Behind the Camera, In Front of the Trends: Goodwill of San Francisco Bay Creates Opportunity Through Thrifted Fashion

Sometimes it can be difficult to visualize the perfect thrifted outfit from the endless pieces on ShopGoodwill.com, however, if it’s been curated by Inga Ojeriene and the e-commerce team from Goodwill San Francisco Bay, she makes affordable fashion, high fashion. Inga Ojeriene is the Associate E-Commerce Director for ShopGoodwill.com in San Francisco. She has over 15 years in the fashion industry and has worked as a buyer and creative manager in Lithuania for 8 years, she also started her own contemporary fashion brand.

Since starting at Goodwill 15 months ago, she has incorporated her eye for fashion in her e-commerce position and has done 13 photoshoots so far. Every two months she coordinates a photoshoot to display the clothing items being listed on San Francisco’s ShopGoodwill.com storefront. Inga chooses the theme and creates a mood board while retail pulls together the product. Once she has completed this phase, she finds models, make-up artists and photographers who want to participate all on a volunteer basis. “Our team is very innovative and we adapt quickly to the challenges and opportunities that arise,” says Inga. “We brainstorm every week and come up with new ideas for listing strategies and ways to increase revenue. We also try to build relations with the local fashion community, and specialists of certain fields and use their knowledge to train our employees.”

Through this creative program Inga has created opportunity for the volunteers to build their career portfolios as well as showing how giving an item a second life can be more fashionable than it’s first. Once the items have been listed on ShopGoodwill.com and purchased, more opportunity has been created within the local San Francisco community helping fund their job training programs. More than a million residents in the Bay Area live in poverty. Goodwill San Francisco Bay’s solution is to “create a bay area where no one is left behind.” SF Bay Goodwill has developed innovative programs, often in partnership with leading Bay Area companies. These include the Google IT Support Professional Certification, a LinkedIn Learning Lab in partnership with Microsoft, IT Security, Canva Graphic Design Tool and e-commerce trainings.

Through these photoshoots, Goodwill of San Francisco Bay hopes to inspire creativity through secondhand fashion and meaningful thrifting on ShopGoodwill.com. Your purchases on ShopGoodwill.com help fund job training programs in local communities throughout the country. Let’s #CreateOpportunity together.