Something old is now something new

AIMING to reduce her contribution to landfill, Giorgia Zappia came up with an idea to recycle her old clothes.

Her idea, however, has now grown into a business which has recently opened its doors in the Mildura CBD.

Located at 162a Eighth Street, Giorgia Brown operates as a pre-loved boutique, providing Sunraysia residents with an opportunity to buy second-hand clothes or sell their own.

Ms Zappia said she didn’t know her project would become a full-time venture after it began as a pop-up business.

She said during COVID, she had already cleaned out her cupboard with the intent to donate her clothes, as she always had, when a slightly different idea came to her.

“I was getting some stuff together and I was reading an article about how much goes into landfill when you donate your clothes if they can’t on-sell them,” she said.

“I thought ‘Well, I don’t really want to add to the problem so maybe I’ll try to think of a solution’.”

Ms Zappia said she planned to hold a pop-up garage sale for her clothes, inviting friends to join her and sell their own.

“I had a heap of bags and I thought ‘I wonder if anyone else wants to (sell) their items as well?’,” she said.

“I put a thing on Facebook: ‘$10 come and sell your own items’.

“I had just this influx of people wanting to do it but they didn’t want to do the work; they just wanted to give me the items and I do it.”

From there the business was born.

Ms Zappia said she created a business plan and began running regular pop-up shops, allowing anyone to buy a rack.

She said she had used several locations to sell clothes but transporting the bags of stock was not ideal and she quickly outgrew the smaller spaces.

By the end of 2022 she had found a location and, thanks to her builder Matt Hughes and electrician Fevzi Biyik, the store had become “everything I envisioned”.

She even chose a new name for the business: the nickname her father Paul had given her when she was growing up.

Ms Zappia said the store had been busy since it opened and having a set space had been beneficial to the business and its customers.

“We opened at a really good time in November as that was leading up to the Christmas period and people were looking for graduation outfits, Christmas outfits,” she said.

“People even these days just want an outfit to go out for dinner or a birthday so I think this is a point of difference, where when you don’t have to pay top dollar for an outfit, you can actually come in here.”

Ms Zappia said it was great to offer something different to the community as a way for people to resell that was convenient and sustainable.

“Preloved is becoming more and more fashionable,” she said.

“People love the idea of instead of throwing it out and not knowing where it goes, it actually comes in here and goes to someone who will love it as much as they once did.”

On average, Australians purchase 56 new items of clothing every year, with 23kg per person ending up in landfill.

Australia is the second-highest consumer of textiles per person in the world, after the USA.

Ms Zappia said she was currently in the process of finding somewhere unsold items could be donated to, whether it be women’s charities or survivors of domestic abuse.

Anyone wanting to sell their clothes can visit Giorgia Brown on Instagram or Facebook and fill out the registration form, which explains the process in full.

Items are sold completely anonymously to the general public and profit is paid weekly.