Why do charity shops...

[LemooonSlice]

...keep items as "display only" ? A piece of furniture for the shop I can understand, or a window prop, that's used each year. But 2 charity shops local to me have a Christmas tree in the shop (easily accessible) decorated with a random assortment of ornaments, and customers are not allowed to buy the baubles. If they were a matching set fair enough, keep them together. But they are a random assortment and the charity loses income and goodwill because they are displaying things in the window and shop that customers can't buy. I genuinely don't understand the logic! This is not a dig at the shop volunteers, who do a great job (and I have done it myself)

You saw me on TV!

@mathanxiety "Do people not donate old baubles and decs in January?"

I see your point here but I tried to do this once and the shop said they did not have enough room to store them until next year. Which is fair enough. I suppose I was hoping they would store them instead of me ( small house , little storage ) bit shame on me - Other bigger Charity shops may be different 😊

In our shop some of the display items are not donated goods, they belong to one of the volunteers. We have two large windows and regularly changing displays, and we also have very limited storage space for keeping decoration. So a big wedding themed window, or Rembrance Day window, or Jubilee window or something is planned and volunteers bring in items to supplement what we have to sell.

I'd have assumed that people would buy them early and then store them in their homes.

Charity shops are frequently the place for a great bargain, but surely everybody knows that you either buy what they have in now or you miss out; it's not Amazon with endlessly-replenished shelves of the exact item you're looking for, at exactly the most convenient time for you.

It does seem a little unrealistic to expect a charity shop to have a full range of your preferred Christmas decorations in, for a bargain price, in December.

We keep what we can, but have limited space to store christmas stock so only keep the best things - brand new still boxed candles, or gift sets, china, upmarket decorations. We just dont have space to store loads of supermarket plastic baubles and similar. We do see a peak of christmas decorations through the first week in January and again end of November /beginning of December when people get everything out and decide what they don't want any more.

depends on the shop staff / manager, its always worth an ask then they can always say sorry not for sale etc