In time for the holiday season, The New Store and Alumni Engagement’s MadeNEW Market launched the Alumni Holiday Market, a section of The New Store’s online site featuring uniquely designed products made by New School alumni-owned businesses.
The market sells over 120 products, from jewelry and apparel to wellness and art. The items are sourced from over 30 businesses, with prices ranging from $2 stationary to an $185 jacket. The Alumni Holiday Market launched as a pilot program on November 13 and will continue until January 17.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Kelsey McKinnon, the Retail and Merchandise Associate Manager at The New Store, who founded the idea for the Alumni Holiday Market. “We have a great community with a wealth of design and talent, and being able to feature that here, I think is really amazing.”
According to McKinnon, on the first day the Alumni Holiday Market was launched, there was the highest spike ever seen on The New Store site in both sales and site traffic. McKinnon hopes that The New Store will sell alumni-made products throughout the year, or at least be an annual tradition.
Illustrator and footwear designer, Justin Blanco is a Parson’s 2012 alumni with a BFA in Product Design. In the Alumni Holiday Market, Blanco is selling a few prints from his company, New York Penn, but has also created New School merchandise specifically for the market.
“It’s a little different from where I am going with my original stuff because my original stuff is solely based on storytelling, and I kind of lose that aspect of storytelling,” Blanco said, referring to creating New School-oriented merchandise in comparison to his New York Penn designs, which capture the atmosphere of New York City throughout the pandemic and civil unrest. According to the New York Penn website, Blanco’s latest work reflects “the times where some days we are reminded that Black joy is very beneficial to our mental health, and other days this is a surge of inspiration in wanting to fight for justice.”
Blanco said he would want to continue to design products for, and sell them through, The New School. “It has definitely given me kind of a shot in the arm,” Blanco said. “I just kind of knew that, for my stuff in particular, there was a place in the market for it.”
Though they may not meet all of the criteria, the alumni vendor’s products reflect the ideals of The New Store’s mission statement for it’s merchandise, such as maintaining ethically minded fair labor practices, being created out of sustainable materials and being made from independent vendors based in the United States. “It kind of just naturally happened with this group of alumni makers,” McKinnon said.
For example, Samantha Sutton, who graduated with a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons in 2017, is selling masks and matching accessories handmade from vintage and deadstock fabrics with compostable packaging. Sutton’s products —also sold on her company’s site— which launched December 9, aim to bridge the gap between sustainability and her aesthetic, which she described as feminine and romantic.
“I have such a maximalist aesthetic, and I was not finding that with sustainable undertones.” said Sutton. “That is the problem I am trying to solve with my company.”
MadeNEW Market, created by the Alumni Engagement team, also launched on November 13 and is similarly an online platform that sells products and designs from alumni-owned businesses. MadeNEW Market will operate throughout the year, yet it exists only within The New School Network, whereas the Alumni Holiday Market is open to the general public as a part of The New Store.
For the market, vendors shipped their inventory to McKinnon, who is fulfilling all orders from her New Jersey apartment. Although vendors are unable to control and track their inventory, there was no upfront cost to sell their products on the site. All products not sold by January 17 will be shipped back to the vendors, with a check for their respective products sold, minus a consignment fee.
According to McKinnon, customers have shown interest across the variety of brands featured on the site. “From price points and across the brands, people are purchasing from all different types of brands, and it’s just really exciting to see.”
