Excelty, a boutique-style, plus-size thrift store at 1110 S. Water St. in Kent, has created fulfilling memories for its owner and customers since its opening.
Named after the phonetic pronunciation of XLT, owner Lisa Wojnowicz said she carries apparel up to 6X for women and 7X for men, all sorted by size and color.
Wojnowicz said she struggled for years to find quality clothes in both her and her husband’s sizes. It was expensive and incredibly hard.
“I thought, ‘I should open a plus-size second-hand store,’” Wojnowicz said. “‘There are probably a million of us in Northeast Ohio doing the same as us. If I could get all the nice stuff in one spot, with fitting rooms, every curvy person near me will benefit.”
So, Wojnowicz cleared her closet, had a friend do the same and started buying large amounts of plus-size apparel 18 months ago to collect inventory for her store, storing them in her garage.
She and Tanya Brink, now Excelty’s store manager, did laundry, sorting, tagging and folding for storage.
“One day, my husband asked when we could get our garage back,” Wojnowicz said. “I started the search for a storefront, and the rest just came together.”
Being plus-size her whole life, Wojnowicz said she has always had difficulty finding clothes to match her “fine taste.”
“It came about out of just pure exhaustion from not being able to find things that we need affordably,” Wojnowicz said.
She moved her inventory to a storefront on Water Street and opened the thrift store in February. Since then, running the store has amounted to her accumulating thousands of pieces of apparel and many special moments with customers.
Wojnowicz remembered a woman who came in to buy a swimsuit.
“She cried in the fitting room because she said it was the first time she ever went into a store and found a swimsuit that fit her,” Wojnowicz said.
Another woman came to find a black dress for a funeral, and Wojnowicz found her in tears, too.
Wojnowicz remembered the customer saying, “I thought I was going to have to go to Torrid and spend $150, and here I got a Torrid dress for $12.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Wojnowicz said.
Caitlin Fisher, a customer at Excelty, went in for the first time this past week.
“It didn’t smell like a thrift store,” Fisher said. “It seemed updated. It seemed like the stock moves in and out; it didn’t feel like stuff had been there for a really long time … That’s not how thrift stores usually are.”
Fisher said they had only been to one other small business thrift store, and she found Excelty to be affordable and reliable.
“It felt really welcoming … it was really nice to be able to go to a place where I knew that there would be stuff for me and it would make me feel good,” Fisher said.
Wojnowicz created her store with accessibility in mind, placing fans in each fitting room and making sure the aisles and rooms were large enough for people in wheelchairs to fit in.
Brink, the store manager, has seen Excelty since its beginning.
“It was thrown together on a lot of love, that’s for sure,” Brink said.
As a business owner in Kent, Brink said Wojnowicz is always helping those around her.
“She’d give the shirt off her back if she had to,” Brink said.
Wojnowicz and Brink receive donations every day, so much so that Wojnowicz has not had to source any apparel in a while.
Wojnowicz said anyone can bring donations to the store during business hours, or they have a plastic collection bin outside.
“What I want is for me to be the first place that anybody goes when they’re extra large or up that they can come and find exactly what they need for a fraction of the cost,” Wojnowicz said.
