Do you think charity shops will become unviable?

[thedevilinablackdress]

Reflecting on my own experience of 35+ years charity shopping, reading threads on here, and speaking to friends who work in them. Will the overwhelming amount of low quality donations and competition from online second hand markets eventually lead to fewer customers, lower profits and the shrinking of the charity shop sector?

I think the donations will be low quality fast fashion.

I think most of the donations already are @Britpopbaby

I'm an avid charity shopper and I still find some decent stuff. I think there will always be people who can't be bothered with the hassle of selling online, and for the charity shops it would have to be worth a certain amount to make it worth their while listing, and also probably in near-mint condition given how litigious online buyers can be.

I tend to look for higher-end high street stuff such as Monsoon, Sea Salt, White Stuff and I'm not bothered if condition is obviously not new. The days of finding an actual designer bargain are probably gone, but there are other bargains to be had. I bought a clock a couple of years ago for £2.50 that I found out was selling for about £70, used, on eBay.

Maybe some will sell more quantity over quality? My best local one has a 50p rail and a £1 rail the stuff flies out!
Every other item of clothing is no more than around £4 aside from detailed wedding dresses ect.
Also more people are willing to donate and shop there too which will help

Most of the nicer designer stuff now goes onto their eBay shop leaving primark f & f , Asda polyester delights only on their rails! 🤪

I've bought several things from ebay and vinted where the sellers are charity shops, they clearly skim off the best donations so they get the best price online. I would only look in the bookshop of my local charity shops but donate stuff regularly, we had a clearout of the games cupboard in the playroom before Christmas and donated it all to the local Mind shop, the next time I went past they had a big display of them all and I got a letter a month ago saying they had made £70 selling them 🙂.

I've been wondering the same thing, not just about charity shops but about the second hand market as a whole. At the moment I'm still managing to find some decent stuff but it's getting harder and 5 or 10 years down the line I can't imagine there being much left.

On the other hand - and this is going to sound patronising but I'm too tired to think of a better way of saying it - how much will future generations, who will have been brought up on the current high street, notice the decline?

I would think so but then I go to the high street and the charity shops are packed. Don't get it myself.

I dunno with the quality of modern fast fashion being so much worse than stuff in the 90s and early 00s there isn't going to be as much that comes through in saleable condition, the fast fashion pieces you do find will be things that have been worn once. So it may well be there isn't masses of extra saleable garments.

Personally I don't resent charity shops trying to get as much as they can for the charity they are supporting. Prices were always going to go up when second hand shopping became a middle class hobby.

Often wonder this myself. But I took have migrated to vinted so I can't complain.

Having said that, all insurgents become incumbents and overplay their hand. Private equity always tries to extract more. I see vinted are now marking items with a few favourites as 'in demand ' to hurry people to buy them, for example. So the pendulum may swing back.

There's still decent stuff, but you have to be patient,. It's a case of spotting a find.

I don't think we've ever been able to walk in and buy what we want when we want.

They should move online too. I don't have the time to trawl charity shops on the off chance I find what I'm looking for in my size/colour & parking in town is very inconvenient, as are their opening hours. But I can log into vinted and find what I need in a few minutes. If I could search charity shop stock like that I'd be happy to buy.

They'd also save money on premises with this model, as they could instead have large storage warehouses full of stock which are generally more cost effective than high streets.

This week I left these into our local charity shop
A Coach prarie satchel
An LK Bennett cardigan
2 Boden coats
2 pairs of Karen Millen sunglasses
I can’t be arsed selling stuff online

I think the charity clothes are expensive and first hand clothes can often cost the same price and on sale can be even cheaper especially in the supermarkets.
I think a charity shop with a delivery van could make its mark when it comes to big furniture/ ornaments / paintings / mirrors...

Charity shop manager here.
We don't only get low end donations, a large percentage of ours are everything from fat face to Karen Millen, a few Jaeger new with tags were donated last week and we get a fair amount of Sahara regularly.
I price things sensibly, I don't have a head office telling me what I have to charge so I can do that, others can't.
We have a discount rail with things like primark & supermarkets for 50p/£1, plus things from higher brands that are bobbled or need a wash.
We turn things that aren't suitable for sale into things like dog toys and carrier bags or bundles of patchwork fabric.
They won't disappear, but they do need to be more creative in the way they work.

Most of them already do have online outlets, either via eBay or e.g. onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/

I've wondered about the "made £70 selling the stuff you gave us" communications. How does it work? Surely they don't label every item in your donations with something saying Janina gave us this, then they sell it for a fiver and make a note of it to let you know? Far too much work. In one shop I took donations to, they weighed my bag - is that so they can estimate how much my things got sold for? But what if they have to bin half of it?

It's a mystery!

Depends on the charity shop and area - I've picked up a Radley bag, Fat Face top and Cotton Traders top in one of our local ones recently but other local ones are full of shit.

GREAT pickings at the moment for the larger end of mainstream sizes though because of people slimming down through sizes on Mounjaro!

I donate mainly Seasalt, Fatface, WhiteStuff etc to charity shops, I never sell anything as I can't be bothered

No, I think/hope the charities will realise where they're going wrong if they are and adapt accordingly.

If they could all begin by not displaying clothing by colour that would do a great deal to attract customers back.

I agree the are still decent things to be had, and I've never expected to do anything other than enjoy serendipitous finds or hunt long and hard for something I'm after. It's more that shops are becoming overwhelmed with more and more undesirable and unsalable stuff. Almost every shop I go into now has had to give its changing rooms over to storage, and a friend who manages one doesn't even bother with the mountains of Shein, Boohoo, Primark etc. they get as they have enough (too much) 'higher quality' that they can't even get through.

I hope the number of charity shops does decline to be honest. There are so many on our high street, and mostly full of poor quality clothing. Some decent homeware etc in some. Mostly primark and boohoo and they sell it for too much. I feel sorry for people buying it at £4.50 for a dress that’ll be misshapen and fall apart very soon.

I don’t sell online so I suppose it’s useful to have somewhere to donate things to.

They generally track it via personalised barcodes. It’s in their interests as they can claim an additional 20% from Giftaid.

Cross-posted. I find great things in charity shops.

I think some charity shops are putting the prices up tooo much. Got a t shirt for my son..... they wanted £7!!!! I put it back. My nearest one is more reasonable with a cheap rail lol