Clara deBoer upcycles, reduces waste and creates fashion one-offs through Summer Company program
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Entrepreneur Clara deBoer has joined the growing ranks of young people battling the rising tide of fast fashion with a brand new fashion line made of all old clothes. Clara’s Upcycling Clothing Line is deBoer’s creative way of helping the environment. “I take clothing from thrift stores and stuff, and give it a second life, so we keep it out of the landfill for a couple more years,” she explained. “I use old sweaters, t-shirts and flannels, match them together and make something new.”
DeBoer was planning to start her business last summer, but her schedule turned out to be a bit full at the time.“I was in summer school, so I thought it was going to be a little too much, maybe. I was going to do crocheting, but then over the last year, I took part in the sewing 4-H club, and I went from there to making these clothes. My mom said, ‘hey, you should try this as your business,’ so I tried it one day, and that’s what I decided to go with.”
DeBoer launched her venture this summer through the Huron County Summer Company program, which provides grants and mentorship for young go-getters like her. “You have to fill a whole lot of paperwork to get started, but then once you’re accepted, you get to take part in business advisor meetings where they come to speak with you individually,” she explained to The Citizen. “They help you take one step at a time to make it grow. You also do overall lessons with everybody in the Summer Company on Zoom. People come on and they talk about, like, one day it might be marketing, the next day it might be setting up your business plan on your computer to make sure you keep all your paperwork together. It helps build your business one day at a time.”
The program proved especially valuable to deBoer when she started to worry that she might not complete the 280 hours required for the grant program. “At one point, I had this downfall where I was not feeling like I was going to finish. We had the minimum of 280 hours we had to spend on the business this summer, and by halfway through, I had like no hours - I was freaking out. But they took me one step at a time to work on the hours, and it turned out that I was just being very precise! I was writing one hour, three minutes, while everyone else was rounding up. So even though I felt like I had nothing, really, I had a lot.”
Her biggest challenge so far has been finding enough material to offer many different sizes. “To start off, I mostly just had like my sisters’ and my old clothing, so it was like smaller items,” she explained. “When I went to the Grand Bend Market a couple weekends ago, everyone was like, oh my gosh, I love it, but it’s not my size. So right now I’m trying to get a whole bunch of bigger sizes because I’m going again in August.”
Balancing business with summer fun hasn’t been easy. “At the beginning, I definitely was business, business, business. I needed to make sure I had hours. So I had to cut back so I didn’t burn myself out,” she admitted. “If I needed a break from working in the basement or getting frustrated with cutting because it wasn’t going straight, my mom would take the time to sit down with me, and once I did that, it was fun to do my business again.”
She’s found that running her own business has made her much better at organization and multi-tasking. “I did the math at one point, and I had to do a minimum of four and a half hours of sewing a day, or something like that. So I would get up at eight, do an hour and so, go down with my animals and practise showing them for 4-H and then I would go back to the house, do another hour or so, have lunch, and just break my day up, so I’m not sitting down in the basement for a long stretch of time,” she explained. “And then any time I did an extra half an hour, an hour, I would keep track of it, and then, on days where I needed more of a break, I would use up my extra hours, so I know I had hours saved up to use.
She’s also learned that there are a lot more moving parts to running a clothing line than she initially realized. “There’s many different levels to a business,” she pointed out. “If you have a good structure, then you don’t have to put so much more structure into it later on. I use Google Sheets - any time I buy new clothing, I put in what the clothing is, the size and the price, so then it adds it up, so I know how much I’m spending, compared to if I had to keep each individual price tag, I would have to spend more time making sure I don’t lose them, and then I would have to make sure I knew what sweater they go with, and stuff like that - it would take way more time in the end. Definitely, I recommend joining the Summer Company program, because it helps you get through the hardest part of starting a business, which is the beginning. So if you join them, they will help you with all the struggles to get to the easy part and the fun part, which is being a part of your business, in the end!”
If you’re interested in checking out deBoer’s unique wearable art, you can find Clara’s Upcycling Clothing Line on social media, or right in downtown Blyth, at the Maple and Moose on Queen Street.