Thinking Vinted will see Charity Shops out of business?

[Monty27]

If you're a chazza fan like me have you noticed how they're not busy?
Vinted is new in the great scheme of things and fantastic. It's a new discovery] for me.
I'm not sure how sympathetic I am towards chazzas losing business because the profits aren't shared

Going into a shop is very different from shopping online. I love charity shops for the "surprise" element. I especially like the ones with random piles, instead of the ones which are really slick and minimalist.

I think sometimes the issue is that a Primark jumper is more expensive than Primark!

Was it a vintage skirt? If it's more than 40 years old it could well have a 22 inch waist as a 'size 10' but the seller should make that clear and include the actual waist measurement if so.

@PhantomOfAllKnowledge - sadly not vintage - some Temu c**p. It was listed as an BNWT unbranded item size 10. There was no size label so the seller had just picked size 10 from thin air (or for potential sale more likely…).

I’m a vintage person - ie I was a teenager 40 years ago and shops like Chelsea Girl/Miss Selfridge/Clock House didn’t do a size 8. I was always a 10 and I weighed around 7 stone (then!!).

Yes, I'm pretty 'vintage' too😆There's so much variation in clothes sizes evenif they're modern which is the main reason I like to at least see them if not try them on. You so rarely see actual measurements online and even if there are, it can be hard to judge whether the fabric has any stretch; exactly where the waist will sit and so on.

🤣

I'm a long-term volunteer in a charity shop (an Oxfam Bookshop, so we don't sell clothes, though we do sell donated CDs and DVDs.)

To echo what some other people have said:

I respect the fact that some people feel that some charity shops are overpriced and up to a point, I can agree. The deputy manager in my shop said that generally, the guideline for our specific shop is that we must mark books at around a third of the original price. If it's practically brand new (i.e. in perfect condition and released within the last twelve months) they want us to mark it at 50% of the original price.

I actually do think this is a bit too steep and I personally think that it should be 25% of the original price for older items and perhaps 40% for very recent releases.

However, in certain shops, the days of getting an item for 50p or one pound are gone. The charities do not see themselves as there to help those of us with low incomes get really cheap things (and to be fair, that is not their official role.) Perhaps in past decades, charities did see helping those with low-incomes as an additional, unofficial factor, but if so, that line of thinking has changed - they are now out entirely for their specific cause.

Some people might argue that lowering prices (at least on certain items) to £1 might increase sales and bring in more money overall that way...perhaps that would be the case in some shops, but it really wouldn't work for everywhere across the board. Sometimes, things just won't sell even at £1. And if they did, it relies on a consistent stream of at least average-quality items to instantly replenish the ones sold - the quantity of donations, as well as the quality, can often fluctuate. People have donated books in the past that have literally been falling apart. If a paperback novel is priced at £2.99 or £3.99, then only one copy has to sell in order for the shop to get that 3 or 4 pounds, whereas the opposite is true if we priced them at £1.

There is a lot of pressure from above to try to meet targets. Honestly, even if prices were reduced, I'm not sure if shops would make our targets. My shop manager feels very pressurised and you can tell it affects her. Why, just this last Christmas they expected the shop to be open for the full 8 hours on Christmas Eve, when prior practice has always been to close early (at around 3 or 3.30 pm.) That's apparently what our manager ended up doing, but it was in violation of what she'd been told to do.

Our manager sometimes gets told off by her area manager if the shop ends up being closed on certain days. The aim is for us to be open 7 days a week, but the organisation that collects our culled stock has a habit of going for weeks without showing up, which means that in our basement crates of uncollected scrap piles up, as well as donations. I'm part of the team that volunteers on Sundays (both of our managers have that day off, so it's the one day when all the staff in the shop are entirely volunteers) and when things get too congested in the basement, we feel it's unsafe, so we refuse to show up. Our manager sometimes gets told off when this happens, even though it's entirely out of her hands.

@MaturingCheeseball

I take your point about condition; that is supposed to be a factor in pricing and if volunteers are trained properly and experienced, they usually do that. (Though less experienced and less well-trained volunteers are a different matter, of course.)

Unfortunately the shop I'm in has one volunteer pricing literature who now MASSIVELY overprices them (he started doing this after the managers told him he was underpricing the stock.) Now he'll put something like £16.99 on a hardback that was £20. It's annoying, and because I know he does this, I try to check his prices and correct them before they go upstairs on sale, but I've got other duties to attend to so don't always get a chance to do this. Our deputy manager says that she's spoken to him about the overpricing, but he says nothing and then just continues doing what he's doing, so there doesn't seem any way to change it.

Also, while there is some room for personal discretion, instructions on prices are set from above. In my shop, we're not supposed to sell anything for less than £2.99 and we are expected to abide by this. (If I see something that I think could potentially sell and can't justify £2.99 for it, then I will sometimes put it out at £1.99 but I don't do this very often.)

The shop has to send off its figures, reports and receipts for the week and 'higher-ups' would see if we were consistently selling items cheaper than they had mandated to us. Which would very likely mean that the shop manager would get into trouble. She already has experience of being told off from people higher up the chain due to shop closures. She is under pressure and worries a lot - to the point that she's started to buy Oxfam lottery tickets herself in order to try to make the targets.

Background info some may find of interest: Charity shops get their stock for free, they are staffed largely by volunteers so no costs there. They pay special reduced business rates because of their charity status.
But check what their chief executives get paid, the median in the top 100 UK charities is £192K. Also look at how much of the charity takings actually go to the cause they claim to stand for. You may be surprised.

@SorcererGaheris I'm happy to pay a bit more in an Oxfam bookshop because the books are categorised/sorted alphabetically whereas in most charity shops they are either not sorted at all or only sorted very loosely. I buy more in Oxfam books than other charity shops because it's easier to find what interests me, and I'm happy to pay for that.

I class Oxfam clothes charity shops as amongst the more expensive, but without being the boutique style of shop with high end labels that justifies the pricing. They also suffer (in my opinion) from too many brand new items - I get that many of these are fair trade items so the money is well-spent, but it's not what I go to charity shops for. So Oxfam clothes, conversely, are amongst my least favourite charity shops.

I use both, I go to charity shops and like to see things IRL before buying. But if im shopping for a specific item I might search for it on vinted. Also I buy books in charity shops, to take on holiday

Ive never used the word chazza and havent even heard of it until this thread!

@SorcererGaheris
Wow.. who'd manage a charity shop? (My sister used to, actually, but it sounds even worse than what it was..)
It sounds like those at the top of the tree are sitting pretty, just putting pressure on the ones below. I suppose most jobs are the same these days, but it's unfair.

I've given up on them, apart from donating to our local hospice shop, & if I have, there must be many more. Mind, I don't use Vinted either. At one time, people's unwanted things would go to jumble sales, which WOULD benefit the local community.

I'll just carry on buying things in sales - jumpers, coats etc - & I live in George at Asda jeans!

There are costs though: at least one paid member of staff per shop- at market salary, pension and national insurance. Training for staff and volunteers. Tills to maintain. Utilities and rent. Rubbish disposal is not free - and there’s a shit tonne of rubbish believe me. As for salaries this is a tired argument. CEO’s of any organisation with a turnover of millions will be paid mid to high 6 figure sums. And so they should- you need experienced and skilled leadership especially for charities who are all chasing funds in a difficult economic environment.

@Clarissaclaire

It's not accurate to say that there are "no costs" for staff in charity shops.

Many charity shops, if not most, have at least one paid employee - the manager. The shop I volunteer in has two - a full-time manager and a part-time deputy manager, who works (I think) about 24 hours a week.

So many charity shops do have staffing costs, even if they are minimal.

Yes, the business/rental rates may be reduced, but electricity and water bills are not, and they have increased. There's also money to spend on other items necessary to keep the shop running - stationery, printer paper, rubbish bags, etc. We have to pay for waste collection (not for general rubbish, but for a company to come and collect our unsold stock/stock that's in too poor condition to even try to put on sale.)

@VanCleefArpels

Totally agree with all your points. I thought it was common knowledge that charity shop managers are (mostly) paid employees and not volunteers? So it surprises me when people say that charity shops have zero staffing costs - they absolutely do.

@cornflakecrunchie

To be fair, I think many of those are the top are under quite a lot of pressure themselves. They get paid a decent salary (which is justifiable, they are doing a difficult job) so you could argue that pressure is inevitable with roles that come with that level of responsibility and they are compensated for that with greater financial reward. But I wouldn't necessarily say they're sitting pretty - being a paid employee in a charity can be a pretty stressful and complex role at all levels.

The difference for charity shop managers is that, (IMO) they are not paid as well as they should be for all of their responsibilities and the amount of pressure they can be under.

I will always visit charity shops and I have never used Vinted. I buy clothes and especially shoes on Ebay sometimes (I am a Fly lover and know exactly what size I need), but the only way I ever try to sell anything online is on Facebook Marketplace, so the buyer collects. Otherwise I donate back to charity shops

If charity shops stop existing, I'd rather buy new clothes (from shops, not online) very occasionally after thinking carefully about what I need. I'm also learning to sew so making some of my own clothes might be an opton in future.

Another point to make about the 'free stock' point - YES, that is the majority of what charity shops sell, but a lot of charity shops (well, Oxfam, anyway) have for years been selling 'New Product' - i.e. brand new (not second-hand) items that they do pay for. This can be chocolate, sweets, cleaning items, tote bags, etc.

Charity shops undeniably have lower costs than other retail environments, but I do think some people underestimate the running costs that charity shops do have.

This is a really interesting insight, thank you. We have a good local Oxfam bookshop which I used regularly for books for DS when he was younger. The kids’ section is quite large and carefully-arranged.

Can you shed any light on why the person I spoke to refused even to look at a bag of kids’ books I had taken in? I’d already made sure I was only bringing really popular ones- a whole load of Julia Donaldsons, Mr Men, Going on a Bear Hunt, Dear Zoo, Hungry Caterpillar, Oi Frog series etc. He wasn’t interested when I tried to point out I wasn’t just offloading junk, said that they had far too much in the back already. Yet none of those were on the shelves and I’m pretty sure they could have gone straight out and been sold within a couple of days.

@ScaredOfFlying

Thank you for your comment!

In all honesty, the reason the person gave (that there was too much unsorted/unpriced or uncollected culled stock in the back) was probably the exact reason.

There are times at my shop where the amount of stuff in our basement has got so out of hand that we have to temporarily stop accepting new donations, even when they're in excellent condition. If this is something that has been decreed from above (the shop manager, or even higher management - one time our area manager came in, saw the state of the basement and declared that the shop must stop accepting new donations from the very next day until we'd got on top of the stuff we already had) then the staff are duty-bound to follow it.

I appreciate that your donation was high-quality, popular children's books that were highly likely to sell, but that doesn't make any difference if there's so much unpriced stock that the environment is unsafe. To be honest, even when shops are accepting donations, I suspect that many health and safety rules/standards are being ignored or violated when we're swamped. I can't tell you the amount of times I've come in and there have been bags of donations left on the stairs into the basement (definitely a health and safety violation) and there are trip hazards in our basement with the boxes of unpriced stock being full and the additional stock being in piles on the floor. If you add to that the fact that the waste collection company (who come to collect the stock that has been culled or has been in too poor a condition to sell) hasn't arrived for five weeks, and...you get the idea. At the moment, in my shop, there must be around 40-50 crates of uncollected 'scrap stock' because the waste collection company hasn't shown up yet this year.

While you say they could have been priced straight away and gone straight out, that isn't always possible, even with space on the children's shelves. Bear in mind that the number of volunteers who have roles 'across the board' can be quite slim; many only come to do their specific jobs and don't do anything else. Volunteering is done on the volunteer's own terms; they can choose the jobs they want to do and the jobs they don't want to do. It could be that that shop just had one specific member of staff who prices children's books, and if that member of staff wasn't there on that day (the majority of volunteers only volunteer once or twice a week at most) then your donation would not have gone straight out, as pricing children's books is not the responsibility of other members of staff, so they just wouldn't have done it. It would have remained unpriced and unsorted until the person who prices children's books showed up for their shift, which could well have been a few days away - so if the back room was so full that it was getting out of hand/dangerous, that unfortunately meant that your donation could not be taken at that time.

Sounds very chavvy. Like when people called Jeremy Kyle Jezza 🙄 😒 😫

https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/where-your-money-goes#:~:text=Our%20vision%20is%20a%20world,from%20investments%20and%20other%20activity.
all pretty transparent
Do you think CEO’s should be paid less because it’s a charity?
Is it a less demanding role than other retailers?
what about shop managers - lower salaries for them too?

I totally hear you @ShanghaiDiva but the sort of people who throw comments around about fat cats and how none of the money goes to the cause, and how CEOs are overpaid are not going to bother their arses to take the time to fact check.

@YellowPixie

I honestly don't understand the objection that people have to paying CEOs six-figure salaries (and even then, they tend to earn less in the charity sector than they would if they were in the private sector.)

Do people not realise that if the charity did not offer a reasonably competitive salary, then the skilled, competent people required for such roles would simply just not apply? Absolutely nobody would take on that role as a volunteer (it's full-time and too much work) and if the salary is low, the only people applying would be those who didn't have the skills and experience, and would would not be right for the job.

If a charity ends up with an unskilled, incompetent CEO because the salary they're giving is too low, then that is detrimental in so many ways to the charity and means that in the long run, the charity loses MORE money overall.

Could not agree more. But you are again using logic to justify why people in charge of charities should be paid a competitive wage. People genuinely do think that charities should run on volunteers and fresh air.