Charity shops and their hugely inflated prices..

[Charityshops21]

I've always loved charity shops and usually pop in whenever I pass one but I've noticed since they reopened post lockdown the prices have more than doubled in many places.

Take the Sue Ryders local to me, women's tops and dresses used to be between £3 and £5, I went in this afternoon and saw that the same type of clothes (not expensive brands in the first place) have at least doubled in price.

£9.99 for a second or third hand faded jumper with loose threads.

£7 for an atmosphere (Primark) blouse that I know only cost that brand new.

£15 for a battered pair of shoes.

I understand the need to recoup losses but AIBU to think this is bad and will alienate their most frequent customers? IE poor people me

@RaspberryCoulis

Surely charity shops are there to provide clothing/ other items for people to help out if there are struggles financially?

Nope, charity shops are there to make money for the charity. As you say. Primark churn out new clothing very cheaply.

Most of the people shopping in our charity shop want something different, something you don't see on the high street, don't want to contribute to fast fashion. It's definitely not all about price.

A lot of our vintage stuff goes online, a lot is sold to agencies who supply costumes for tv and film - if they're filming a show set in the 60s they want to buy genuine 60s outfits, not try to source the fabric or have things made.

Your shop is very different to the ones we pass in a fairly poor inner town area. Believe me, a lot of those shoppers aren't looking for vintage. They need a cheap pram, baby clothes, toys etc. Yours sounds very lovely and I'm sure I'd enjoy a mooch but they aren't all like that.

One of my local ones sells 2nd hand and clearly very worn Primark for around twice its rrp. A second hand, well worn vest is around £7 its ludicrous. Well worn jeans... £15.

I thought it was just me that thought this I love a good charity shop but have given up now after tours round a few since re opening and they are all silly money

I volunteer in a charity shop and our prices have not increased due to covid. We regularly discount items that have not sold after 2+ weeks and have a decent turnover.

Some items are more expensive eg a sea salt tunic, brand new with tags for £20, but we have a lot of products around the £3.50 to £6 mark (lots of jeans at 3.49) and baby clothes in vg condition from 99p.

A national charity I know of was making a loss on its charity shops a few years ago. Literally it was actually costing the charity money to have them, they would have been better off closing them all down.

They brought in new senior management with strong retail experience, overhauled everything, trained up shop managers, new strategies for stock and pricing and they are now turning a healthy profit that goes to support the charity’s beneficiaries.

Of course there’s probably loads of people grumbling that they can’t get the bargains they used to be able to pick up, but there you go.

Sorry to jump on, but could anyone recommend a nice charity shop local to St Albans/Harpenden, or Hitchin? Biggleswade?

I don't live in those areas I'm nearby now though and generally find expensive areas have better stuff

@pointyshoes

I volunteer in a charity shop. They are run very professionally these days - managers have sales targets etc set by head office. If the shops don’t make a profit, they don’t survive. So whether people think they’re over priced or not, they must be making money overall

This.

I volunteered a few years back now, and I remember the managers being under immense pressure.

Luckily, around here, I still snag some very reasonably priced bargains.

They're not maximising anything if people don't shop there!
That's how I feel.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect shops to price accordingly. I'm not expecting designer clothing for a tenner, but would like it if used supermarket or low end high street wasn't priced close to new prices, and it would be nice if they didn't take anything 10 years old or quirky looking and stick it on a vintage rail.

Several years ago one of my local ones went through a phase of writing 'designer' or something like that on the tags and then inflating the prices. The problem was they were counting Joules, Next, and Zara as designer. It was around the same time that they stopped having the shop set out by tops/dresses/books/trousers, and instead tried to emulate a boutique with colour themed rails and so called artsy displays.

A charity shop opened near me last year with unbelievably low prices, £1 for an adults coat and that kind of thing. It was swamped all the time, queues outside and all, they posted their takings on their Facebook page every week and they were bringing in thousands. Then they got a full time manager rather than just letting volunteers randomly price everything and now everything is more expensive and no one is ever in it. Such a shame, an absolute waste of an opportunity to benefit the charity and the community.

My pet peeve as a charity shop volunteer is the crap that gets donated. I don’t want to sift through dirty, smelly, torn clothing and I certainly can’t sell it.
Just throw it away!

I think there's a big difference between people who whimsically mooch charity shops for bargains or vintage & people who prefer to shop for ethical purposes to those who NEED cheaper clothes, shoes, toys etc.
Not everyone shops there through philanthropic choice! Or to get one over on the CS with a bargain.

I hadn't been to charity shops for a long time, pre-Covid, at least partly because the prices had been trending upwards beyond what I was willing to pay for second-hand goods. I would recognise things from their original shops and know that they were asking more than what it had cost new, just a year or so earlier.

Some shops were worse than others, and some would have a mix of reasonable and excessive prices. It depended on who was pricing things when they came in.

I think sometimes they have volunteers that don't know a lot about labels etc (fair enough) so wouldn't know they're overpricing something from primark or under pricing something else.

My best sue Ryder buy is a white company 100% cashmere long cardigan for £6. I just came on to be smug about that really 😀😀 when I googled how much they were new I did donate another tenner out of guilt! I wear it almost every day on the winter.

Nohomemadecandles
If a charity shop prices fairly then they can probably hit both groups.

The best charity shop near me has a range of stock from different brands/shops, all in decent condition, all fairly priced. Those who need cheaper clothing can get nice clothes are a cheap price, and those who want second hand fancier items can also get them.

It's not surprising that this shop is always and has a good turnover of stock, meanwhile others are rubbish.

I suppose they have to try and make money after being closed for many months over the last year due to covid.

Thought that this week. Local one to me had two sofas, nothing special and not the excellent condition described - £395 each. These were given free.

I give to the local hospice shop and the local Cats Protection. Both seem sensible.

Charity shops receive a lot of tax relief: corporation tax, VAT, business rates. It’s reasonable to see some of this as reflecting their charitable purpose but local business rates relief in particular seems to me to be a recognition of their benefit to the local community by providing cheap and needed goods. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying they exist to make money for their charity.

I've been in a few local to me but nowadays they seem full of cheap supermarket clothing that's sold at new prices (or more). I don't bother to go in, but if there was any reasonable chance of getting a bargain I would visit regularly.

Most of my local ones are fairly priced.

Occasionally there'll be the odd overpriced anomaly.

Oxfam has been overpriced for years. Books, dvds and primark vests for way over original rrp.

Completely agree the inflated prices are eye watering in the shops near me. I don’t go in or buy stuff anymore, as it’s just too much. I also don’t donate anything and find other routes to give things away

Our local one has put its prices up and started selling more new stock. Books are cheap, and they had a sale on men's clothes, but £4 for a kids' top that would only have been £6-8 new? Daylight robbery.

My nearest charity shop tends to have a pricing structure based on type of item not original sale price
Eg dresses are £5-£7 I probably wouldn’t pay £7 for a primark dress on the other hand have had some lovely higher end dresses for a fiver
There was another charity shop locally which was much cheaper but it had to close due to lease renewal being too expensive

@kowari - I wish there were a "like" button.

I agree with everything you have said on this thread.

^Your shop is very different to the ones we pass in a fairly poor inner town area. Believe me, a lot of those shoppers aren't looking for vintage. They need a cheap pram, baby clothes, toys etc.
Yours sounds very lovely and I'm sure I'd enjoy a mooch but they aren't all like that.^

100%

Also agree with everything @Nohomemadecandles is saying. I think there are some posters on this thread who seem unaware of some families budgets.

Charity shops receive a lot of tax relief: corporation tax, VAT, business rates. It’s reasonable to see some of this as reflecting their charitable purpose but local business rates relief in particular seems to me to be a recognition of their benefit to the local community by providing cheap and needed goods. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying they exist to make money for their charity.

This ^

The local hospice in our city has several shops around the City, and then one "Boutique" where it sells "outfits for occasions" - I presume the shops around the City send things there and I think as it has become known, people presumably takes things there themselves.

My dd (and then some of her friends) got her prom dress from there. I got a beautiful wedding outfit from there, etc etc. You pay more than most outfits in the local charity shops, but you also get some really quality good and special outfits there. Strikes me it's a really good business model.

Doesn’t it depend to some extent on the manager?

Some people can’t seem to understand that it’s better to sell something for £2 than have it hanging around for ever at £4.

I used to have a similar beef at the library where I worked, over the ‘for sale’ items. Paperbacks at 50p but at a colleague’s stubborn insistence, hardbacks invariably at double, even though hardly anyone ever bought them and we’d end up having to chuck most of them,, because of lack of space.

I’d rather have flogged them at 25p, than bin them.