Sharon Perez and her Mercer Island Thrift Shop staff and volunteers are running full steam ahead with their Restart Rebuild campaign.

All their hard work has come to fruition and they’ll be expanding the shop’s hours beginning Aug. 1 and furthering their mission of funding the city’s crucial Youth and Family Services (YFS) programs through in-store and online sales. The shop will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays at 7710 SE 34th St.

“It’s easy to work hard when you know your results will have great payoff,” said interim administrator Sharon Perez a few days before the 50-year-old-plus city-run resale boutique plugged in its positive recharge of the shop.

In building back better, those running the shop — which was shuttered in March 2020 due to the pandemic and returned to Sunday-only five-hour operations in August 2020 — are motivated to support YFS’ counseling and emergency assistance services, Perez said.

A previous Reporter article noted that the shop brought in more than $1.1 million in funding for YFS in 2019, but its 2020 severe revenue losses resulted in layoffs and furloughs in the YFS department, according to a city press release. The release added that the Mercer Island Youth and Family Services Foundation helped offset the shop’s monetary losses with an additional $815,000 in funding support to help restore counseling services for this school year.

“We are grateful to the staff and community members that have supported the Thrift Shop through the pandemic and into recovery operations. The Thrift Shop provides critical revenue for YFS services, which are experiencing unprecedented demand for mental health and case management services,” said YFS administrator Tambi Cork.

Following Gov. Jay Inslee’s latest guidance, everyone will be required to mask up while shopping and working inside the store, which has no limit on the amount of customers in the store at a time. They will be monitoring that scenario each day.

Ever since Perez stepped into her role with the shop in May, things have been fast-paced.

“It’s fun. It’s a lot of moving parts. There’s so much support in the community and there’s so much need, so it’s really exciting to work on a project that you know as soon as you get it up and working, we’re going to have immediate payback,” Perez said.

Perez said that with an increase in sales with the expansion in hours comes an enormous need for donations to keep pace with the customers’ demand. People can donate items during drive-up curbside services from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays at the Community and Event Center at 8236 SE 24th St. Also, two more self-service 24/7 donation bins will be added on Aug. 2 at the Mercer Island Boys & Girls Club at 4120 86th Ave. SE and the south-end QFC at 8421 SE 68th St.

On a recent Sunday, the shop raised nearly $9,000 in sales with 59 transactions an hour during its five hours of operations. Three cashiers were working that day, and currently the shop has 80 active volunteers and four staff members. They are currently hiring for a community engagement/volunteer coordinator and an operations lead.

The shop’s back-of-house operation features volunteers collecting, sorting, pricing and placing items and more. If household items aren’t sold at the store, they’re recycled and upcycled or passed on to other services for usage. The shop plays a huge role in service learning, with many of its volunteers coming from high schools/alternative schools and college work study programs or are court appointed.

Perez noted that thrift, in general, is a rapidly growing retail field and large companies — like Nordstrom — have dipped into the thrift world. Also, the younger generation has embraced thrift for its environmental benefits and cost value, she added.

For more information, visit https://www.mercerislandthrift.org/.

Eager Mercer Island Thrift Shop customers line up before the 11 a.m. opening on Sunday. Photo courtesy of the city of Mercer Island