For Utah State University students Ellie Cram and Logan James, shopping for thrifted and vintage clothing is uniquely exciting.

“It’s so fun,” Cram said, likening it to a game or a challenge. “(You’re) trying to find that one piece. … You go thrifting with your friends and you’re trying to, like, get the good stuff before they get it.”

Cram and James began selling thrifted clothes a little over two years ago — locally at first, while also traveling to vintage markets and pop-up events.

“We were doing a lot of selling on campus, loading everything into my car, unloading everything out of my car, over and over and over again — wasn’t fun,” James said.

After growing sour toward that grind, James said the pair decided to purchase a retired school bus after brainstorming with entrepreneurship professors at USU in Logan, Utah. They pitched the idea to USU’s version of “Shark Tank,” and though they took last place in the competition, James said they were awarded $1,250 to go toward their vision.

“When we decided we wanted a bus, I told my parents about it,” James said, explaining his mom pointed him to a news story about his hometown school district selling a bunch of old buses.

Approximately a week later, James said, the district held an auction.

“Just completely lucky, random luck of the draw,” James said. “We were on top of it, snagged this one, and then, yeah, went to town remodeling it.”

The newest iteration of their company, Thrift Jam, features the duo’s curated selection of salvaged clothes and textiles displayed inside and out of the bus. They’ve also recently begun taking old, dilapidated items and turning them into something new.

“Those bags over there used to all be pairs of pants,” James said. “We’ve taken apart damaged sweatshirts and re-sewn them together to make them, like, more stylish.”

When it comes to the landscape of street wear brands, James said everything is exclusive and sometimes price prohibitive. But thrifting is exclusive without being exclusionary.

“We don’t have two of anything,” James said. “But it’s a low price point. And so you can have something that you’re confident no one else is wearing but it didn’t, like, break your bank account.”

According to James, all the items sold at Thrift Jam have already made it through a typical thrift store donation process, and the company never sources clothing from local thrift stores.

“Everything we get is either about to be cut up and turned into rags or dumped in a landfill,” James said. “That’s one thing we like about it is we don’t feel like we’re taking from anyone. We feel like we’re just, like, giving all of these garments another chance and just pulling them back to the beginning of the cycle.”

Once a clothing item is donated to a thrift store, James said, it typically lasts on a rack for a matter of days before it’s either sent to “rag houses” to be recycled, shipped overseas or placed in a landfill.

James said Thrift Jam works with seven or eight people — with similar tastes in style — who pick through these leftovers and make selections. Those selections are either boxed or compressed into a “bale” and shipped to Thrift Jam.

“If we had more money, I’d hire more because it’s sad to know of just all the really insane, cool T-shirts that are just getting dumped,” James said.

Not all of the items received fit the Thrift Jam image, though.

“We have a $5 bin in there. So, a lot of it goes in there where we’re like, “All right, this doesn’t fit our style. Maybe someone will like it,’” James said. “We have donated things before that just really were not going to work out.”

Cram said some “crazy” and “weird stuff” had been sent to them in the past. Some clothing items were simply too ill-favored. Cram said lots of “weird, political” items had too been shipped out.

“Stuff that we don’t feel comfortable hanging up on our racks,” James said with a laugh.

Though they travel to various Utah cities, Cram said around 50 percent of their items are sold online and shipped throughout the U.S. Cram said the company gets lots of attention through TikTok.

Even still, Cache County is one of the pair’s favorite places to set up shop. Cram said the people of Cache Valley are accommodating, and the college-aged crowd wants what the company sells.

“We like Cache County,” Cram said. “People are just nice here.”

For more information, visit @thriftjamco on Instagram or TikTok.