Our Story

In June 2001, Tasha Chapman decided to open Chaphill’s Consignment and Resale Shop in Carbondale Illinois. This was the beginning of their resale venture. I started taking consignments and the process was in full motion. More consignors were received than expected, not to mention clothes. In August 2001 I opened the doors for the first time for business.

"I ventured into the world of small business with no training and lots of prayers. I hoped for the best, but knew the worst was yet to come." says Tasha. "On my first day I made over $300.00 in sales. I was ecstatic that my dreams were now a reality."

 The weeks ahead turned out to be treacherous. "My six month cushion was dwindling and no profit was coming in. Who knew owning your own business could be so hard?" exclaimed Tasha, "I believed if I built it, they would come. I soon found out that the old tale was not necessarily true."  

Never the less, I endured the hard times and pressed forward desperately trying to find my niche in the world of retail/resale.

One year later a student came in wanting to sell his "rags" (reffering to his clothes). This was the first they had ever heard or even thought about buying clothes for cash then reselling them. Now the question was, “what would be a fair price to give someone?”

"Consignment is so different in that we take no risk; we sell someone else’s goods and don’t have anything vested in them" explains Tasha.  The idea of buying and reselling clothes seemed like a good idea. Their niche was found! She has built her business around the concept of “CASH NOW” for your clothes. "How could I go wrong? Right?" questioned Tasha "I didn’t, and so  I decided to focus my attention on the segment of the market that would sell often and keep my store booming."

 I decided to focus on the college student and the trendy mom. Chaphill’s had been in a bad location and produced another whole group of problems. I decided to open another location closer to the campus and give it a more modern name that would appeal to the younger shoppers. After much debate, the decision was made to use the students idea of  “rags” and so RagWear was born!

That was in 2004; two years later expansion have been made to the first store, doubling its size and tripling the inventory. And on July 22nd, RagWear celebrated the Grand Openning of a new store in Marion!