{"id":371128,"date":"2026-06-23T04:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T04:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/371128\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T04:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T04:57:11","slug":"the-thrift-vault-on-cedar-ave-is-a-selective-thrift-showroom-serving-fresno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/371128\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thrift Vault on Cedar Ave is a selective thrift showroom serving Fresno"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most thrift stores rely on donations from locals to keep their shelves stocked. That isn\u2019t the case with The Thrift Vault on Cedar Avenue at the corner of E Fir Ave.<\/p>\n

Former real estate professional Brandon Bottoms opened the store in April. It features an array of wall art, accessories and clothing as well as harder-to-come-buy items including a surfboard in the display window and a Chanel purse in the back.<\/p>\n

Bottoms began buying and selling items as a small child, trading baseball cards, hats and snacks for a few dollars. Even while working his day job in real estate as an adult, Bottoms enjoyed curating pre-loved items to sell to interested customers. He opened The Thrift Vault after leaving his 20-plus year career due to burnout, turning a lifelong hobby into his full-time job.<\/p>\n

While Bottoms will occasionally accept items that other people bring to the store, he does not rely on donations to stock The Thrift Vault, instead sourcing and buying pre-loved inventory on his own.<\/p>\n

Other secondhand stores are typically less selective about the items they accept. Bottoms\u2019 philosophy is that less is more if he can maintain quality and distinctiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very one-off,\u201d he says of his inventory. \u201cSo when somebody comes in, it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s pretty cool.\u2019 And once it\u2019s gone, it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

If he happens to be sourcing items at a yard sale, Bottoms goes for unique items that other buyers may not see as anything special at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going, you\u2019re looking, and there\u2019s just, like, a bunch of clothes, and all of a sudden, there\u2019s just something that just has, a ton of color on it. I\u2019ll grab that before I pick up anything … I want to know what that is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When people call the store and ask if they can bring donations, Bottoms clarifies to them that he prefers the word \u201ccontribution\u201d to \u201cdonation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re contributing to what I\u2019m doing. You\u2019re not donating your junk or your trash. You\u2019re contributing to what I got going on, and it completely changes their mindset of what they bring,\u201d Bottoms said. He believes that this leads people to drop off higher-quality items than they would otherwise.<\/p>\n

The Thrift Vault presents itself as a showroom rather than a typical thrift store.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery item is hand-picked and every visit is a treasure hunt,\u201d Bottoms said.<\/p>\n

\"A A Chanel purse is one of the most recognizable treasures at The Thrift Vault. Hana Tilksew hana.tilksew@fresnobee.com \"Bags Bags are on display behind a glass case at The Thrift Vault. Hana Tilksew hana.tilksew@fresnobee.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most thrift stores rely on donations from locals to keep their shelves stocked. That isn\u2019t the case with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-371128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}