200 charity shops closing (cancer research)

I really enjoy using charity shops and the ones in my small seaside town are always busy and have some decent stock.

But I do notice that their pricing is all over the place with many items completely over-priced.

Then head office should surely review their policies, with the shameful rise of fast fashion, some of the items donated may have cost that little in the first place! It would make sense to be far less rigid and have a "bargain bin" of 50p items etc or if books have been there for donkeys years put them down dramatically. Its not rocket science- but it does look like greed.

Another issue that faces the shop I volunteer in is that the company that is contracted to collected our culled and unsellable stock, frequently does not show up when it's supposed to. They're supposed to come every week, but frequently four or five weeks go by where they don't show up.

As a result, the amount of scrap continues to accumulate and we can literally have had 60-70 crates of uncollected books taking up space. It gets to the point where. at the instigation of our Sunday shift leader, we volunteers who work Sundays refuse to go in when it gets really bad - which, since the managers don't work on the Sunday, means the shop is closed.

Local charity shops charge way too much I was looking for a Navy jacket some charity shops wanted,£40 + for a second hand h&m suit jacket that are £20 new !? So I no longer shop in them,the only charity shop that takes donations is one supporting
local domestic violence.

Their business model is all wrong. I regularly will put £10 in my purse to spend in a charity shop. This morning I took two grandchildren with me. First shop was an independent and we bought four side plates and a pretty spotless brand new fox plush toy all for £1. Fantastic. Talked to the main volunteer who seems to be in there quite often and she said they often take £6000 a week. All good.
Cross the road to a Break shop and totally empty. Grandson wanted a toy turntable at £5.50. I said no as it took 6 AA batteries and no guarantee it would work. He picked out a tiny car priced at £.75p. I gave him 50p and told him to offer that. The server reluctantly let him have it as he’d asked nicely.
It’s not rocked science: better to sell 100 things at a £1 than one thing for £5.00.
The ceos dictate the prices and I hope they are soon out of a job. They deserve to be fired.

Ours are hard to get to for the most part, spread out so you can’t just try the next one, and don’t always want donations.

Sometimes I take things to family members who live in areas with more excepting charity shops. But most of the time now, I just leave clothes out for the rug man. Jigsaws, brick back, and the like are stored up and donated to whichever local school is running a fate and need something for the tombola.

People always talk about how if charity shops sold everything for 50p or £1 then they would make so much more. That might work for some places but there are two key reasons we don't.

In order to keep stock flowing very quickly off the shelves you need LOADS of volunteers to accept donations, sort donations, put on hangers, price, steam if its clothing, remove the stuff which has been there too long, operate the till. We really struggle for reliable volunteers, so much so that we can't open on a Monday morning as there are no volunteers.

Also, if people are generous enough to donate us a sealed in its box Lego set, a Hobbs wool coat still tagged, or a brand new John Lewis duvet cover set, we would be failing in our charitable aims to maximise income by letting it go for pennies.

Pricing is an art not a science. Our store is reasonable - £5 or £6 for a top, £7 or £8 for a dress - but sometimes you go in and find someone's gone rogue and priced a Tu or George top for a tenner. Who knows why, we're not perfect and it happens. We have no paid staff in our shop, just volunteers. Similarly, I've spotted other things which are very much underpriced - I am a knitter and know that 500g of pure merino yarn is worth a lot more than £2. And like I said, we get weekly figures showing what is selling so if something's on the slide we can take action in some way.

Yes I’d never put stuff in the bin

This^

The problem is the volume of clothes sold these days are cheap fast fashion - eg the supermarket/primark effect. Yes the items might be ok to wear for a bit longer, but when the new cost of a T-shirt in primark is £2.80 (for a kids t shirt) yet a charity wants at least £2.50 for a second hand shirt it’s easy to see why people aren’t going there anymore.

as someone else said, things like crockery are so cheap at the range/home bargains that it makes sense to buy something you actually WANT rather than making do for the same pricing.

in our village we have a thriving freecycle fb page which is where I get rid of nearly all unneeded clothing, books, furniture etc.

The ones near me are cheap and cheerful. I love going in them.

There's one at our local recycling centre/tip too.

Those clothes bins in car parks are quite good if you need to drop stuff off

By the time rent, utilities and the manager's salary have been paid, I doubt there's enough made to make it worth them existing. Add to that the costs to the charity of all the central admin around running 200 shops, and I'm actually surprised they've lasted this long.

It's unrealistic for people to expect them to sell stuff for next to nothing, when you do and consider all those costs.

@ShanghaiDiva

"shortage of volunteers to sort"

That is also a really good point. The volume of volunteers has decreased in shop from what it once was, and I imagine has probably happened elsewhere. When shops started re-opening up full-time after Covid, I think quite a few of the older chose not to return. And people's life circumstances change, which means they may no longer have time for volunteering - or they may just wish to call it a day.

Surely people know where the charity shops are in their local area?

If you don't then you could always look it up on your phone.

The cancer research eBay shop is fantastic.

My local CR shop isn’t overly great, we have a giant Big C shop and that’s good. It’s not as expensive as Red Cross/British Heart Foundation which charges £20 for a (faulty) zara jumper! I prefer the smaller local charities, people seem to donate better things to these and they price them appropriately

@RandomGeocache yes I am not interested in clothes from charity shops - I like books, toys, collectables, dvds, computer games, craft sets etc.
They often seem to be an afterthought in a lot of shops - shoved randomly in a box all jumbled up.
I wish a lot of charity shops would forget selling clothes and focus on other items.
That might be a way of saving shops from closing down.

@Wavescrashingonthebeach

The staff in the shops (including the manager) may not have the authority to lower prices. At Oxfam, with whom I volunteer, Head Office stipulated last year that the minimum price (on anything) must be £2.99. We're expected to adhere to this (although I will very occasionally put a book out for £1.99 if it's in good condition and I think it might sell.)

The same may be true of other charities, especially the large ones.

Legacy management has always been very separate from charity shops.
Fundraising comes in many guises and specialisms and charities employ experts in each stream.
Charity shops have been struggling to make a good profit for many years.

BHF is too expensive, M&S well worn T-shirts £6.99, scruffy shoes £12.99, Primark jumpers £8.99. They’re pricing themselves out of business.

I am a charity shop volunteer - not Cancer Research.

These threads are always about clothing but that is just part of our turnover. Yes the quality of womenswear clothing donations has declined drastically in a way that the quality of menswear donations has not. Lots of it is only fit for ragging. Our shop is in a fairly affluent area and we still get some real gems.

However, we also get a breakdown of weekly figures and week in, week out, these show that we make more on both bric a brac and toys/games than we do on womenswear. Jigsaws, craft materials, Lego, play kitchens, mugs, kitchenware, pictures - massive part of the business model.

Cancer Research have decided that they are concentrating on larger out of town shops rather than smaller high street.

There are a lot of charity shops though. There are 2 Cancer Research shops in a local town - selling the same sort of stuff , so I imagine on of them will shut.

@PersephoneParlormaid

I volunteer in a charity bookshop (an Oxfam one), and there's a good why reason why at times they're not accepting donations. It's because they only have limited storage space and are at full capacity - to take more would be make the space unsafe for people who work there.

There are a few times when the basement in my shop has been so filled with excess stock that we have had to temporarily stop taking donations.

I know it's a pain to show up and find that donations aren't being currently accepted, but I do encourage you to try again - it's obviously not a situation that would be permanent.

They over charge and no one buys as a result. Charity shops used to be great for people who had very little to spend, I have actually bought new things from Argos at less than the charity shops wanted.