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These moms have a blueprint to fix California’s clothing glut

March 20, 2026

Customers shop at Project ReWear in Newbury Park on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. Kimberly Lau and Linda Young are the two moms behind Project ReWear, a thrift store whose circular business model is to ensure every item gets multiple chances to find a home includes quarterly WEARhouse sale events. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Customers Leticia Finn and Linda Martin have some fun as they shop at Project ReWear in Newbury Park on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. Kimberly Lau and Linda Young are the two moms behind Project ReWear, a thrift store whose circular business model is to ensure every item gets multiple chances to find a home includes quarterly WEARhouse sale events. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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California throws away 1.2 million tons of textiles annually, even though CalRecycle estimates 95% of those items are reusable.

While the state’s landmark Responsible Textile Recovery Act (Senate Bill 707) will eventually force manufacturers and brand owners to fund and manage this waste, those mandates won’t take effect until 2030.

Kimberly Lau and Linda Young aren’t waiting.

The co-founders of Project ReWear, a mission-driven, secondhand clothing boutique in Thousand Oaks, are proving that independent stakeholders can drive change now. Their circular model treats thrifted clothes as a resource rather than trash, operating on a purpose first, profit second philosophy.

The business partners describe their five “impact pathways” — online sales, an in-store boutique, a “first dibs” room created for VIP donors and a quarterly Wearhouse Sale featuring $10 fill-a-bags. (The next one is in late May). They also partner with Bundles of Kindness to clothe the unhoused and store “unwearable” items for future upcycling collaborations.

Most of their stock comes from Lau’s thrift-shopping sprees and donations. In fact, she met Young while shopping at the Mad Attic thrift store where Young was a volunteer.

“We purchased over 100,000 items personally before donations even started coming to us,” Lau said.

Through their Landfill Project, the duo weighs every item purchased or donated, and again at checkout. To date, they’ve diverted 6,800 pounds of clothing back into local closets.

Their newly launched Don8 incentive program gamifies the experience, rewarding donors with tier levels — Sustainability Star, Closet Champion, Impact Icon and Landfill Legend — based on the weight of clothing diverted from landfills. The top three tiers provide discounts on store purchases.

“We’re always trying to think outside the box, because there’s not really anywhere you can donate clothes and get rewarded for doing that,” Young said.

The Southern California News Group caught up with Lau and Young to discuss how they are tackling the fashion glut and why their approach is already resonating with the community. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: When you sat down to sketch out your circular model, what was the dream version of Project ReWear?

Kimberly: The vision was building this community of people and generating awareness, and eventually, becoming a thought leader in sustainability at the consumer level. Personally, I’ve always had this big vision of my end goal.

Linda: For me, the whole mission was about saving this planet for future generations. My biggest goal was to get the messages out there. There are things people don’t know, like the fact that we have enough clothing on the planet to clothe the next six generations if production stopped today.

Q: Thousand Oaks is an affluent community. How did you create a presence there?

Linda: Our store is more like a boutique. It’s all secondhand, but you wouldn’t know that by the space you’re in. We’re breaking down those barriers for people who do have the means to buy new … educating them on why we need to look at secondhand as a first option.

Kimberly: What’s interesting is you don’t have to change the narrative for teens anymore; it’s become the cool trendy thing to do whether it’s for sustainability or not.

Q: Are you also seeing a shift where people shop with you for financial reasons rather than just eco-friendly ones?

Kimberly: One hundred percent. Some people come in because they know all clothing is $2 to $18. If it’s not ready for the store, then it goes to the Wearhouse Sale. We’re focused on affordability, but also adding that flair of style, convenience and impact.

We’re about to be launching our Don8 incentive program. Linda, why is it No. 8?

Linda: The number 8 looks like two connected circles (describing it as a symbol of the circular economy).

Kimberly: So it’s donate, earn, shop, repeat. Because we’re not a nonprofit and want to keep the pricing very affordable, the donate part fuels our system. What we’re doing is saying, “Hey, you donated this amount of pounds.”

Q: Not everything you receive is perfect, right?

Linda: Absolutely not! We have a lot of unwearables — things with holes, stains, rips, tears. Our goal is to hire a seamstress who can re-create things for us from those unusable items.

Kimberly: For now, we are storing all unwearables.

Q: Can you talk about the thinking behind your Wearhouse sales?

Linda: We hold those because a lot of the items don’t seem to be ReWear-ready for the store level. We look at every piece and ask: Which pathway is this going to?

Kimberly: Is it for the store? Is it going to Bundles of Kindness? That was started by a 13-year-old girl as a bat mitzvah project. Every month, we get looks for interview clothes for men and women and provide school clothes for homeless kids in the (San Fernando) Valley.

Linda: We have a team of about 10 employees. It’s a small crew right now, but it’s definitely growing.

Q: You’ve also made the jump into e-commerce. How does your mission of reducing waste translate to an online shopping experience?

Kimberly: The online thing has been a labor of love. We’ve been pivoting and changing, and by the end of this month, we’ll have probably close to 500 items up. Given our mission is about reducing textile waste in real time, we weigh every item on our website. We put the weight on the picture, and now customers can even sort by the weight they potentially want to save from the landfill.

Linda: That’s a big shift in the market. It’s “I want to make an impact” rather than “I want to buy a pair of jeans.”

Kimberly: We allow store pickups, but a lot of times the online items are not available in the store; they’re a bit higher end and only items that we personally source.

Q: California has a major textile recycling law going into effect in 2030 that will force companies and brands to take responsibility for their waste. Since you’re already doing this work on the ground, do you see that as a windfall, or are you just focusing on the consumer level for now?

Kimberly: Honestly, I think a lot will change between now and then. I personally don’t even think about what brands are doing anymore. There’s always a lot of red tape, right? It’s more just strictly on the consumer level, and what we as small-town moms can do on our level. We just educate and come up with these outside-the-box ideas that hopefully will gain more exposure.

Q: So let’s look at the big picture. Five years from now, 10 years from now, what’s the ultimate vision for Project ReWear? Is it to expand the physical footprint across Southern California or even out of state, or is more about changing how we value the clothes that we already have hanging in our closets?

Linda: I think it’s about world impact and how we raise these little humans to, from the beginning, know that thrifting and buying secondhand is normal. It’s what we should be doing because if we don’t do that, there won’t be a planet for little humans to run around on.

Textile waste is a huge problem.

Kimberly: Beyond our lives, it takes over 200 years for a fast-fashion item made from synthetic fibers to decompose in a landfill. So, the end goal is we want to build a blueprint and replicate it in other cities. We have some exciting ideas to gain more exposure and become a thought leader in the area, speaking at schools and on panels, things like that.

Q: One final question: Is this a lucrative business?

Kimberly: (Laughs) Yes and no. Yes, because of how much we’ve accomplished. We are generating quite a bit of revenue. Because we’re crazy and trying to do everything at once, you have to invest a lot of money to get it going. So when you look at the actual investment, no — but when you look at our revenue over the last year and how consistently it’s growing, yes.

The founders of Project ReWear

Kimberly Lau, 51

Role: Founder and CEO of Project ReWear

Hometown: Thousand Oaks

Family: A single mom of two boys, ages 14 and 16.

Professional background: Spent 24 years in wealth management, rising to the level of co-CEO.

Lightbulb moment: Cleaning out her sons’ closets and seeing how many items still had tags on them.

Linda Young, 52

Role: Partner and COO of Project ReWear

Hometown: Originally from Australia, now living in Agoura Hills.

Family: A mother of two, a 12-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son, who balances business with “school drop-offs and pickups.”

Professional background: Worked in retail management and global brand development, notably leading the Australian brand R.M. Williams (formerly part of the LVMH portfolio) across the American and British markets. Locally, she served as board president of The Mad Attic thrift store.

Fun fact: She grew up thrifting, which she says is part of everyday life in her home country of Australia.

Address: Project ReWear, 2940 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks or find them online at projectrewear.com.

These moms have a blueprint to fix California’s clothing glut Orange County Register

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These moms have a blueprint to fix California’s clothing glut

The founders of Project ReWear

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