On Lincoln Highway and a few skips from campus life, Kaizen Vintage has carved out its own identity as a shop curated around vintage clothing, offering students and DeKalb locals a chance to breathe new life into a few older pieces.
Inside the storefront, located in the Junction Shopping Center, shoppers will find a range of items picked by quality, with a selection of pieces that range from Y2K to punk, all influenced by the owner’s personal style and popular styles today.
Michael Forbear, a finance major at ISU, began running Kaizen Vintage after taking over the business, previously named SommsVintage, from owner Jordon Sommers, a friend of Forbear’s.
“I’ve really been selling clothes to pay for my own college, and I came together with some friends and thought what if we did this at a higher scale,” Forbear said.
Band tees and other graphic tops, denim jeans with interesting designs, and other kinds of apparel are featured on the walls of Kaizen Vintage.
Forbear talked about the ways in which Kaizen Vintage organizes an ever-growing collection of clothing that changes every week by item type and style.
While Kaizen Vintage is one of multiple thrift and resale options in DeKalb, Forbear mentioned they heavily pride themselves on creating a selection that is not only fashion forward, but of a certain quality that would allow the owner to keep an item for a long time, making the selection picked with customers as the prime focus.
“Lately I’ve been liking the early mall brands when they actually had really good quality, and it was before the polyester came in with fast fashion,” Forbear said.
Sustainability plays a role in the store’s appeal, and although Kaizen Vintage does not accept donations, DeKalb residents are able to take items of a certain quality to sell back to the store for store credit, trading or cash at the discretion of Kaizen Vintage.
Forbear explained the store’s name comes from the Japanese concept of Kaizen, in which every small part of a project can amount to a significant positive change, calling all collaborators to action for their parts.
“It’s only positive,” Forbear said. “We had ‘Kaizen’ shirts that we did for our team, and we all were Kaizen, and we kind of lived by it.”
Kaizen Vintage is open from noon to 7 p.m. from Wednesday to Sunday. They are located at 866 W. Lincoln Highway. For information on upcoming events and sales, see Kaizen Vintage’s Instagram kaizenvintagellc.
