Note to readers • This story has been updated to include a Tribune interview with Preloved founder Satu Kujanpää.
Provo • On any given Saturday, a few dozen young women arrive early at Indy Clover in Provo, carrying garbage bags and plastic bins.
They have an hour before the store opens to hang, fold and stage a few rented feet of retail space. If they finish early, some browse their fellow resellers’ items — even before others have finished setting up.
Fast forward to the following Friday night, when the items that didn’t move go back into bags, and each booth is vacated. The next morning, someone else rents each space, and the process repeats anew.
This is the rhythm of Provo’s exploding thrift-booth economy, where Indy Clover, on University Parkway, and Preloved, on Cougar Boulevard near Brigham Young University’s LaVell Edwards Stadium, dominate.
Resellers lean into the shops’ existing infrastructure to dip into entrepreneurship and build their own brands, and in a college town where purchasing secondhand clothes is a particularly popular hobby, the model is changing the market.
Where the booth model originated
Of the city’s two booth-based reselling giants, Preloved came first.
Founder Satu Kujanpää told The Salt Lake Tribune that she brought the idea over from Finland; both she and her husband are Finnish, she said, and there, she discovered and fell in love with local booth-style thrift stops.
Each trip home to the states, the couple would stuff their suitcases with secondhand clothing for their kids, because “kids grow really fast,” she said, and “it would just save me so much money.”
Living in Texas at the time, she started hunting around for a similar model in the U.S., but she kept coming up empty. Her entrepreneurial side sensed an opening, she said, and when she and her family moved to Provo during the COVID-19 pandemic, she dove into the planning process.
“I signed a lease with a baby on my chest,” she said of opening the store’s first location. “Then I just started talking to everybody I could talk to.”
By the time they hosted their grand opening, they had 42 booths occupied and made $2,000 in sales, “which isn’t very much compared to what we now do on a Saturday,“ she told The Tribune, ”but that was $2000 worth of stuff that people were just sitting on in their closets.”
Three months in, Kujanpää’s husband quit his job and dove into the business full-time with her. Six months in, they opened a second shop in Spanish Fork. Now, Preloved has 11 locations across Utah, Idaho, Illinois and Texas.
“Part of my mission is to make [thrifting] a way of life,” she told Y Magazine in 2023.
Inside the original Provo location, rows of wooden booths hold clothing, shoes and home items. The booths rotate weekly, rented by sellers who set their own prices and keep 60% of the profits.
The stores also feature a “kids corner,” where children can play while their parents shop.
“With the corner always in clear view, you can ensure that your kids are having just as much fun as you are,” the company’s website states.
Indy Clover runs a similar reselling operation. The brand launched in Utah four years ago and has since expanded to Idaho, Arizona and Massachusetts.
Preloved and Indy Clover both charge resellers $30 for a week-long booth. Both operate on a Saturday-to-Friday schedule. Preloved sorts booths by category — women’s, men’s and kids’ — while Indy Clover lets sellers mix.
‘A really fun, happy vibe’
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Stephanie Pitcher, co-owner of Indy Clover in Provo, helps clients load-in to their small booths for a week on Saturday, July 18, 2026. The consignment retail and thrift store as sellers reserve space on a week-by-week basis.
Stephanie Pitcher co-owns Indy Clover’s Provo franchise with her husband, Tyson Pitcher. She first encountered the booth model while living in St. George, where an Indy Clover franchise opened in 2023. Her teenagers started shopping there, and their enthusiasm drew her and her husband in.
“It was just a really fun, happy vibe, and it was so different than anything we’d ever seen up until that point,” she said.
At Provo’s Indy Clover location, which features pink walls and plush clothing, most shoppers are college students with small budgets hoping to save money on secondhand items — and earn extra income reselling their own.
“A lot of the brands [sold here] are so good and so reusable,” said buyer and seller Briseis Zurita. “It’s really nice to just be like, ‘Oh, I’m just going to go to Indy Clover, and these $200 Free People pants will be 30 bucks.’ It’s more sustainable.”
First-time seller Brooklyn Robertson, 22, said she was drawn to booth-style thrifting because of the clothing quality.
“Everyone that sells takes care of their clothes really well, so it’s very high quality and cute stuff,” she said. “A lot of my Lululemon things I’ve gotten here. They’re still in really good condition, but they’re like two-thirds of the price.”
It’s also a social scene. Robertson was introduced to Indy Clover by a friend, and she’s since introduced it to other friends, she said.
‘I reuse that money to buy more clothes’
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chase Burgener, right, and her husband, Nathan, decide what might fit in their booth at Indy Clover in Provo, a consignment thrift store where customers rent out booths to sell their clothes and home goods on a week-by-week basis, Saturday, July 18, 2026.
The Pitchers say they have a loyal Provo clientele that keeps coming back, turning their shopping hobby into a side hustle, with weekly profits averaging over $100.
“I’ve done it many, many times,” said Gigi Reynolds, who takes her daughter Sage to Indy Clover both to buy and sell. “I shift out my clothes every so often; I sell them, and then I reuse that money to buy more clothes.”
At Preloved, sellers typically see a 40% return, Kujanpää said.
“We encourage people to do a purge about once a quarter,” Kujanpää said. “Then you’re always putting stuff away to sell and getting it out of your house.”
The stores offer convenience and a built-in customer base, converting closet turnover into cash without the labor of photographing, listing and shipping that reselling websites like Poshmark or Depop demand.
The tradeoff is that you have to show up twice — to set up, and tear down. But many sellers don’t seem to mind.
“It’s a great way to reduce, reuse, recycle — and get money back,” said Chase Burgener, an Indy Clover seller first introduced to the booth model when she moved here from California. “Utah’s killing it in that department.”
Correction • July 28, 11:25 a.m.: This story has been updated to correctly attribute a comment from Preloved founder Satu Kujanpää‘s to Y Magazine. It’s also been updated to correct that Preloved charges $30 for a week-long booth rental.