Allison Fitts is a senior at MU and the Chief Procurement Officer of MU’s new student-run business, ThreadBare.
The new business is located on the first floor of the Student Center and sells thrifty, gender-neutral clothing for an affordable price.
Fitts, who is also the president of the Panhellenic Association, met Gabriel Riekhof, the founder of ThreadBare, through the Cornell Leadership Program their freshman year, and he brought her on the ThreadBare team to do inventory and run the Instagram account for the store. She did the majority of shopping for the business this summer while she lived in Chicago, and some of the clothing is also from Fitts’s hometown, Kansas City.
Senior Kyle Gunby is the chief marketing officer for ThreadBare and has known Fitts since they were sophomores. When Reikhof and Gunby began building the ThreadBare team, Fitts was the first they wanted to bring on board, specifically because her expertise in areas of advocacy.
“Allison brings exceptional validity and sincerity to everything she does,” Gunby says. “She’s someone I trust in every situation, and she’s in it for the right reasons. And something that I really value in her.”
As a business marketing major, the title of chief procurement officer may seem like it does not fall in line with what Fitts wants to do after graduating, but she says otherwise.
This summer, Fitts interned for Superfly, a company that puts on major music festivals like Bonnaroo, located in Tennessee, and Outside Lands, which takes place in San Francisco. She has also worked for The Blue Note and helped start Mizzou Music Management, an organization that helps students that want to work in the music industry.
“This may seem a little indirect, but it’s all millennial driven,” Fitts says. “Accepting everyone is something our generation tacks onto.”
The music festival industry primarily targets young adults and adults under the age of 30, and Fitts helped market towards this age group this past summer. Similarly, ThreadBare’s main target is college-aged students. To Fitts, ThreadBare’s clothing has a social message behind it.
“We want to be accepting of everyone, mainly wherever they fall on the gender scale or what their socio-economic status is,” Fitts says. “Whatever your identity is, we want to make sure you’re accepted.”
In addition to her involvement as CPO and with PHA, Fitts is a member of Tour Team. She has been involved with other campus organizations in her time at the university, but it’s not the organizations Fitts is involved in that define her, it’s the lessons she’s learned through her experiences, particularly in the realm of social justice.
She was invited to do Community 360, a weekend retreat that is designed to develop leadership skills and knowledge of social justice issues, her sophomore year.
“That was a game-changer,” Fitts says.
Through Community 360, she learned about the complexities of institutionalized racism, LGBTQ identities, transgender rights and about people of all identities that come from all walks of life.
“Social activism wasn’t something that was on my radar before college but now it is,” Fitts says. “That’s something I’m really grateful for, and that didn’t come from the classroom, that came from lived experiences.”
To Fitts, ThreadBare puts many of the things she has learned over the past four years in action, and she has been able to apply what she’s learned in the social justice realm to her work with the business.
ThreadBare is accepting of people from all walks of life, no matter where they fall on the gender scale, or what their socio-economic status is. Their clothing and presentation within the store portray acceptance of any and all identities.
“A lot of people like to talk, but I feel like we’re actually doing something with this,” Fitts says.