To think charity shops should be cheaper?

[Chocolatelover45]

The prices in my local charity shops are ridiculous (small northern town) .
E.g.
£2.50 for a rattle
£1 for a scuffed pint glass
£3.99 for a children's t shirt (George)
£1.50 for dog eared children's paperbacks
£4 for hardback puzzle book with half the puzzles already completed
£2.49 for 4 small plain Christmas baubles

Why do they charge so much? Surely they'd sell a lot more if it was cheaper? Or is there a good reason?

Presumably someone is buying it. I could walk into Waitrose or Harvey Nics or wherever and say the same! The good ones will have rigorous pricing structures and - where not rock bottom prices - will have worked out that sorting/pressing/displaying less that sells at a higher price point (if slightly less turnover) is a better business model than having to stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap and all the resource that requires.

I agree!

I agree! And I know this is always contested but I am certain they do save the best things for selling on line. I say that because many times I've donated really good clothes with designer labels and I never see any of it for sale in the shop I gave it to.

I'm another one wondering who can afford to buy second hand furniture from BHF. The prices of sofas, bed frames and tables are astronomical.

I think they started getting more expensive when ebay became popular. There were people making money from buying cheap at charity shops and selling online for much more. The shops got 'wise' and put their prices up.

YABU. Good charity shop price things right for the market. If someone’s donated a brand new designer coat that cost several hundred pounds cause it was the wrong size shouldn’t be sold for pennies. And similarly a George t-shit should be pennies.

Charity shops are there to raise as much money as possible.

But I also would never shop in any of the large national charities shops. I only use smaller ones that aren’t run as big businesses.

As an aside I also volunteered for a charity and set up two shops for them so do understand the market quiet a bit.

Must be at least a week since we had this thread.

Anyway. I'm a charity shop volunteer for one of the big chains. Managers in the chain charity shops like ours are drowning in management information - total sales, sales by department, sales versus last year, against everyone else in the chain, average price per sale, sales per square foot... It's very easy to spot trends. Managers and the district managers are CONSTANTLY reviewing figures and tweaking prices to get the most money possible. Because the shop is there to raise as much as it can for charity, not to provide cheap stuff.

Most decent shops also have some way of monitoring how long something has been out for sale. We use week numbers, other stores use colours, or letters, or some other system. If something hasn't sold in 3 weeks, we put at 50% sticker on it, or just remove it from sale and sent it for recycling if it's clothes.

Agree though that lack of volunteer staff is a huge issue. We have one manager who does 35 hours a week, the store is open 53 hours a week so she's not always there. Volunteers vary in quality and ability. Donations likewise!

Mistakes happen, just as they do in every business. But there appears to be this feeling that all charity shop volunteers are clueless, quite like not selling anything, price artificially high and love the fact the same vase has been on the shelf since May.

Not the case.

Yanbu. Charity shops were of dual benefit to shopper and supplier.
Many if the 2nd hand toys have bits missing and they charge close to store prices.

Totally agree, I don't bother going in my local one now, even though I buy most things second hand. I just spend half my life trying to get a bargain on eBay or gumtree!

If you want to give your kiss clothes to children who need them, try your local Sally Army. When we moved, I went to a local Sally Army ship to ask if they wanted baby clothes as there were none in the shop. The answer was yes please, clean and wearable. They don't sell them in the shop usually the sort them and send them straight out to local outreach programmes to be distributed to parents. The money they made from them made little sense when they could give them to those in need.
To me, that makes sense of the 2 objectives.

I don’t think you can expect charity shops to virtually give their stuff away only for it to be hoovered up by people who want to mark it up and put it on eBay.

Why not?

Those people might sometimes keeping themselves and their children fed and clothed, or putting money aside for someone's education. Or just earning the extra money that enables them to support the local coffee shop, hairdresser or bakery.

Nothing happens in a vacuum.

@AJPTaylor That is a good idea. I bag mine up and offer them on a local site there are plenty of families happy to collect them.

I agree AJPTaylor - if clothing the destitute is part of the aim of a charity then why are they charging anything at all for clothes?

Maybe start by asking the landlord why they can’t reduce the rent, and the electricity company why it charges them, etc? They have overheads too!

Agree with Pineapple, I manage a charity shop and am confident that I offer good quality donations at a fair price (& I am prepared to reduce if something has been overpriced), more often items have been underpriced by an enthusiastic volunteer, only yesterday I had to sell a lovely Toast skirt for £4 , and retrieve a pair of DuBarry trousers that had been put in textile recycling!

As Pineapple says, we get masses of financial information to determine our stock and price levels, if a charity shop isn’t performing well it will be closed(like any retailer).

Like any business, there will be badly run charity shops and well run ones. My shop performs very well, I have lots of regular customers and people seem to enjoy shopping in my shop. I don’t sell ‘bobbly Primark jumpers’ or ‘tatty paperbacks’ ..... my customers are happy to pay £2 for a well presented, good condition paperback ... by selling it for 50p I am nor respecting the wish of the doner or raising money for a charity I love.

And pricing ‘cheap’ doesn’t always mean it will sell more quickly ... retail is a lot more complex than that.

The quality of donations can be shocking, at least 3O% of my time is spent trying to responsibly dispose of unsalable items, you would be surprised at some of the things we are donated, many people seem to think they are doing their bit for the environment by donating to a charity shop ... much of what we get is completely unsaleable. However we never turn donations away.

There are also initiatives in some places where clothes are put into age bundles and offered via the local church/food bank programmes. Good way to pass on last year's winter coats etc.

I also agree with @user1497787065 point that pricing too low is disrespecting the donor. They have been generous enough to give us valuable items, we owe it to them to get a decent amount for it, not sell it for pennies so someone else can make a profit on it on Ebay.

In our shop we don't even sell George / F&F / Primark unless it's still got the tags on. We don't put out anything even slightly bobbled, marked, stained. Last shift I did put out a lovely 100% wool coat with a button missing but it was clearly marked as missing a button and went out for £10 rather than £15 - that would have been a £100 coat new.

The problem with having blanket pricing along the lines of "all jumpers £4" is that it doesn't take account for value. Of course a 100% cashmere jumper in great condition from Reiss or Hobbs is going to be worth more than a 100% acrylic one from H&M. So you price the Reiss one at £8, and the acrylic one at £3.

We have pricing guides but you have the flexibility to adjust for condition/brand/desirability. So our starting point for a top or blouse is £5. I'd add a bit more if it was silk. A bit more if it was a premium brand like Phase Eight or Karen Millen. Take a bit off if it was very old-fashioned. Take a bit off if it's a size 26 as that's a lot less likely to sell than a size 14 or size 12. If it's brand new still with the original tags then the starting point is around a third of original retail value - but again we use our experience to judge.

A lot of the issues are absolutely down to lack of help in the shop, we are drowning in donations and really lacking in good volunteers. You can't run a shop on one manager and 15 year old D of E volunteers one hour a day after school.

I agree that brands should be sold for more and it shouldn't all be dirt cheap, but people are saying that they wouldn't buy it and others are donating there stuff elsewhere instead, the demise of charity shops appears on the way perhaps. It sounds like your charity shops are run well, but the reality is that a lot do sell Primark tops for the same as they retail new, who on earth would buy that?

Would they sell more if they did allow offers on items? They would still be in control of the final sale price,. 50p may be the difference between an item selling or staying the rack for months. Many people love a good haggle and even knowing that they could haggle may draw them in, perhaps if they, otherwise, would not go in? Then, once in, they may see something they like anyway and happy to pay the original price of.

This is why people like car boots, they like testing their CF skills out. I know charity shops can never go as low as car boots in price but the general principle may work.

People can give all the 'logical' reasons in the world why the prices are 'too high', or argue that they are not, but it boils down to the fact that people seem to be generally in agreement that they are and have stopped buying and in some cases no longer bother going in.

Agreed. Ive seen primark et al tshirts more expensive than they were in the original shop, its bloody stupid.
Having said that there is one near me and their decent stuff is reasonable, so £80 shirts for less than a tenner etc

Charity shops are big business (which is why the high streets are littered with them). They get reduced business rates, tax breaks and sell everything at 100% gross margin. A lot of the staff are volunteers and the rest get paid NMW. Only a small part of the revenue makes its way to the 'cause' and the rest gets swallowed up in 'admin' or paying directors' salaries.

I'm all for charity but the regulations need an overhaul particularly when people are donating (and buying) in good faith believing they are doing a good thing.

Waves to @Ragwort - I've had a name change but remember you from previous threads along the same lines and we're both involved in the same chain.

I love my volunteering and maybe the people who are so critical of what goes on in the sorting room would benefit from seeing it from the other side? Some of the donations I sorted on MOnday were absolute dross and only fit for the bin - empty DVD boxes, coloured in colouring books, disgustingly scratched and dirty pots and pans, dried up felt tip pens, a plastic "burberry" counterfeit handbag....

Having said that I did find a Beswick animal figurine in amazing condition which went out at £50. And some really manky jewellery which looked very dull in the box but once cleaned turned out to be solid silver.

the one I use is great. can get a good brand jigsaw for 2.50. their clothes are cheap as well. so they have a good turn over.

Ours used to be cheap then when people started trawling them for stuff to resell on eBay and FB they caught on. Now they take anything nice and sell it online and we have a dozen shops full of tat at ridiculously high prices. It’s a real shame especially as we have very few other shops so really just means we don’t bother shopping locally any more.

Most of the shops round near to me seem to have the balance right, items are cheap enough that stock turn over is quite good but not so cheap that the shops are missing out on money they could be taking.

There is one however that is very overpriced and stock never seems to change. We went in for a browse the other day. Saw a pack of mini baubles clearly used but in the original al price marked boxed. These were not vintage or special, cheap high street stock from a couple of years ago. Original shop price on box £1.49. Charity shop was selling them for £2.99.