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?

It was 20 years ago I last did a boot sale as a seller and we had to be there for 4am! There were buyers going round at that time too, looking for specific things (car radios was one - how times have changed). I think DH and I made about a fiver over the £10 cost of the pitch after spending 7 hours there 😄

Boot sales are dreadful imo...did one a few years back. I was selling a pushchair....I only want £3...it was a basic one like you'd take on a plane...a woman argued with me for about fifteen minutes trying to get me to take £1 for it. Unbelievable. Towards the end, I'd had enough. A woman came up and picked up a Calvin Klein handbag I was selling and asked me so much....as I was so fed up I said 10 pence and the cheeky cow, threw it back down.

Yes, higher rate tax payers can donate and then use the gift aid contributions claimed by the charity to reduce their overall tax liability www.gov.uk/donating-to-charity/gift-aid

The limit is now £1000

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67855872.amp

I used to do quite well - have found DVF dresses, Kate Spade bag, some uber swish coat from a designer I can’t remember, etc etc but it’s all just rubbish now really. My local ones are, in the main, overpriced and full of tat. The less ‘glamorous’ ones tend to be cheaper but are a bit grim so can’t really be bothered looking.

There are no limits to how much money you can make tax free from selling your own second hand clothes to free up space in your closet, if the money you make from your clothes is less than what you have paid for them.

£1,000 is the threshold for “side hustles” before you are liable for tax e.g. if you are reselling for profit on Vinted, or offering tutoring or cleaning services.

Our best charity shop is the one that piles it high and sells it cheap, doesn't matter if it's Boden or Shein, it all goes for a similiar price. They do really well, it's always busy. They don't waste money on shop fittings, even they have been donated. They always do awesome window dressing though and are ontop of their FB page. Needless to say it's a local charity who only use volunteers.
I paid £2 for a pair of Shein flares in there the other day, quality seems fine, but I wouldn't be paying the prices that one of the big charities charge for similar items.

No, selling your own things doesn’t count as trading as you aren’t making a profit on them. Only buying things to sell and making a profit counts as trading.

A few people here have commented that they don't know how Gift Aid works, so I thought I'd post a quick reminder that higher-rate taxpayers who donate to charity can also reclaim some money from HMRC:
https://www.gov.uk/donating-to-charity/gift-aid
I used to sell some of the better things on vinted but stopped, partly because donating to charity shops then getting the bit of tax back feels like the best of both worlds (not much money for sure but also less time spent listing, shipping etc.)

Ah, apologies, I see that some posters already mentioned this - I should have RTFT!

I bought two dresses on Vinted this week but both were terrible quality (Asos & Mango). Given how shite quality is these days I see more people going back to wanting to feel clothes before buying them or high return rates if high street presence continues to decline.

This week my local Cancer Research had some great finds after a long drought of Shein and H&M. I bought:

• Hawes & Curtis mens shirt - £4
• T M Lewin white mens shirt - £5
• Mango blue maxi dress - £5
• Boys Levi jeans - £5
• Boys long sleeve thermal Next t shirt - £2.50
• John Lewis egyptian cotton super king fitted sheet - £3
• White Company heavy furry throw - £20 (on their website for £210!)