New resale shop in Fort Smith mall offers clothing, other items for kids
FORT SMITH — Two local working mothers joined forces to create a resale store designed to help parents, their children and the environment all at once.
Candyce Gabucci, 40, and Sara Poole, 35, of Van Buren, opened SophieMacs on Oct. 10 at Central Mall as managing partners. They said the store — located inside a former Abercrombie & Fitch clothing shop — offers many types of gently used children’s clothing, toys, books, shoes and baby gear for newborns to preteens, as well as various novelty items.
Gabucci said she and Poole wanted to bring a clean, stylish and higher quality resale store to the city that was a fun place to shop and provided more of an “upscale experience.”
Business in terms of sales and feedback has been going well since SophieMacs’ launch, Poole said.
“Our inventory turns over,” Poole said. “Just about every week, you can find something new. Every couple days, really, you can find something new in our store.”
Poole said the pair were inspired to create SophieMacs after not being able to sell certain children’s items at a neighborhood garage sale in early June. Their only options at that point were to take these things to stores in Northwest Arkansas or larger cities like Tulsa and Dallas.
The SophieMacs website states the store’s mission is to both make parenting more affordable and promote sustainable practices.
Gabucci said children tend to grow out of clothes quickly. She added kids’ clothes are “very expensive,” so the store can help parents sidestep paying full retail price for commodities their child will use only for a short time.
“Kids wear things one time, and there’s so much
waste there, so we really like the idea that the things that we sell are getting another life,” Gabucci said. “They’re not just going off to the landfill. They’re being used to the fullest, so to speak.”
Poole said she and Gabucci did considerable market research while trying to get SophieMacs off the ground and had a notebook with all their ideas. They then went to Bill Sabo, regional director for the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, who assisted in organizing their thoughts into a business plan and determining a suitable location for their store. He also provided additional market research.
Gabucci said Sabo’s involvement in developing the business plan helped her and Poole secure a bank loan and working capital for SophieMacs.
The center is an economic development program that helps both new and experienced entrepreneurs with business creation, management and operation, according to the UAFS website.
Sabo said Gabucci and Poole created a business to fill a need they saw in the community. He said SophieMacs offers affordable clothes in a place that’s laid out nicely and in which it’s easy for people to shop, something Sabo believes didn’t exist in Fort Smith at the time it opened.
“Fort Smith has more than its fair share of thrift stores and things like that — and consignment, I think — but in terms of something where you can shop at like you would a department store, that’s a first,” he said.
Store inventory and condition determine what preowned items SophieMacs will or won’t accept, Poole said.
“We always try to say that we don’t take anything that we wouldn’t dress our own children in, so we really try to use that as a guide,” Gabucci said.
SophieMacs accepts baby and children’s clothes ranging in size from Newborn Youth up to Youth XXL — along with clean toys, baby gear and books — from 2-7 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays, according to the store’s website. All clothes must be freshly laundered and contained in tubs, boxes, totes or baskets not exceeding 30 gallons with no hangers.
The store also offers payment via cash or check for all these items, the website states. It doesn’t accept car seats, breast pumps, used baby bottles and dishes, socks or underwear.
Alongside their responsibilities as entrepreneurs, Gabucci works for the city of Fort Smith as its director of community development and Poole is a business development manager for the Austin, Texas-based Hull Supply Co. Gabucci is also the mother of one child while Poole has two. SophieMacs is named after their daughters — Sophia and Mackenzie.