Lost & Found – A Bin Business in Hudson Valley

“The idea of Lost & Found was born from a lack of places like a traditional rag house or warehouse style space to thrift from in the Hudson Valley. This was both an observed and personal problem, and we kept asking each other why nothing like this exists up here. The idea was to make vintage feel more accessible and more fun for all, including both avid thrifters and our reseller community.

As this industry grows by leaps and bounds, we are finding less and less out there in terms of quality, age, and natural materials. Places like Goodwill and Salvation Army are both flooded with fast fashion and thrifters of all kinds. While it’s amazing to see the momentum, it has made the thrill of the hunt feel more like shopping for whatever is left. Even our secret spots were not so secret anymore. It was time for something new and for an adventure.

Instead of presenting a small selection of highly curated pieces we wanted to bring in both depth and range to our assortment and organize it in a way that still encourages discovery, digging, and exploration.

Lost & Found is a fine balance between the price points of donation based thrift shops and undone curation.

Lost & Found is a bin-style vintage shop inspired by the traditional rag house approach to shopping for used clothing. All of the clothing and accessories are sorted and organized by category and retail gender and then placed in cardboard boxes for thrifters to dig through. Each item has a color-coded tag attached that indicates its price. Our price points range from $5 to $38 and we have over 150 categories out and available to shop.

When you first walk in it may seem a bit daunting, but once you grab a basket and settle in, you can get lost in here for hours. The beauty and simplicity of this is that you can look at every category that you want and you can skip the ones that you don’t. We encourage a little bravery and to give things a try anyway. Afterall, personal style is the curation of yourself and the message you want to send, and we warmly invite that into our space.

Newburgh is a special place with a long rich history with many creative people and independent ventures. We felt Lost & Found could be a part of that community.

Where the shop is located is more city center and set away from Newburgh’s downtown district. This decision to be here was thoughtful and intentional as we wanted to be centralized and accessible for anyone and everyone who thrifts for pleasure, income, or out of necessity.

We source domestically and internationally from a growing list of vendors, often purchasing in the thousands of pounds at a time. Our goal is to source thoughtfully and sustainably while offering both variety and depth in our vintage clothing.

Chris puts an enormous amount of work into the sourcing and acquisition of vintage clothing for the shop.

There is no shortage of used clothing out there but we are specifically hunting for great quality vintage.

This is the lifeblood of any shop, let alone one the size of ours. It takes time, research, and relationship building to make it all happen.

We believe that secondhand is already a standard rather than a choice for us. With over 6 generations and counting of second hand clothing out there and new clothing is something we are not interested in selling.

Secondhand is also much more affordable in most cases, made of better quality fabrics, even the synthetics are of better quality. The intentional way the majority of new mass produced clothing disintegrates, pills, rips, and tears has forced generations of people to consume way more than is necessary.

By shopping secondhand, even if someone wears it once and resells it they are a part of the solution and keeping things in circulation.

One question we keep coming back to is what to do with fast fashion.

We do not intentionally source it, and we keep our inventory largely clear of it. You may occasionally find a Zara or Forever 21 piece in our bins among other mall brands, but our focus remains on offering vintage.

Being a small resale and non-donation business we can curate and be highly selective about what we bring in and buy. Arguably though, by choosing not to resell fast fashion it does not alleviate or dissolve the problem. That raises questions for us: What responsibility do we have to help keep existing clothing in circulation? Is there a way to handle these pieces thoughtfully while maintaining our own curation? It is something we are still working through and more conversations to be had. We want to be part of the solution while staying true to the shop we are building.

We want Lost & Found to be a welcoming space where anyone can find something vintage at a great price. We also love our reseller community and warmly welcome people looking for pieces to flip. There are relatively few places to source this kind of inventory in the Hudson Valley, and creating that opportunity was an important part of our concept. This is also true for the film and costume community that has a strong presence in the Hudson Valley.“

Lost & Found
8 Washington Terrace
Newburgh, NY 12550
Thu-Mon 10am-5pm
845-213-3909
@lostandfound.newburgh