200 charity shops closing (cancer research)

[lebopbop]

AIBU to be sad about this as a charity-shop lover?

I don’t have a nearby cancer research shop but lots of other charity shops and I’m worried this is signalling a general trend :(

I do like Vinted etc for pre-loved clothes but it’s so much better to see things in person, be able to try on and not pay postage. It’s also just fun to go and rummage.

Proof if nothing else

prices:quality ratio is bad

It was a clapped out rusty van. Plus the two in the van used to shoplift at my previous work. Was informed about being gypsies

It just gets better and better. So now you can ascertain someone's ethnicity based on alleged criminality....

There's a word for that, and that word is racist

You're right they are: these days, it's arguably cheaper to buy these things from the likes of The Range and Home Bargains than it is from a charity shop. Therein lies the problem...

@Jumpingthruhoops , there is no Home Bargains in the town where I live, and The Range is on a Retail Park about a mile and a half from the town centre.
It's not a shop I'd goout of my way to get to.
There's a Home Bargains in neighbouring towns. The nearest one is about 8 miles away.

@MaturingCheeseball

Glad you like them. Oxfam bookshops, in my experience, try to present themselves as being like general bookshops; i.e. quite professionally laid out.

I agree that at the moment, some charity shops are not necessarily fit for purpose, and I think some points in this thread are fair enough and reasonably legitimate - I just don't necessarily think they're the whole reason why some charity shops are failing.

Various factors come into play, including the issues people here raise, but others too. Given the cost of living, I agree it might be prudent for some charities to consider reducing their prices somewhat - at least temporarily. They could give it a go and if it made no difference, then they could raise them again.

But I also think that some people have expectations or ideas of what charity shops should do that just aren't workable in practice or aren't going to happen. At Oxfam, 50p (or even a pound) for a paperback novel (in good condition) of an original price of £7.99 just isn't going to happen. That kind of book goes for £2.99 in my shop, though I think £1.99 would be a reasonable price.

Good, there are way too many charity shops.

@SorcererGaheris , If I wanted the book, I'd pay a sensible price. The 50p books encourage me to buy books I would have left if they were £2.50.
I re-donate them, but even at 50p, they don't sell quickly.

Where do you live?
I love a good day out charity shop shopping and several have closed near me.

but frequently the comments made by posters are ill informed-
eg most of the money raised goes to pay head office salaries, not true and can easily be verified with a quick google
sell all items for a pound- brings with it a whole new selection of problems eg volunteers to sort, quantity of goods required and the fact that many donors don’t want their donations sold for £1 when a higher price can be achieved.
What’s really frustrating is the assumption that staff are clueless: we receive a huge amount of data on sales and where I volunteer we change how much space is allocated to a specific range on a regular basis.
There are certain factors outside our control: quality of donations eg cheap fashion is hard to sell even at a very low price point.
ime if you (
general you) care about charity shops think about what you are donating: it takes time to sort through bags of broken, dirty and torn stuff. Does anyone really want your used bras? We would much prefer to spend time serving customers and presenting nice quality donations than sorting through stuff that belongs in the bin.

It does depend where you live. The charity shops near me are, well, awful. Awful stock and awful prices. But I went to Edinburgh last year and came home groaning under the weight of purchases: a Hobbs skirt I’ve worn to death, a Mint Velvet coat and a Brora cardigan - all at very fair prices.

@MaturingCheeseball charity shops can only sell what is donated though.
If all they get is old Primark and Shein donations then that's all they can sell.

I am not racist. When the police (a bloody rare thing) came in to get CCTV images plus spoke to a few staff. I saw the shoplifters as they were legging it. I looked at the footage and said they went down my road the previous day, taking bags of donations that people left outside their homes. Police interested and took a description of the van.

The pair of thieves belonged to a group of people of eastern European travellers that spend time in various parts of the Midlands, before being removed and then set up camp somewhere, shoplifting at the shops nearby etc.

It's just people round here call those people g.

But exactly. If all your donations are stuff that people would not want to buy then you can’t expect to sell them and the shop is redundant!

Obviously donation quality has plummeted since the advent of eBay/Vinted and, added to which, more people buy Primark/Shien etc and that has a poor resale value. We all know this. So trying to flog a dead (clothes) horse seems not to be a good business move now and that is why charities are closing their shops.

I don’t think all cs workers are stupid, but frankly some are, shall we say, blinkered . One independent shop near me has a sign outside with a big hand on it saying No Donations. I did ask if they wanted dh’s work shirts (Thomas Pink etc) and the woman was very rude and barked they had to clear all their stock before taking anything else. Perusing every so often, after the initial fanfare opening, they have had exactly the same stock for three years (and actually they have just closed down).

I really do think many charity shops would do better if they gave up selling clothes and focused on other goods.

For me, personally, it’s not the price.
If there is something good quality that I need, I will buy it, I tend to look round the charity shops with something specific in mind.

I don’t want to buy brand new stuff that’s been donated straight from the retailer because they couldn’t manage to sell it in their own shops - I can go to TK Max for that. We have a couple of charity shops locally that are more and more taken over by brand new tat - I don’t even bother going in any more.

I go to charity shops for the sort of good quality, long-lasting items that don’t really get manufactured any more, and I’m happy to pay accordingly on the (increasingly rare) occasions I stumble across them.

I don’t like buying things online, I prefer to touch them and look at them properly- photos are not the same.

This. They are ridiculously overpriced. It's much easier to find something you actually want, in the right size for a fair price online. £5 for a washed out Primark tee that costs £2 new is just nonsensical.

I go to charity shops for the sort of good quality, long-lasting items that don’t really get manufactured any more, and I’m happy to pay accordingly on the (increasingly rare) occasions I stumble across them.
People aren't donating them any more. We've been buying fast fashion for decades.
Retail has changed from what it was when we were buying well-made clothes.

I think charity shops have lost there way
it used to be cheap now there isn’t much different in buying new

there’s a charity shop near us which has £1,£2 and £3 section does really well also they have a free section for stuff not really fit to sell but maybe some use

You know, deep down, we don't give a fuck where the money goes. I also don't care how much my donations get sold for either.

We care about how much things cost. That's it. We're not going to take anything into consideration about where the money goes. That's not why we go to charity shops.

This is why we tend to swerve the expensive ones and clear out the ones who don't take your eyeballs.

This is why they're being closed down.

If people can't understand this then meh

I agree - some charities have lost their way regarding pricing. I work for one of the big charity retailers and we are also looking at large scale redundancies and closures. Our shop is hugely successful due to location but we also price things realistically. We have a manager plus a small number of paid part time staff and we have volunteers to help run the shop.
We are a success and are high up the weekly takings lists but we are constantly harassed by area management to make more money - mainly by putting up prices. We try this periodically to prove that selling higher causes a drop in income - we're told to price a coat at £20 (whereas we'd have priced it and sold it at £8) and it sits there taking up space for a month and is then reduced to £10 and it still sits there for another month and then we have to take it off sale to go to a different shop who have to start the whole £20 shite all over again. It's madness. Other shops in our area are under performing so they're told to increase prices to make more money and they then make less because the prices were already too high. When we were ordered to do £1 week we lost thousands. We sold the same number of items but only for £1 each rather than the usual £2-£10 (a good label dress or coat sells for between £7-£12 here). So we got it in the neck for underperforming that week even though we produced figures to show how much we lost from bloody £1 week. The interference and pressure applied from the top is huge.

@gamerchick You're probably right - some people don't care about the charity cause and just the prices.
We have many, many 'regulars'. Some care and some don't but they keep coming back to our shop because we fight to keep our prices reasonable and as a result get a lot of donations which stabilises our turnover. Does that earn us any respect from area management? No....because we can always do better/make more money.....apparently!

@Nocookiesforme

Good point about the pressure that some charity shop managers face from above. Apparently they want our Oxfam bookshop to be open longer during the week (it opens 10-5 Monday to Saturday and 11.15-4 on Sundays.)

I understand that they want to maximise the time the shop is open (and to be fair, some years back we did open from 9.30-5.30 on Monday to Fridays) but I think the amount of pressure that our manager seems to experience is rather too much, considering that her role isn't that well paid.

@SorcererGaheris
Paid staff are on NMW but the manager is only getting about 30p an hour more than us which is ridiculous. This isn't attracting the best staff and if our vacancy list is to be believed, most of the vacancies are for shop manager's and assistants who are prepared to accept 7hr p/wk contracts but be fully flexible on commitment and when they work.