HUDSONVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — Eleanor Workman won the Grant Me Hope Thrift Store sweater that went viral over the weekend thanks to a post on the Weird and Wonderful Secondhand Finds Facebook page.
“I won this beautiful sweater and I’m giving it to my daughter,” Workman said.
While Workman walked into the Hudsonville thrift store by mistake Monday, others purposely sought out this colorful sweater, which is similar to one that Kitty Forman wore in “That ‘70s Show.”
A shopper noticed the similarity and posted it to the Facebook group.
“That post essentially went viral inside the group,” store manager Ashleigh O’Donnell said. “We had over 30k interactions on it. I want to say there was over 300 shares. There was over a thousand comments of just people being like, ‘omg I can’t believe this looks so similar.’”
While the social media hype didn’t exactly translate to an increase in buyers Monday morning, about a dozen people entered the in-person drawing, O’Donnell said they have seen an increase in foot traffic and name recognition overall.
“We’ve had almost 900 new page likes,” she said. “So that’s 900 new people who are seeing our content, seeing our videos, seeing our mission of trying to get these kids adopted and that alone is priceless in our eyes.”
The Grant Me Hope Thrift Store helps fund introduction videos to foster kids who are looking to be adopted. One video cost about $900.
“Every purchase here seriously matters,” she said. “It matters to those kids. It matters to us who have a passion for it.”