If you shop in charity shops do you think the quality clothing is harder to find?

[Britpopbaby]

I fear it is all disappearing and in its place is the usual super market fashion and fast fashion.

I donate good quality stuff to charity shops because I CBA to sell it on Vinted. Most of my clothes come from Vinted in the first place!

I love nosing round charity shops and think the quality has definitely dropped. I won't buy Shein etc even second hand but there's now a lot of it in our local charity shops.

Definitely in decline. I won't buy shein on principle, even second hand.

So much of that crap in charity shops now that I've turned to vinted where I can at least look for exactly what I want and sort by brand and size.

Another one who is surprised the average items bought per year is ONLY 70.

It probably depends on where you look.

We were in a charity shop in Ashley Cross in Poole a few weeks ago, the area has 5 or 6 charity shops and I always see something good.

DD17 bought a pair of brand new black Clarks court shoes for school, a fat face top and a beautiful dress with no label. In one shop in 5 mins.

Ditto there is an incredible cats home shop in our local city and it's full of Ralph Lauren, mint velvet, vintage topshop. Normal charity prices.

Im afraid I live in an area which is full of charity shops which are full of Primark , Tesco and Asda clothes , but it doesn't stop me looking

DH is a builder so I get a lot of stuff for him for work - jeans, jackets and hoodies - but sometimes it is cheaper to buy new out of Primark

When the grandkids were little , better pickings were from children's bundles off Facebook

I dont get on with Vinted at all. Anything I have worth selling on I give to a friend to sell on her account

We can only sell what people donate to us. In our shop we still do get some donation bags full of Hobbs/Reiss/Whistles but these are increasingly less common. We do see lots of shitty fast fashion from Shein, Primark and all the other internet companies like ASOS, Cider, BooHoo. Many still with tags on.
That is the stuff which just isn't worth the hassle selling on Vinted as it's only worth £2 or £3, even BNWT.

We do price to sell but also have a no clothing under £3 policy - mostly because we have very limited space (it's a tiny shop) and by putting out 6 Asda or H&M vest tops for 50p or £1, we are then not putting out better stuff we could sell for more. Despite what people think we are there to raise money for our charity, not to provide local people with cheap stuff.

70 items a year to me is outrageous but I have a teenage student daughter and can easily see how it happens. She is going away with friends for a week in the Med this summer and "can't possibly" wear the bikinis and outfits she bought for a similar holiday last year. Whereas I will be pulling out the shorts/linen trousers which I have had for years.

Ditto there is an incredible cats home shop in our local city and it's full of Ralph Lauren, mint velvet, vintage topshop. Normal charity prices.
Yes I can still endorse cat shelter shops. Our local one is so good, I've thought about volunteering there (except I don't like cats).

I volunteer in a charity shop in a quite nice area. We spend ages sorting the donations. Unless they are new with tags we don’t sell Primark, Matalan etc and the new stuff is 1/2 of the ticket price. We do have lovely stuff and it is priced accordingly - M and S jeans £4 to £6. Levi’s circa &15 etc. We cull and refresh 3 times a week and shift a lot of stock. Top notch items sell very quickly.

@allmycats your shop sounds like ours. We'd price a high street blouse/top from M&S or Zara at £5 or £6, couple of quid more for top end brands. Dresses around £7 or £8, up to £15 for prom dress style items. Winter coats around £10, jackets a bit less.

Our sales figures are interesting, we get these each week and we are taking as much in bric a brac as we are in women's clothing.

Putney, Richmond and Barnes still have lots of good stuff in their charity shops. Stella McCartney, DvF, Matthew Williamson, D&G etc. A little pricey but a bargain compared to what it would have cost initially.

Pimlico good too.

Zara is one of the labels that some charity shops charge a premium for in the shops that I visit.

I used to volunteer for Oxfam, in about 2021/22 we had an insane amount of boxes from them as a corporate donation, it was about 100 boxes to our store as an initial allocation, then about 200 more over the course of 6-9 months. Multiply that by the 500 Oxfam shops in the UK (although not all will have received as much as we did) and that is an awful lot of clothing. Mostly internet returns, perfect, brand new with tags. I know they also donated large quantities of new stock to Red Cross shops.

Zara sizing is all over the place - I am a size 14 and have things in size S (a puffer coat) and XL (a jumper). So people order 2 or 3 sizes to get one which fits and then return 2 to the warehouse, by which time it's out of stock online as they've moved on to something else, so it's slung in a box. It's incredibly wasteful. This is the fast-fashion model though and I suppose you could argue that at least Zara is trying to offset the damage they are doing by donating surplus. Other brands are just burning it, or landfilling it.

Definitely. I have shopped in charity shops for years, but I don't bother that much these days. I used to get great clothing, but now it's rail upon rail of Shein and supermarket clothing. There might be one nice piece in the entire shop (if I'm lucky) but then it'll be priced at £19.99 or more. It's really disappointing, and I think the best years of charity shop shopping are over now.

I tend to find the more affluent the area, the better quality the goods.

Yes but I think clothing quality is dropping everywhere including reputable brands.

Theres a Ralph Lauren skirt in my local charity shop for £5 but there's a greasy stain on the front of it. I'd love to take it off their hands to try to fix it but maybe for half the price seeing as there's no guaranteeing it's fixable

I think vinted is just so much easier.Even if you narrow down your search by brand, colours, size and price you can still have lots of choices.

For me the more important aspect is the reuse of clothes rather than the charitable aspect. I do feel priced out of most charity shops. I’m sure it makes more financial sense to sell one t-shirt @£10 rather than ten @£1 but there’s a really limited number of people who will donate an item worth that / people willing to fork out when it’s cheaper to buy new albeit lower quality / lesser branding.

I volunteer in a charity shop here in Ireland. The shop is in a decent size town with several other charity shops. We check all donations and only stuff that good quality is sold. The reality is that people are bullying more fast fashion and more is ending up in charity shops

We would get Shein, Dunnes Stores, Penny's (Primark) but we also get the more expensive labels. We do charge more for the expensive labels.

I have gone into a lot of charity shops in Ireland. I can see the difference in regards to stock, display, quality and pricing. I think that in wealthier areas or places beside them can have better quality or better branded items.

Yeah, it can definitely feel like quality clothing is harder to find in charity shops these days. A few years ago, it seemed easier to pick up good brands or well-made pieces, but now you often have to look a bit harder. That might be because more people are shopping second-hand now, so the best stuff goes quickly. Also, with fast fashion being so common, a lot of what gets donated now isn’t always the best quality to begin with. But if you’re patient and enjoy the hunt, you can still find some real gems; it just might take a bit more time.

I found a lovely navy blue Karen Millen sweater dress for £8 in my local charity shop this morning - sadly it was too big but someone will love it!

Definitely with the odd exception - I found a pristine Loro Piana top for £9 in a rough bit of London about 3 years ago. The rest of the stuff in there I wouldn’t have touched - live for those moments!

Definitely - since my last post I can report a Lola Espaleta dress in a £1 clearance charity shop and a Joe Brown's dress for £2 in the centre of Bradford.

I don’t know but I recently took a pair of jeans to the till and was charged £25 in BHF 😭 I didn’t have the heart to tell them to leave it. I’m not used to charity shops but that’s taught me if you want anything good quality you have to cough up.

I think it can be a bit harder to find really good-quality items in charity shops these days. It’s still possible, but it takes some digging and a bit of luck. A lot of what’s donated now is fast fashion, so finding those gems like well-made pieces or good brands, isn’t always easy. That said, when you do find something great, it feels like such a win! Sometimes shops in nicer areas have better stock too, so it’s worth checking around.

I’ve struggled to donate things recently- our local Barnardos donations centre stops taking donations by 9:30 most mornings and other shops will also say they can’t accept this, that, or the other. I also used to donate stuff for rags but apparently that’s no longer a source of revenue for the charity shops. In the end I’ve had to take things to the tip, which is a real shame. Not just clothes, homewares and things too.

But as pp have said, decent stuff gets sold on Vinted now rather than donated. It’s similar prices in many cases.