Tennessee Tech students partnering with the Habitat ReStore to design and manage curated furniture displays that showcase donated items as complete room sets.
ReStore manager Alyssa Stenson said the collaboration began last fall through a connection between the university’s Human Ecology program and the local Habitat for Humanity construction director. The initiative allows interior design students to complete their practicum hours by taking full control over a specific section of the retail floor.
“They really have pretty a pretty good amount of control over what they can put in that room,” Stenson said. “I only have a few little restrictions of things that they can’t use.”
Stenson said the students are responsible for selecting items from the warehouse and pricing the merchandise they choose to feature. To monitor the financial impact of the project, the store uses a specialized tracking system for every item sold from the student-managed area.
“We actually track their sales, so they retag everything with a sticker that says Tech on it so that we’re able to tell them at the end of the semester or their practicum how much they’ve earned for the store,” Stenson said.
Stenson said the staged rooms help customers visualize how mismatched or individual donated pieces can function together in a home. This visual strategy has led to a noticeable increase in the speed at which furniture moves out of the store.
“When it’s staged like that, we definitely see a lot more movement of the product when they can see how it can be used, and it’s just visually appealing and draws people into it,” Stenson said. “So that’s great to have them help create a room like that.”
Stenson said working with a rotating inventory of donations forces students to abandon pre-planned designs and adapt to whatever items are available in the back of the store. This environment serves as a practical training ground that differs from the controlled settings of a classroom.
“That definitely requires more creativity because they can’t have a set idea,” Stenson said. “They have to be able to adapt to what we have. So they may want a particular style and we don’t maybe have that style, so they have to think outside of the box and use what we’ve got.”
Stenson said the partnership has also served as a marketing tool that has brought more university students into the store to furnish their own living spaces. While the primary goal is education, the revenue generated by these sales directly supports the construction of local homes and the operational costs of the organization.
“All of our proceeds go to help our mission,” Stenson said. “They fund the homes that we build, they fund our staffing, our overhead, the lights, the electricity, just all of the things that require running a business and helping others achieve that dream of homeownership.”
Stenson said the store intends to maintain the relationship with the Human Ecology department to provide future students with professional experience for their resumes.
“It’s great for the Tech students, they’re gaining real-world experience,” Stenson said. “So a lot of good comes from it.”
