The phrase “someone else’s trash is another person’s treasure” is not just a saying; it’s a business model.

While the original definition of the word thrift means to use money carefully and not wastefully, the act of “thrifting” has come to mean the art of buying and reselling used clothing items. And while clothes purchased at thrift stores are usually cheaper than brand-new clothes, there is still money to be made as well as saved.

That’s at the heart of the 1st Street Scavengers, which is a student-operated business that opened on campus at Akins this spring. The business is the product of students in the new Entrepreneurship course taught by business teacher Jackie Ward. Students in her course develop a business pitch and then implement that plan. Ward said the pitch process is similar to what people would see in the TV show Shark Tank, in which a business person presents their idea to a panel of judges that decide whether to back the idea with an investment to make money together. In this case, Ward’s students made their presentation to judges from Junior Achievement of Central Texas, which is a chapter of an international non-profit organization that helps students apply entrepreneurial thinking.

Ward said the Entrepreneurship course has several objectives for students to accomplish.

“The goal is to make a profit. I hope they learn from this is, well, a lot of things,” she said. “They learn how to track their sales. They learn how to keep financial records. They learn how to create a bank account, make deposits. They learn how to work as a team, delegate duties to different roles in the team. They learn how to manage their inventory and also have to track inventory, and they learn how to handle roadblocks and obstacles when having a business.”

After their pitch session in November, the student group received a $150 cash prize in the city-wide competition for receiving fourth place against some stiff competition, Ward said.

The group used the prize as seed money to purchase the inventory and supplies they needed to start the business.

Besides the pitch presentation in Austin, a team in the Entrepreneurship course competed in a business pitch competition at a state competition held at Baylor University in late April and earned a $500 prize for winning 3rd Place.

Junior Carter Penwell, who participates in the 1st Street Scavengers, said the original idea for the business came from a student in his group who noticed that there was a lack of thrift stores near Akins.

Senior Naw Serena said everyone in the group had an interest in thrifting, which helped the business become a success.

“Most of us went thrifting like every weekend, and we were like, ‘Oh, why not just start a thrifting business so that every student could have it easily, like it could be easily accessible at school, and, you know, cheap prices,’” she said. “It’s a trend now, so that just felt like it’d be very successful.”

Part of their business plan included developing a pricing structure that addressed customer needs, he said. The group distributed a survey to Akins students to ask them how much they would be willing to spend on used clothing items.

“We learned that most students were willing to spend $20,” Penwell said. “For the more specific pricing, we just based it on what we thought we could sell it for. We rarely buy anything at $20, though. The average prices for the clothes we sell are around $5-7.”

Serena said her group had several challenges to overcome with actually implementing their business plan.

“So the challenges were definitely finding a space for all the clothes, and we were looking for, like storage rooms, and just like trying to contact the office and the principal, and just approving it, because, you know, the students having a business at school and receiving money sometimes, you know, the principal doesn’t really agree with that, but we had, like, a whole presentation for him and all of that.”

Serena said that marketing the business was another challenge; however, that is also a fun part of the challenge.

“So I enjoy the process of what it’s like to start our business and knowing how to manage everything in the business. And I just like to be creative with how business can get.”

Serena said she plans to use the skills she learned from starting this business when she goes to the University of Texas at San Antonio to study accounting and entrepreneurship.

“I want to be able to, with my accounting degree, help entrepreneurs to grow their business,” she said.

Ricardo Ramos-Ramirez contributed to this story.