Three Myths About Thrift That Many Shoppers Believe
Behind the scenes is different than most people believe
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Thanks for joining the discussion about thrift and second-hand retail!
1. Everything is Free
Not really.
A donated item stops being free as soon as a paid employee touches it and it is brought into a building that has rent, utility, insurance, and all the other expenses of a business tied to it. Granted, not paying for the actual merchandise is a head start.
A thrift store sorts through bags and boxes of random stuff to find things good enough to put out for sale. The labor cost of all that sorting and preparing is several times the labor cost of merchandising a traditional store. That free stuff costs quite a bit to get out on a sales floor for customers to look at.
Most thrift stores supplement their donated item sales with purchased goods. This is true of second-hand home centers as well as traditional thrift stores. Most things you see in quantity are likely purchased. It can be anything from socks to paint. They often buy closeouts or seconds to keep their costs down so prices are competitive.
2. They Clean the Clothes
Sorry, doesn’t happen.
Generally less than half of clothing that is donated ever sees the sales floor. Things that show up clean, neat, and only slightly worn are sold in the store. The rest are sold at an outlet or salvage. Sorry, no one launders those clothes. You might want to when you get them home. Just say’n.
Most stores also have scent machines throughout the store to minimize that slightly worn smell.
Housewares and hard goods may be wiped down or the spider webs knocked off, but that’s about it.
3. “Somebody” Will Buy Crappy Stuff
If it’s crap, it’s crap.
My pet peeve has long been “donors” that are trying to pawn worthless things off at a thrift store. Thrift stores are in business to connect good donated items to people that want and need those items to support a cause. Thrift is not in the trash collection business.
I talked with a guy that drove up to the donation door with a black futon full of cat pee and fur. He was angry we wouldn’t take his landfill-worthy couch. He was really mad because he had to find some other way to get rid of it.
One year we accepted one of those huge Christmas trees nicely zipped up in its storage bag. We put it away for next year without opening it up. Come next fall we pulled it out thinking we had an amazing tree to put on the sales floor. Imagine our surprise when we unzipped it and were covered in real pine needles. Yep. The “donor” had given us his old real Christmas tree.
One of the ongoing challenges in thrift retail is balancing what is accepted and what isn’t. Every dollar that goes to pay to dispose of trash is a dollar that doesn’t go toward the cause.
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