Every semester a small group of Cal Poly Pomona students are getting real life experience of running a small clothing boutique — without ever having to leave the campus.
It’s done through Clothes Closet, which provides free business clothing and style tips for students, and operates out of a small room in the Career Center. On this Wednesday afternoon, Cal Poly sophomore Samuel Wen is going through two racks of men’s items inside the boutique as intern Carolina Medina assists.
Medina, who is majoring in Apparel and Merchandise Management, is completing 120 internship hours and earning course credit this semester by helping run the boutique. Through an emerging partnership with the Career Center, as many as a dozen students each semester take donated professional clothing items to the inventory room and then tag and track the clothing.
Once the items have been inputted into a system, the students take them to the boutique down the hall.
“It takes all that they’ve been learning and are able to put it into practice. Of all the things they do, being a personal stylist is the most rewarding,” said Cheryl Love, a career counselor who serves as the closet coordinator and also supervises the students.
Students running the service are either taking the Retail Simulation and Internship course or are Apparel and Merchandise Management majors completing their required internship hours, Love said.
Vanessa Cerda, recent Apparel and Merchandise Management grad and past Clothes Closet intern, said she gained invaluable experience. As Love indicated, her favorite part was interacting with fellow students.
“It feels good that can you help them find something. It makes me feel happy that they’re going to be dressed for success or that they’re going to be ready an interview,” she said.
Although the boutique has been in operation since 2010, the partnership between the apparel department and the career center only began in 2016. Since then, Love said she has noticed a stark improvement in operations.
Last year, 1,400 students used the program, compared to four years ago when fewer than 400 students took advantages of the free attire available, she said.
As the users grow, so does the need for more clothing items. For the past couple of years, the program has operated mainly through financial donations from the public. Going forward, the Career Center will be given $5,000 annually for the program, Krista Spangler, director of development for student affairs, said.
Spangler will also be looking for matching donations with hopes of increasing the budget to $10,000 annually.
“The more money we have to support it, the more money students can have to be creative and to promote (the boutique),” she said.
Love correlates the increase in users to physical changes interns made to the boutique. On top of that, students are constantly analyzing the inventory.
That data provides Love and her interns with the necessary insight to improve operations. For example, last semester, students in the Retail Simulation course compiled the data of users and found that students in the Collins School of Hospitality were using the boutique the least. That prompted a pop-up boutique at the school to help create awareness, she said.
Interns also look at the analytics for peak times and to gauge if items “are not selling,”i.e. have been on the racks for too long. Oftentimes, the data show they’re in need of men’s clothing and shoes.
“They’re always thinking about ways to make the space fresh and getting people to come in,” Love said, “really looking at the ways of being intentional operators.”
For the month of February, 226 students took advantage of the boutique, Love said.
“That’s off the chart,” she said. “That gives you an idea of how busy one month is, and that’s the shorter month of the year.”
The boutique accepts clothing items from the public, faculty, staff and even 20 area employers who have a relationship with the university, she said. Not everything is accepted: They need clean, professional clothing that is either new or gently used.
In the cases when items don’t fit the criteria, Love said students will place them in a donation bin for a charity in Orange County. Nothing is wasted.
“We’re very fortunate because a lot of the stuff that we get is brand new,” Love said.
Clothes Closet also carries shoes, ties and an accessory station. Students are allowed to pick out six items per semester. Interns track with a “checkout” that has them filing a form. Then Career Center staff inputs the list into a system.
Once a week, Love will meet with the interns to discuss any additional plans for programs outside of the boutique. For example, in April the career is hosting a conference, which will include a dress for success fashion show. The interns are responsible for picking the models and styling the models for the show.
Among the interns’ responsibilities is to produce what is known as a “Look Book,” a quarterly style guide featuring items from the closet.
“There’s a lot of things they get to do as an intern or team member of the clothes closet. It really is tapping into all of the different things they’re learning in their major,” Love said.
For more information on how to make a donation, contact Krista Spangler at 909-869-4450 or at kspangler@cpp.edu.