SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – With 2023 just times absent, lots of of us are creating a listing of new year’s resolutions. If just one of yours is to incorporate extra sustainable procedures in your everyday living — three females from the University of South Dakota could possibly have just what you require.
Likely from retail store to keep to obtain the fantastic outfit can be exhausting — specially when you are heading to thrift or classic outlets. Performing so on the internet is even far more of a hunt. Which is why 3 close friends from USD designed a little something easier.
“Fomeno is an app where by you can thrift from a bunch of diverse on line thrift, vintage, upcycle outlets. So we bring a bunch of various inventory into a person site so it is easy to uncover what you are seeking for,” Fomeno co-founder Payton Ryz mentioned.

Developed by Brigit Blote, Payton Ryz and Ashlynn Atwood, Fomeno permits you to scroll as a result of outfit inspirations or search for one thing certain. At the time you locate it, just simply click. From there, you are going to get tips for items from more than 50 different online thrift retail outlet associates. Click on when a lot more and you are accurately in which you need to be to make a acquire.
“We’re just attempting to actually simplify that method on-line and assist hook up men and women so that we’re building the trend industry more circular simply because fast manner is like tremendous detrimental to our ecosystem,” Ryz explained.
Fast style is the phrase for cheap clothing made rapidly by mass-industry retailers in reaction to the most current developments. Reducing rapidly trend is at the coronary heart of the mission of Fomeno.
“A whole lot of individuals do not even notice that a standard cotton t-shirt utilizes the similar sum of water that somebody beverages in three yrs. So it’s like a insane amount of methods that takes to produce new outfits,” Ryz said. “Also, these garments are getting manufactured in factories throughout the state that we never automatically see day-to-working day. They’re working below harsh ailments, receiving paid out considerably less than a living wage. So sort of halting that cycle of this mass manufacturing of clothing that purchased and then possibly another person will put on them a couple times and then they’ll be very poor high quality so they throw them out. Or they just stop up in the thrift shops.”

To start out their mission, the 3 mates used for the Hult Prize, a opposition that crowd-sources ideas from university-level pupils right after demanding them to clear up a pressing social difficulty — these kinds of as sustainability.
“At the stop of all that, we ended up staying one particular of the eleven folks that they chose to win a hundred thousand pounds. So that was genuinely cool, like so incredible, genuinely kickstarted everything,” Ryz reported.
From there, they expanded their group and hired Annie Lien as a model curator.
“It’s been so enjoyment because I’ve got to meet up with men and women across the globe with so a lot of different styles and personalities and passions and just outlooks on lifetime. It’s been so thrilling,” Lien said.
This past November, they lastly released the Fomeno application.
“That was just about three yrs immediately after we had first begun the level of competition,” Ryz stated. “It was a extended journey but I assume that is the startup daily life. You keep grinding away and ultimately, it clicks. We have actually been thankful to have a new advancement and tech staff on board.”
“If you select to store 2nd-hand, like that minimal choice in your each day life is generating these types of a enormous distinction,” Lien stated. “So just the slightest tiny modify in your buyer pattern can make an monumental effect on the world and the people who stay in it.”
Hear from Payton Ryz how Fomeno acquired its exceptional title:
Four youthful, female entrepreneurs leaving a greener footprint on this Earth.
“We like to brand ourselves as a ‘do good’ enterprise due to the fact that is our intention,” Lien stated. “We want to assist the planet and we want to support the individuals on the earth simply because we’d like to protect it for our little ones to have and for their young children to have. Preventing in opposition to the quick fashion sector is just one of our major ambitions.”
“So we generally want to continue to keep that mission at core,” Ryz said.
The Fomeno app is accessible now to download on Apple equipment.