So what would you tell a charity shop manager?

[Supersimpkin]

I volunteer in a charity shop and want to hear it from the horse's mouth - ie the customers. Colour blocking - yay or nay? Prices? Boutique or rag-and-bone decor?

Am feeling smug as anything as have just won an award for volunteering, so let rip, I can't be offended by anything right now.

Clothes by size and type, books on shelves in alphabetical order (not in a big basket you need to dig through as I have seen).

Crockery stacked neatly in manageable piles e.g. not a pile of 50 plates unless they are a matching set and are labelled as such. Cups on a mug tree or hooks if possible.

Shoes, kept together by clips or something so you aren't hunting for an odd shoe.

Most of all, kept clean, not overly cluttered like a jumble sale, and friendly staff.

By size. Stick all the rubbish in a tub at 20p, and ditch anything that smells musty (including books and jigsaws that can absolutely honk if they've been stored somewhere damp). No-one wants badly faded duvet covers, even if they are clipped up on a hanger, so fold them up in a pile and offer them up at £1 each for dust sheets/dog bedding.

Most importantly, chat by all means but don't spend 10 minutes debating Our Julie's prolapse when customers are in the shop!

And pretty much everything you've explained there @SileneOliveira is why, generally speaking, I much prefer a small, independent, local charity shop to the big players. Their prices are usually realistic and reasonable.

£1.99 is too much for a used paperback. £2.50 even more so. And it's not uncommon for charity shops to refuse books because they're drowning in them. Most of us give them back when we're done anyway!

You say raising the price hasn't negatively affected profits. I wonder whether you wouldn't find dropping the price had an even more positive effect.

Personally, if books are £2.49 each I'll consider my purchase and certainly won't buy 2. If they're £1, I'll likely buy 6.

Oh, and if you've got a huge backlog of books that you can't shift (probably due to inflated prices) or you think are too old and undesirable, please sell them all off at 20p each. Don't put hundreds of them in the recycling just for the sake of it. (I've seen this done, though by Oxfam in Frankfurt, not in the UK, and I don't think I will ever get over my disgust and outrage.)

I want clothes by size not colour.
If you can do all the trousers together, all the tops together, all the dresses etc too that is super.

As long as it's clean and set out to find things easily that's great.

I want things reasonably priced. I am not going to spend £15 on a very bobbled Gap jumper for DC I can get in the sale in Gap for less just because the money is going to charity.
The best charity shops near me and the busiest are those that are not only raising money for charity but serving the local community by providing affordable clothes.

I don't want a boutique that charges more than they are new.

With books The Works sell new titles for £2.
Many supermarkets have donation pots for book sales these days for charities. I always take them back too.

I don't know if this happens in all charity shops, but my local one has a separate rail for children's school uniform, so all the shirts, trousers, dresses, pinafores etc are all in the same place. That's handy.

There’s a charity bookshop near me that I’ve stopped going in completely because of their pricing. They were typically asking for something like 40-50% of the RRP, so I’d be struggling to see a book in there priced under £3 - £4. More than I’m prepared to pay for a used second hand book under normal circumstances.

So I stopped going in there and now look for books in other, cheaper charity shops.

I agree with the pricing - £1 for a paperback and I'll take 4 or 5. £2.00 and I'll only buy one if I'm pretty sure I'll read it. And yes, you'll get it back again to resell.

Don't overprice supermarket clothes: F&F isn't a high-end designer, it's Tesco. Papaya is Matalan, Nutmeg is Morrisons, Pep and co are very very cheap when new, so bear that in mind when pricing.

A local charity shop I donate to sells brand new items (think garden ornaments) for £30 upwards. I can't imagine they sell many.
I still donate my unwanted items there because it is an aminal charity and it's only a 4 minute walk from my work place.

The staff there are friendly and cope well with the till. They are always very pleasant.

I agree with PP that size is the most important thing when arranging the items. I always go straight to the rail with my sixe on and have a look through. I'm browsing so not 'looking for a white blouse'.

The books do need to be stood upright so you can see the spines and also don't squeeze the books in so tightly you can't move any.

Colour blocking - no thank you. :)

Organise by type, then size.

Please.

By size is better but colour blocking looks nice and is probably easier to sort. Last week I went into Marks and Spencer and all the sizes and lengths in the trousers section were all jumbled up. I remember when there were more staff who would tidy up the racks but that is no longer the case. Don’t get me going on the pants section - that is more like a lucky dip in terms of how the sizes, material and shapes are arranged.

We have a shop for good causes which is not a registered charity so I can donate items there safe in the knowledge that gift aid won't come up. Or I put it in a clothing bank.

I can see how this is upsetting Prun. I nipped into a shop to donate and got irritated at being nagged to sign up, although I do gift aid happily for cash donations. It was just that I was in a hurry and wanted to drop my stuff off. A bit of customer training along the lines of ‘Could I interest you in gift aid’ and then not pushing it would be good. Also a reminder to staff that actually there are a lot of people who don’t pay tax quite legitimately (below the earnings limit etc) so they shouldn’t assume they can do the gift aid sell to everyone

I found colour block quite useful when I was looking for a concert "spring colour" top the other week. But they had the size cubes on, too.

One of the most successful charity shops I have known (Comrie Cancer Club shop) is your proverbial musty place. But oh, wasn't it busy all the time? Books 50p or 3 for £1, if you don't like it, chuck it back. Got some great bargains (all 7 James Herriot books in one band) and new to me authors that I wouldn't have tried if the books cost £2. We only tend to buy a book in places like BHF/Red Cross if we really, really want it. At the aforementioned shop we also bought about 20 small cut wineglasses, 20p each, a steal. We just rounded them all up, but many years later donated at least half of them to another charity shop, still making up a good set.

Space by the bookshelves to peruse and not be in other people's way.

Gift aid annoyance, too. Not only having to register but also having to give an estimate of the value, eh?

A way to drop of a few bits without having to wait for the cashier to go through an endless ritual with a few well-meaning customers and their purchases.

Too high prices for some semi-branded stuff. Like an M&S shirt for £3, which was well shrunk (from 22 to comfortably fit my size 18). I know the shirt would have been £8 max bought new, I think that's still a high price for second hand. But I needed it (see "spring colours" above).

I hate the jumbled look of clothing, sorry, tops together, trousers together coats together. I don't ever go to shops like TK Maxx due to a) the jumble and b) something never being in your size (or buying thinking it will work while you know better, really).

Stuff so way out of fashion nobody's going to buy it (long pointy toe murderers). There may be a customer for it, but it's more likely going to be scrapped. The amount of stuff that is ragged before it even hits the shop, and afterwards, is huge. Even then there are some who would argue these items could be sold for 20p each. I don't know the truth of that.

Not get so funny with you when you walk in with a box of stuff to give. Honestly, some of them look at you like I'd imagine they would if I tried to do the same in John Lewis

Obviously there's no point in pricing too high and things not selling. But on the other hand it's the job of the charity to maximise revenue. We know our customers are happy to pay £2.49 for a paperback. It was £1.99, the prices went up at the start of the year, the figures show there has been no impact on sales. Same with clothes, our customers will pay more for Boden/Hobbs/Cos than they will for M&s or Zara.

Firstly I love the idea of a charity shop. It is for a good cause and I would be sad if they were no longer on the high street.

Saying that...... How much for a paperback? I don't pay more than 50p at a boot sale.
I stopped gong to charity shops because it was the 'grab a bargain' element that was the thing for me. I would like to go back to using them but I now feel they are out to trick me out of my money, and I am not rolling in it.
Agree some brands sell better but age, condition and the fact it is second hand must be taken into account and really isn't.

The pricing structure in the vast majority of charity shops is laughable. The shops are not maximising profit as a lot of people just don't use them.
The push for maximum revenue is reducing footfall. You can't go on data that isn't measuring potential sales. You don't know how many new walk ins would come in and buy if prices were lower do you?

Sizing over colour blocking, not many people have time to search every rail.
I am a plus size so could spend half an hour looking for one bobbly t shirt marked up a £5 when it is a Primark £2 T-shirt and I know it.

Agree about a bargain bucket. Double bonus, kids get a 20p item every time they come out to the shops (plus a rummage in the bucket, they do love that) and the shop gets rid of freebies and slow to sell items.

I love a nicely dressed window, but you have to sell from it there and then it is good customer service (however quietly fuming you are) the rest of the shop I am not so fussed with. Clean, neatly sectioned and not smelly that's all I want.

I think charity shops can help in two ways, fundraising for their charity and helping the needy in their community. They have forgotten the second element.

I hate the colour blocking business, but I am prepared to pay up to £15/20 for a good brand dress in good condition. My favourite jacket in the world came from a charity shop and cost £40 which seemed like a fortune at the time but I've worn it a gazillion times and it was in a shop on a fairly well heeled high street. I think knowing your area is everything.

I wouldn't bother with Primark or supermarket brands.

I buy way too many charity shop books so I've banned myself!

Gift Aid is great I think (I understand people who don't want their tax reclaimed, but I'm comfortable with it) but only where it doesn't stress the volunteers out like mad. I've had people be really moody about a GA donation because they don't know how to do it.

I also love a big out of town warehouse style charity shop. Those seem to be getting more popular round here for furniture etc.

I rarely go into charity shops anymore as it is much cheaper to go into Primark and buy new stuff than my local charity shops £8.99 for a faded duvet cover circa 1990 is not my idea of a bargain.

Smell: incense sticks are better for getting rid of the musty smell than plug-ins or those artificial chemical random spray things.

Pricing: We have one shop where everything is arranged according to price and it seems to work very well. 50p rail, 99p rail, 1.99 etc etc. This ensures quick turnover and people know it is a good place to pick up a bargain.

For some reason crockery is very over priced in CS's. Very old fashioned dinner sets (incomplete) sold individually with a plate being £1.99, then they wonder why it doesn't get sold.

Am feeling smug as anything as have just won an award for volunteering, so let rip, I can't be offended by anything right now

Many congratulations for this btw! Hope you're celebrating

As someone who had lived in poverty when raising two children, please remember that the CS helps people as much as the income it raises does. I am so grateful my boys are adults now, because I went into a CS recently and everything was so expensive that a few years ago it would have been beyond my budget and had my children still been diddlers they would have gone without clothes that fit (Primark was not an option then and nothing like it in my area). I know they need to make money, but they also need to remember the reason they exist.

Staff: I volunteered years and years ago in a CS and there was a serious amount of politics going on between long term volunteers and those who were there by force for work schemes. The former felt they had ownership and that the latter were taking from the charity (travel expenses) and this often spilled over to shop floor. Customer facing volunteers need training. I recently took a bag of (new) stuff in and the volunteer looked at me as if I had spat on her.

Don't crowd the shop full of stuff so it looks like a jumble sale, you don't need to put absolutely everything on display all at once. Make the shop look tidy and uncluttered, allow room for people to browse and easily look at things they are interested in.

Select things for display and replace when they are sold, put a time limit as to how long an item will be on display and if it doesn't sell in that time frame remove it from display and put something else out instead.

I don't understand the well we sell things at a high price because we want to raise as much as possible for the charity.

This works if it's a designer dress of course and our local shop DOES have a designer section but not for anything at M and S sort of level downwards.

One of our local ones sells manky bobbled M &S basic T-shirts for £9.99 and Primark t-shirts for £5.99 (the £2.50 ones)
No one's going to pay more than new for a bobbled /stained top just because it's for a good charity. They will just make a donation in another way.

People buy bobbled , knackered t-shirts because they NEED to.

Lots of charity shops don't stock children's clothing because they can't charge as much for it. I know that they are trying to maximise their profits for the charity, but it's a shame for the community that children's clothes aren't available - and some customers might not bother to look at all, without the lure of children's section.

Agree about the new merchandise - don't even look at it, except in Oxfam, and charities where they are selling crafts to benefit the people who are making them.

One of our local charity shops is closed for refurbishment at the moment - which makes me wonder just how much is being spent, that could be spent on the charity's activities - the percentage of takings that goes to the charity is already frighteningly small.

Used to love the Salvation Army shop in Cambridge - no decor, but great bargains.

I love colour blocking! it makes the shop look much more pulled together and absolutely yes, I do think, I need a grey jumper. Also, when things are of similar colours, it's easier to distinguish the fabrics.

Don't put out clothes that smell. Too many charity shops still don't smell great. Put together nice outfits (my local Sue Ryder rocks this).

I volunteer in a book shop, and too many customers, I"m afraid, bring in stuff that is too torn, dog-eared, yellowed and out-of-date to sell. And they know this, because they know what the business model of this particular shop is and they can see the quality of what's on the shelves. THey are using us to do their recycling and it's a bit shit. One donor was well put-out when I very politely refused to take her ancient videos.

So don't donate knackered, crap, smelly clothes. Give away stuff while it's still nice, people!

With puzzles and games, it's great if you can indicate whether or not they've been checked for completeness. Which might mean a general notice if you always check / realistically can't ever check; or just a note on the price sticker or similar that states all pieces present / not checked, or whatever.

Regarding the smell - I don't know what the answer is, but I'll take a bit of mustiness over a strong, chemical air freshener stink. I love charity shops but there's a local one I can't go in now because I know when I walk out my hair and clothes will still smell of cheap air freshener. They must spray a whole can a day!