every day is a craft day,” Goff said.
Say a person finds a dresser he or she likes.
If, while browsing, that person also comes across some interesting knickknacks they’d like to apply to the dresser, they’d make a monetary donation to help cover the materials used.
There is, however, a potential catch. If a desired object in the store doesn’t have a price tag, then “backwards bargaining” takes place. It’s the inverse of cut-throat bargaining. An exaggerated example would see a proprietor always trying to lower his or her prices while the customer demanded fairer prices at a higher dollar value.
While I was at the Repurpose Project, people steadily trickled in to the store. Goff’s participation in the conversation was cut short because a customer needed help.
Myers said the Repurpose Project is open to volunteers developing abilities they’d like to pursue.
It became more and more obvious that there is no set formula to the way they run the store other than work hard, be generous, and allow people to create. Myers said a guy named Nelson, who’s exceptional at fixing things, teaches a class every so often;.Other people come in and volunteer to open boxes simply for the kick of seeing what’s in them.
As far as drop-offs, the Repurpose Project accepts almost anything, with the exception of clothing, depending on its condition and print. Dropping off is simple enough: just show up during normal business hours and ask for either Sarah or Mike.
The Repurpose Project plans to expand to a space about as big as 15,000 square feet, Myers said. The shop is planning to collaborate with UF entrepreneurial interns to help create more of a presence on campus.
“We’d like to plug in to the young population at the university,” Myers said. “Sustainability is certainly an issue for that generation.”
A version of this story ran on page 10 on 8/29/2013 under the headline "Itching to create? Every day is craft day at the Repurpose Project"
Owners of the Repurpose Project Mike Myers and Sarah Goff pose in the shop they’ve run since January 2012.
