Editor’s note: Molly Guthrey learned about Nine Lives through Leadership St. Paul, a program of the St. Paul Area Chamber. She and several of her classmates in the 2025 class will spend the next year learning about and volunteering for the nonprofit as part of an engagement program.

When customers walk into Nine Lives, a new thrift store on West Seventh Street in St. Paul, they sometimes try to find something that has nothing to do with secondhand clothes.

“People look for the cat when they come in,” said co-founder Roxanne Sanchez with a laugh.

There’s no shop cat — not yet, anyway — but this nonprofit thrift store gives new life (and second chances) to clothes … and second chances to people as well.

That includes Sanchez.

“This is my dream,” she said.

Her dream, like that of shop co-founder Caitlin Langer, involves sustainable fashion, helping people in need and supporting other small businesses.Secondhand dreams

Langer learned early about sustainable fashion.

“My first job in high school, where I worked until I was 30 — for 14 years — was at a consignment store, Elite Repeat, in St. Paul,” said Langer, 36, of Shoreview. “That was when I got into secondhand fashion and clothing.”

Langer, a mom of two young children, now works at the nonprofit American Indian Family Center in St. Paul, but her consignment roots stay with her.

“It pains me to pay full price,” she said with a laugh.

Secondhand wasn’t always Sanchez’s thing.

“Growing up, we had to wear secondhand out of necessity,” said Sanchez, 37, of St. Paul. “Kids weren’t nice, we would get picked on. I didn’t want to get picked on, so it took me a long time to like secondhand.”

But even though her mom stopped telling her where she found the family’s secondhand deals, some lessons got through:

“My mom always said that you go to the mall to be told what to wear, but you go to the thrift store to make your own choices,” Sanchez said.

She became a convert about 15 years ago.

“I became interested in sustainability,” she said. “I was rattled when I heard that there are enough clothes on the planet now for everybody to wear for six generations. I decided I wasn’t going to buy any more new clothes.”

Later on, thrifting became Sanchez’s job — or, one of her jobs.

New Orleans

After graduating from Henry Sibley High School (now called Two Rivers) in Mendota Heights and studying art and photography at Kansas State University, Sanchez became a flight attendant and then, in a roundabout way, ended up living in New Orleans, where she was a nanny who also worked at a thrift store.

“All my jobs are weird accidents,” Sanchez said, laughing.

It was her curiosity that got her the next “weird” job on her résumé.

“A customer checking out had a very child-sized tweed vest, striped socks and a silk scarf,” Sanchez recalled. “I said, ‘Whaddya got going on here?’ She said, ‘I’m shopping for ‘American Horror Show: Freak Show,’ trying to find circus-themed pieces from the 1950s.”

This conversation led Sanchez to working as a production assistant and then as a union costumer.

In New Orleans?

“There was a boom in the film industry there at the time,” Sanchez said of 2012.

During her New Orleans era, Sanchez’s biggest job involved crime. Well, fictional crime.

“I ended my career as the ‘NCIS’ uniform costumer,” she said.

(That’s an acronym for Naval Criminal Investigative Service, by the way.)

Now that she’s back in Minnesota, does she ever miss showbiz?

“Sometimes,” she said. “My friends got to work on the halftime show at the Super Bowl. That could have been me. But I’m doing what I did there every day at the shop — the pace is different, though. Now, I’m not working 16-hour days and I can go home for dinner. And this is my dream, to have a shop.”

Pandemic plans

During the pandemic, as some of us learned to crochet or make sourdough starter during lockdown, Sanchez and Langer — childhood friends — were remembering their dream of opening a thrift store.

“It started in 2016, when we were roommates,” Sanchez recalled. “I had come back to Minnesota — I thought I was ready to come back, I wasn’t — and we lived in an old house with four cats, watching trash TV and drinking wine and that’s when we decided we wanted to open a store.”

At the time, the friends considered random names, like “Frida’s Emporium.”

Sanchez’s mom, the Thrifty Queen, wasn’t impressed.

“She said, ‘You need something simple, like, ‘Nine Lives,’ because clothes have nine lives,’” Sanchez remembered.

They all agreed — in this case, Mom knew best. But it was just a shop of their imaginations.

“For five years, we talked about it all the time,” Sanchez said.

By 2021, Sanchez was ready to be back home in Minnesota, where she was managing a DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) located within a Hy-Vee store.

All these work and life experiences seemed to build toward realizing Nine Lives.

“During COVID,” Sanchez said, “we got a little more serious about starting a shop.”

A test run, Sanchez and Langer decided, was needed.

Rummage sales

“It started with rummage sales,” Sanchez said.

The would-be business partners asked friends and family for donations. It worked. Soon, they had mountains of clothes as well as professional-looking displays and racks. They also had volunteers (their moms, husbands and others) to help run the cash registers and complete other tasks so Sanchez and Langer could focus on interacting with shoppers during their two sales. In addition to the clothes for sale, shoppers enjoyed live music and ate walking tacos — there was even an ice cream truck, Sweet Fruci’s, at the second sale.

“They were fun,” said Sanchez of their sales, “and organized like a store.”

The entrepreneurs continued to raise needed capital by popping up around town and renting space within another shop for a time.

With a lease agreement signed, their dream — Nine Lives, a nonprofit thrift store — was finally realized eight years after they started dreaming it.

“We opened on June 14, 2024,” Sanchez said.

A shop of their own

Nine Lives’ fashion goal is to offer inclusive sizing, with a focus on women’s clothing and accessories (although there is a selection for men, too).

The thrift store is located in a building on West Seventh Street near Watson Avenue, about two miles down the road from the Xcel Energy Center. It’s a corridor rich with independent shops and restaurants. On the thrift store’s block, this includes Brake Bread across the street and Great River Gallery, an art gallery and artist studio connected to Nine Lives.

On a sunny weekday in February, during a lull in customers, Sanchez is inside her shop, pricing a rack of corporate-looking women’s clothing.

Her sweatshirt, which spells out the message, “Saint Small,” speaks to the vibe of the thrift store as well as this corner of St. Paul.

“It’s more comradery than competition,” Sanchez said of other local shops and area thrift stores.

As she works on pricing the rack of clothing, she pulls out a knit sweater tank adorned with a floral pattern.

“This is probably the most interesting piece,” Sanchez said.

The sweater, like all the clothes here, are used but in good condition and stylish; so are the price tags.

“All the tags are recycled cardboard,” Sanchez said. “My friends at BWBR, an architectural firm I worked for, save them for me.”

It’s a community effort at a community store; the business is developing connections with local nonprofits to offer referrals, vouchers, fundraisers and shopping nights for clients in need.

For everyone else, it’s still a good deal: Unless it’s a designer find that Nine Lives could sell big to make money for their outreach or overhead, the shop keeps prices at the bargain level. Take that knit tank, for example.

“I’ll probably price it at $6,” Sanchez said.

The goal is to keep merchandise moving and to offer deals.

“It’s all from my heart,” said Sanchez.

Thrift, not vintage

Julie Benick discovered Nine Lives through the neighborhood rummage sales, and now she checks out the deals at the shop.

What are some of her best finds?

“I got a really great foldable traveling hat and a really cute cropped denim jacket and some fabulous silver high-top sneakers that retail for $300 — I looked them up — but I paid around $9,” she said.

The sneakers are an example of how this is a thrift store, not a vintage shop.

Nine Lives explains the difference this way: A thrift store is populated with donated items, a mix of modern and old pieces. A vintage shop is curated with items that are at least 20 years old, all cleaned and mended.

“It’s flattering to be mistaken for a vintage shop,” Nine Lives said in a post on Instagram, “but we are a simple thrift store!”

The “simple” store gets so many donations and is doing so well that it’s expanding into the space next door (it’s still open during this expansion).

On a recent morning, Peggy Sanchez, Roxanne’s mom, was behind the counter as she reflected on the evolution of thrift, which is flourishing across the city and the east metro, including St. Vincent de Paul’s thrift store down the street, Flying Pig Thrift on Snelling Avenue, Neighbors Clothes Closet in South St. Paul and CRAFT Thrift Store in West St. Paul.

There never used to be so many options, the Thrifty Queen mused.

“I learned early not to tell my kids something was from Goodwill — there was a stigma,” she said. “But now, I’m amazed at how many high school kids come here to shop. You never used to see kids shopping like that at Goodwill.”

Community building

For Benick, there’s another reason to shop at Nine Lives, too.

“They host cool events, like Nine Lives After Hours, where they partner with other independent businesses or artists, with wine and cheese,” Benick said. “It’s become a way to meet a lot of cool people and do some networking and support good causes — in addition to finding some great thrifted items.”

Nights like these are an important part of the nonprofit’s mission (the next one is set for Wednesday, March 12; details on this and other special events can be found at ninelivesthrift.com).

“It’s a special event for our supporters and also a way to invite new people in, a way to get to know more people in the neighborhood and create partnerships,” Langer said. “That was a big vision for when we were starting this, to have events where the community could gather.”

While Langer is currently more in the background of the business as she continues to work her day job and focus on her two young children, Sanchez was able to quit her job as a receptionist at the architectural firm and focus full time on their business.

Together, though, the friends continue to build this nonprofit that emerged from their dreams.

“It’s amazing to see everything come to fruition,” Langer said. “It’s everything we imagined.”