Aibu to think this is a crazy way to sell clothes in a charity shop?

[A580Hojas]

Went with DD to a posh charity shop near me recently.

All the clothes are very decent and the prices are high-ish. Absolutely fair enough.

The shop is huge, has lovely wooden floor, mirrors and has a nice atmosphere and the clothes are hung on rails roughly according to type (eg jeans on one rail, coats on another, fancy tops on another).

BUT everything is on a matching wooden coat hanger with no size on the hanger and no size ticket easily visible when you push the hangers apart. They are also all crammed in really tightly together and are arranged in colours (presumably to look pretty en masse). It's really, really hard work to find anything in your size, everything is in together and you have to physically prize the hangers apart to remove a garment, fish around inside it for the size label, then squeeze it back onto the rail when 7 out of 8 times it's the wrong size for you.

Neither DD or I bought anything that day although we must have looked at at least 50 garments between us.

AIBU to think TK Maxx have got the right idea with clothing displays? At least you can look in just a handful of sections and be sure you aren't missing something.

The charity shops I've frequented, usually have sizes on the hangers, seems odd to miss one of the key items for selling clothes.

I prefer clothes ordered by size. What I would like most is

By size with pockets.

Then
Everything without pockets at the other end of the shop.

colour blocking is recommended but I have tried it on a few occasions in my shop and sales have dropped so I ignore the 'guidance'

Good on you.
I actually stopped my regular trawl of our charity shops when they started this malarkey. I don’t want to flick through several things in the same colour, find a nice item, then discover it’s not my size. It’s very frustrating.

I will sometimes be after something specific like a navy cotton polo neck, but normally I just go in for a rummage.

My town has excellent charity shops and I no longer buy new.
They all have a men's sections, a children section, dresses, coats and general rail.

One shop is organised by colour. I find it the least likely for me to buy from. A rail of just greys and blacks/greens/blues/reds/browns/yellows isn't appealing and I tend to not bother looking unless something catches my eye. I tend to think 'I don't like pinks and purples/orange ...'
They do group by size but I find I tend to only look at my size

The best shop is the most haphazardly organised one and it's the busiest. 'Because the stuff is mixed together I will have a good rummage and I often find something unusual I have been looking for online in the previous few days.

The thrift shop I go to (US) arranges clothes by type (ex, men's dress trousers, women's short sleeved tops), by colour within each type, and also by size within each type. They also have a system of differently coloured price tags so they can keep track of how many weeks an item has sat there. And the tags show sizes of the items.

They do uniform pricing too, so you can pick up some gems for less than $6.99. Their books are haphazardly on shelves at the back with a distinction between children's books and others.

We have one which used to be really good. Usual chazzer shop. Now it’s all wooden floors and colour sorted. So everything yellow on one rail. Coat, top, dress, trousers, scarf.

I couldn’t be bothered to look at every item to see if it was my size. No one was in there either.

Similar second hand clothes shop where I shop have basically four size sections - baby, children, adult and adult plus size. Works fine for me (and prefer this to new clothes shops where I am never sure whether I have even seen all from what I want to see as its too chaotis for me). There is enough room to go through hangers and look for size tags /if there are any/.

I like how things are arranged in groups (skirts/trousers/ several different top sections/ and the groups in colours.

@toppkatz

My local charity shop organises all their books by spine colour.

I'd like 2 red books and a green one, please!

I can't think why any customer would appreciate things being organised by colour! It's sort of pretentious (not quite the word, can't think of the right one for now) and I highly doubt brings in the most money for the charity. I certainly won't bother going back to the shop in my OP now - too much like hard work to trawl through everything. Even if you need to try on to get a good fit you're hardly likely to look at more than 2 sizes.

And another thing - I'm on a roll now - I wish retailers would put things like multi packs of underwear and tights in size groups rather than style groups. Hmph.

Yes, our Oxfam shop does the arrange by colour thing, and it's the shop I buy the least from. My favourite chazzer does it by style, ie all the jumpers, all the jeans and so on, and arranged by size within that. So much easier!

@toppkatz

My local charity shop organises all their books by spine colour.

Clearly not familiar with the Dewey Decimal system

I buy more clothes from the charity shops arranged by colour - because the shop looks more attractive and I primarily choose clothes by the colours that suit me. I drop in regularly and have a very cursory whizz through to see if anything catches my eye - then I check to see if it's a plausible size. In a multicolour layout I find it harder to distinguish individual garments without looking through them one by one. I do buy from the multicolour shops but I don't spend as much, because I only occasionally have the time to do a proper dive in.

Sorting books by colour is obviously vastly inferior to sorting by author but I guess it's superior to not sorting at all.