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This article talks about what many of us have noticed for the last 5+ years: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/style/thrift-stores-fast-fashion.html
When we go to Goodwill, etc, we rarely see the quality clothing items that we used to. In 2010, we could go to the thrift store every day and bring homes bags of wool, leather, flannel, cashmire, silk items. Now we can walk through the whole store and maybe find a couple quality items. I know some scavengers do better by really putting in the time to find clothing.
So many clothes these days are just fast fashion, cheap, disposable.
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I’m not able to read the article (paywall) but I do clothing exclusively and have found a way to also source exclusively online. I agree about not being able to physically walk in and come away with great stuff, which is just one reason I have moved to an online model. But for now, it’s still working for me.
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Here’s the text:
Tina Koeppe grew up thrifting. When she was younger, she would spend weekends going to thrift stores with her mother, hunting for unique trinkets and garments but mostly looking for quality items to fit into her family’s tight budget. Now in her 40s and with a daughter of her own, Ms. Koeppe has carried the thriftiness of her youth into adulthood. Most of the furniture and décor in her home came from thrift stores. All of her clothes, except for her socks and underwear, were purchased secondhand.
But lately, “there’s just less and less desirable items,” Ms. Koeppe said in an interview. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, she began to notice that her local thrift stores in Lincoln, Neb., were filling up with items from Shein, LuLaRoe, Fashion Nova and other fast-fashion brands, whose garments tend to be relatively inexpensive, often adapting designs from small shops and high-end labels.
At the time, she assumed it was because people were cleaning out their closets while stuck at home.
“I’d go into thrift stores thinking I could find a few things for my wardrobe or for my family, and it would just be absolute, you know, garbage on the racks,” Ms. Koeppe said. “Like stained fast-fashion clothes that nobody wants.” But even now, she has still been finding fast-fashion items, sometimes with tags still on them, hanging on the racks.
The rise of fast fashion has changed the way younger women shop for clothes, according to Megan McSherry, 25, a sustainable fashion educator. It is “nearly impossible,” she said, to scroll on social media without running into so-called haul videos showing hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars’ worth of garments from Zara or Shein.
“Those hauls just encourage overconsumption,” Ms. McSherry said. “And there’s no way that all of those items are going to be constantly worn.”
Because of the rise of thrifting, what isn’t worn ends up getting donated, Ms. McSherry said. Although it’s a better option than sending clothes straight to a landfill, she said, thoughtless donating can direct lower-quality items to people who really need them, while also driving up thrift stores’ operating costs.
“If you donate trash to a thrift store, it doesn’t just disappear,” Adam Minter, the author of “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale,” said in an interview. He added that smaller stores in particular could easily become overwhelmed by incoming garments, making it “much harder to do the business of running a thrift store.”
He said his research had shown that thrift stores have no shortage of donations, especially in recent years. But an increase in donations has led to increased business costs. Stores need more employees and more time to sort through the clothes. Inventory and space issues mean more clothes need to get either sold into the export market for a lower cost or disposed of, which has a financial cost, he said. That means that what does get sold on the store’s floor — which is usually 20 percent of donations — is priced higher to make up the cost of running the store.
But more choices do not necessarily mean higher quality. Last year, the online consignment store ThredUp received more clothing than any other year since its founding in 2009, with many of those items coming from fast-fashion retailers, the company said. Compared with 2020, there was a 186 percent increase in the number of items listed from Shein and a 75 percent increase in pieces from PrettyLittleThing, a ThredUp spokeswoman said in an email
“There’s all these clothes out there, but it’s just that they may not be as durable as you would like,” Mr. Minter said. Because of fast fashion, more than 60 percent of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels.
This is alarming for the generations of women who have been thrifting for decades as a way of filling their closets affordably with garments made of high-quality materials.
“I’d say that the golden age of thrifting is over,” Megan Miller, 65, said in an interview. “The ability to find high-quality, well-made things is definitely on the wane.”
She said the predominance of fast-fashion items in stores where she lives in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., on the banks of the Colorado River, has become hard to ignore. Encountering so many fast-fashion items while browsing frustrated her, she said, because probably “they were made by somebody making pennies on the dollar in terrible conditions” to feed the “rapid turnover of seasons or trends.”
Despite the less desirable options, Ms. Miller still ventures out to thrift.
“There is something ingrained in me about not paying outrageous prices for something that I know that I could — if I’m just patient — find at the thrift store for a fraction of the price,” Ms. Miller said.
Angela Petraline, 52, owner of Dorothea’s Closet Vintage, an online boutique operated out of Des Moines, has been thrifting since the 1980s. “It would take minutes to find something cool,” she said of the old days. “Now I’m lucky to find anything cool at all.”
“You used to be able to find high-quality vintage items: silk, cashmere,” she said. “That’s rarer now.” Ms. Petraline said that although she rarely found items in thrift stores for herself anymore, she had begun visiting them to find garments for her teenage son. During summers they went to nearby towns to avoid the cheaply made clothing clogging their local stores.“But even then, it becomes almost all fast fashion,” she said. “Which is incredibly depressing: You drive 60 miles and you’re like, ‘Well, why did I do this?’”
For Ms. Koeppe, the glut of fast fashion recently became more inconvenient. Early this year, she began hunting for work clothes in preparation for her re-entry into the work force. (In May, she received her master’s degree in instructional design and technology.)
She said that even though it was considerably more difficult to find the items that she needed this year than it had been when she last had to look for work clothes, she wasn’t interested in the other affordable options in her area, like Target or Old Navy. Unimpressed by pieces from big-box stores that are made out synthetic fibers and sometimes begin to fray after a couple of washes, she craved the linen, wool and cashmere that she used to find.
“I like my clothes to last, and I understand how clothes are made,” Ms. Koeppe said. “I want clothes that will still look good after I’ve worn them multiple times.”
“It shouldn’t be harder to find good stuff,” she added.
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I am finding that clothes are selling better than ever these days. I never used to buy it and now I try to buy anything that is cool looking or unique/old. I do agree that in many areas, at conventional thrift stores (goodwill, salvation army, savers) it is picked over. Smaller mom n pop thrift stores still have good old clothes.
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My first thought is that these larger thrift operations probably became better at filtering out the expensive stuff before they hit the floor. Smaller (mom & pop) stores don’t have the time, hence the stuff is more readily available there.
Speaking of clothes, I’m a regular “bins” shopper, and the amount of clothes that come out hourly is honestly shocking. I don’t dabble, but frequently see clothing resellers filling up entire carts with what is (presumably) quality stuff. There’s a group of younger (say, early 20s) clothing resellers I keep my eye on that are clearly looking for trendy items they can flip for high prices. I can only describe the style as “ironic”, like a NASCAR or WWE wrestling shirt from the late 90s or early 2000s, where it’s like the entire shirt is one big advertisement. I looked up the prices of a few and was amazed, like an average of $50 it seemed, sometimes more.
If the thrift stores are filtering the good stuff, then it becomes a game of getting better at following trends, I guess. None of it makes sense to me! That’s why I stay in my lane.
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Yeah the bigger chain thrifts filter out the really good stuff for their own online auction sites. Then the stuff that does hit the floor is priced up. For example, At my local thrifts if it says Nike it is at least $10 an item now.
I’ve talked to the managers at some of my thrifts. Some goodwills have a list of brand names or specialty items that must be sent into their online sales group.
I’ve definitely noticed a steep drop in the overall quality of clothing. I just look through at a very high level looking for the things that stand out. I still find the occasional clothing item, but I’m also not very focused on clothing. I still have plenty of clothing in my death piles so I’m in no rush to load up.
in the end, the numbers either make sense or they don’t. I’ll still buy their shoes at $10 a pair if they sell for $50+. Same for clothes.
i still find plenty of good stuff at the “Gucci goodwill” that all of these same trends are happening at.
I’m starting to think this may not entirely be a bad thing. Thrifting has become hugely popular. Buyers will get frustrated with the increasingly high prices and poor quality Stock at local thrifts. Now that they are well established second hand buyers They’ll start to look through our online stores full of cultivated nice items at only slightly higher prices than overpriced thrifts.
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Everything in your post is so spot on. Especially the last paragraph about how popular thrifting has become, and how bad local thrifts can be good for eBay sellers like us. It definitely helps that eBay and etsy and poshmark are all accessible with a few taps on a phone screen. It wasn’t that long ago that eBay was optimizing our listings for mobile, after all! But now it’s a breeze for buyers to find those listings in the app, and also easy for thrift store management to delude themselves into the value of items without understanding why things sell for more on eBay or why an active listing says nothing about an item’s relative worth.
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I’ve just about stopped going to my local thrifts due to just these issues we’re discussing. There is either nothing there I find worth buying, or items that are worth buying are overpriced and wouldn’t be profitable.
I just had my mind blown going to the Goodwill online store. I am going to have to start trolling there for inventory. Most of the items I looked at were up for auction and everything I was interested in was a decent prices. Am going to place a few bids and see what happens.
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Another example is a small charity shop I go to. Couple times a year. They now comp EVERYTHING to online. They have tags that say “online price $xx our price $yy”.
I could have just laughed and walked out. Instead I went through the store and found the things they missed. Occasionally I would also buy their items with the online comp prices. For instance, a baseball glove they priced at $25 because it allegedly goes for $75 online. Well it actually does and has a phenomenal STR. I gladly paid the $25 and listed it for $75. I’ll accept an offer down to $50 and it will sell within a month easily.All told I spent $100 at this thrift where legit 100% of the money goes to caring for shelter animals. I listed everything I bought for close to $1k. There’s money to be made even in picked through overpriced comped out thrifts. You just gotta keep expanding your knowledge base and be willing to shop any department.
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I don’t know if the “golden age” is over. These things go in cycles.
I do agree that there are way too many new with tags, ugly LulaRoe things at all the thrifts. Like, this stuff is seriously ugly.
I don’t bother donating anything to Goodwill anymore because I never see it hit the floor. I used to sometimes see our stuff, which always weirded me out, but not anymore. Either they are selling it online or shipping it off to a different store. I know that one of the local goodwills will straight up destroy stuff they don’t want to deal with. Like, they have a giant trash compactor in the parking lot. No thanks! I put my stuff at the end of my driveway and anything my neighbors don’t want goes to either the women’s shelter thrift or the monthly humane society rummage sale.
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They now comp EVERYTHING to online.
When I was a volunteer in a thrift book shop the manager wanted to comp all the stock online. You just end up with stressed volunteers, overpriced stock and slow sales. Higher management closed the shop down, and employed a local firm to clear the premises. The firm threw out the financial records for the shop, which then had to be reconstructed from memory (so I’m told). The manager was relocated to a shop 30 miles away from his home. Which might not seem like a big distance for daily commuting, except that the road is basically an upgraded farm track.
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One of my favorite library sales (in fact I’ll be attending this week) has a cart with specialty priced items where they say eBay $25 buy for $10, or alibris $50 buy for $25. It’s just one cart in a room full of items, it’s usually the same items on the cart and I’ve yet to figure out how the powers that be determine what goes on the cart. I guess it’s like the glass case at the Goodwill, but it is so arbitrary.
I’ve found amazing specialty books, art books, media items, vintage items, you name it in other parts of the room at normal prices. I imagine they have one or two volunteers who said to the right person in charge “Hey some books sell online for lots of money” and they spend a few hours a week “helping” by pricing items for their cart. I guess everyone needs a purpose, but it is so strange how organizations make things more complicated for no real benefit except to massage a few people’s egos. You’re selling donated items curated by volunteers at a huge volume, just price the stuff so lots of buyers open their wallets, and there’s the profits you need until the next sale. I know there’s some overhead involved even for a library (and more for a thrift store) but no amount of looking up “values’ on eBay or alibris really helps a bottom line unless you have a real, true expert in a certain niche.
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The difference between independent thrift stores and ‘chain’ thrift stores.
Layers of management.
The shop I volunteered at had a manager, an area manager and a regional manager. The area manager came in about every two weeks, and didn’t interfere too much. The regional manager would come in once a month, start re-arranging shop displays, talk loudly on their mobile ‘phone, and otherwise annoy the staff and cause the manager to start cringeing.
Above that pair, a hierarchy of managers and directors, graphic designers, accountants, H&R apparatchiks etc. Expensive.
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Agreed. “chain thrift stores” are run like businesses to squeeze the most profit out of their inventory (that gets donated). They evolve their systems which costs them money to try to make more money. For instance, Goodwills in the US now have created their own eBay: https://shopgoodwill.com/home. I cant imagine how much it costs Goodwill to run this online store, ship, organize inventory, etc.
Independent thrifts and “church thrifts” run lean and mean. They get free inventory and just want to sell the stuff as quick as possible with as little overhead as needed.
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Indy thrifts are great. Unfortunately I’m seeing a lot more people thrifting though during the pandemic. There is now a 45 minute wait to get into my favorite at opening. A lot more high school and college kids shopping clothing.
We only have one Goodwill and it’s in a really central location. Stuff really moves there. They have a couple of better brand clothing and shoe racks and they do send stuff to corporate I think. However, I really have noticed that it depends on the manager and staff has a huge turnover. The current manager seems to like to keep things moving. Also it’s easier to just throw stuff out on the floor, especially breakable items which I deal in. I do notice though that they never have good smalls – zero jewelry, lighters, belt buckles. I bet they just ship all of that out to corporate.
The regional chain seems to go through large swings in pricing. Right now demand is high so they have really hiked their prices. At other times in the past they had to advertise lowering of prices to get people back in.
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