By Kalena Reynolds | Arts & Life Editor

Katie Valenzuela combines fashion with sustainability with her business, Bear Threads. Originally founded in late November 2025, Valenzuela set out to provide secondhand clothes to the Waco and Baylor communities via her Instagram @Bear__Threads. As both an avid shopper and a senior marketing specialist in brand integration at Baylor, she has used her knowledge of the community to provide a reliable place to buy secondhand clothes.

The inspiration for Valenzuela’s business was born from a thrifted yellow sweater that she frequently received compliments on. When sharing with her co-workers that the sweater was secondhand, most responses were shock.​

“A couple of my friends and colleagues said they never have luck with stuff like that and then they don’t have time,” Valenzuela said. “And I love clothes, I love dressing fun, I love doing something quirky … which then kind of led me to joking around with my friends and saying, ‘Oh, I should go thrifting and do a little thrift page that way people can just buy the stuff I find.'”​

While therapy comes in the form of shopping for Valenzuela, Bear Threads provided her a medium to hone in on her love of fashion details and slow her, otherwise normally racing, thoughts down. Valenzuela also decided to lean into the Baylor-adjacent audience because she has multiple other friends running online thrift shops outside the Baylor niche.

“No one really had a specific like thrift it, have it kind of like within Baylor colors and branding and sphere or it’s something that’s kind of out of the box when it comes to dressing … so it just felt like a perfect fit,” Valenzuela said.

​Green and gold is obviously a staple theme for Bear Threads, as Valenzuela tailors to her community, however, she also has a variety of neutrals and pieces meant for people all around the U.S.

“I’ve also had people who just like what I’ve thrifted, and so they’re in other places of the country, and I just ship to them,” Valenzuela said.

As thrifting becomes more of a trend, longtime friend and online resale shop employee Carli Conner said COVID-19 created a significant shift in how people buy clothes and ultimately led consumers to thrift more.

“I think how Katie is doing it … is more accessible to people, and especially people that don’t want to go out to a store,” Conner said.

Conner also said thrifting is a great way to find your personal style in an affordable, environmentally friendly way.

“It does help the planet, but also, I think our feed is so oversaturated with fast fashion, and it’s things that are really trendy, but they won’t last.”

Connor said she finds most people throw their fast-fashion clothing away by the end of the season, either because it didn’t last or because it’s no longer trendy, whereas high-quality pieces can last much longer.

“I think the difference is years, I mean, I’m about to be 31, and I have pieces from when I was 15,” she said.

Each clothing piece is listed on Valenzuela’s Instagram, and she accepts Venmo, Cash App, Zelle or PayPal for payment. For Waco residents, Valenzuela delivers the pieces to the buyer’s front porch.

As Valenzuela’s business continues to grow, she hopes to prioritize inclusivity with a wide range of sizes and items for different genders while mixing her love for Baylor into the mix.

“Sizing is kind of fake and it doesn’t make a lot of sense sometimes and a shirt that fits you in one brand, in like an extra small, might fit you as like an extra large in another brand,” Valenzuela said.

While Valenzuela is currently working on an online doctorate program, she said she hopes to continue her business in the future.

“I think it gives me a lot of energy right now, and it’s fun, and who knows what the next four or five years of my program are gonna be,” Valenzuela said. “I just started my PhD last August, so I still got a lot of time with it, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Overall, Valenzuela said that the customers are the part of the business she enjoys the most.

“It honestly just makes me really happy when someone buys something because it’s also like, ‘I hope it has a great life with you,'” Valenzuela said.