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I am in Southern NJ, just outside Philly, and have seen the opposite in my small town. In the last year, 3 thrift or consignment stores have opened in addition to the 2 that already existed.
One of them (a consignment clothing shop) must do some business online, and certainly uses it to promote their business a lot. The owner is extremely friendly and really passionate about the town and her business, so I’m rooting for her to succeed.
One of the thrift stores seems like a pretty middle-of-the-road thrift store — nothing too expensive or cheap, nothing I was interested in the few times I was there. I would think that most thrift stores in this situation, independent from a church or non-profit, close within a few years unless they adapt or change.
The third store, I’m not sure what their deal is. They are only open for a few hours a day 3 days a week. All their stuff is extremely overpriced and the owners aren’t friendly — as in, didn’t speak to me or even acknowledge me the one time I went to the store, even though there were no other customers and the store is very small. I can’t see how that business even makes enough money to cover commercial rent, let alone turn a profit, but I think some thrift stores exist for other reasons beyond selling second-hand goods.
The existing stores in town are more established: a consignment clothing shop that has its built-in clientele, even though the owner isn’t the friendliest, and a church basement thrift store which is staffed by blue-haired old ladies and most things are very inexpensive. I haven’t been there since before the pandemic since the space is so cramped, but I ought to drop off some donations there soon if nothing else.
It will be interesting to revisit this post in a year or two and see how things have changed for these businesses. I’m not sure if my Small Town, NJ is representative of Small Town, USA or not. But I’m grateful to think about how different my town was just a few years ago, and how it’s becoming more of a place that feels like home.
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craig rex,
Small town PA here. Similar situation I’d say….I see more stores opening, some are consignment shops, one is a shop that started as a flea market/auction, and has become basically a place where they buy pallets of returns and stuff online and sell it in a warehouse type setting…but they’ve kept an online (Facebook) live auction component and update their Facebook page regularly with notices of new inventory, sales, etc.
What I’m finding is, there is much more competition to buy stuff, and it feels like less of the good stuff is making it to the shop floors (either being sold online by the shop, or it’s simply sold as soon as it hits the floor). I’m definitely seeing a lot more people locally selling on Facebook, etc, and so that stuff is never making it to a thrift shop (or even yard sale).
I’m also seeing the shops increasing prices to a point where it can be hard to make money at resale.
As always in the Scavenger World, Knowledge is King, and the more you know about stuff, the better off you will be. I have so much unlisted stuff that I could take a year off from sourcing and be OK, but I won’t do that because 1. Sourcing is the fun part and 2. things can change so quickly—shops go in and out of business or relocate, demand changes for items, etc, that I think it’s important to stay in the game…
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It is interesting to hear how similar our situations are. Those pallet of returns type of places have become a lot more common than even 2 or 3 years ago. I can’t imagine there is much consistent profit left in it for anyone, except maybe Amazon, but I’m sure there are good ones out there.
I am in a very similar position to you in terms of sheer quantity of unlisted stuff, but I like having the backlog to “eat off of” as Jay would say. Sometimes those are the weeks where there’s nothing good to buy, and sometimes those are the cold Northeast winter days where the best way to spend the time is inside, creating a bunch of new listings!
One of the challenges when you’re building up an eBay store is how do you get to 100 listings and then 500 and then 1000. I think a lot of the people we see buying stuff as soon as it hits the shelves, or hustling the new listings on FB Marketplace, Mercari, etc are at the point in the cycle where they’re trying to figure how to sustain this thing they’ve been building. They need that next new item to list, or 20 new things to list, or the next $200 in their pocket. Technology has made it so easy to look up prices or list stuff, but it takes knowledge, patience and more than a little bit of luck to keep the sales steady over a long period of time, and no flipper tool or subscription fee can give you all of those things.
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it takes knowledge, patience and more than a little bit of luck to keep the sales steady over a long period of time
Which is (I think) why thrift shops may find it problematic moving their sales onto the internet. Here in the UK salaries in the charity-shop sector are low; Oxfam pays their shop managers £16,800 which is slightly above the minimum wage. There’s no spare money to pay someone with the skills to do successful online listing, so they rely on volunteers.
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I agree that the stores that try online selling but don’t have the knowledge will crumble under the weight of unsold inventory. One local thrift store stopped selling to the public and went online. After a year, they pulled down their online store. I assume now just sell in bulk to other dealers or send more expensive items to other auction houses.
We’re in NYC for the week and are enjoying just scavenging on the street where people leave stuff out in front of their stoops. My kind of shopping.
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Went to an antique fair on Saturday, in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Plenty of vendors, boring and over-priced stock, hardly anything being sold.
Weird decisions as to stock- one stall had a selection of modern Polish ornamental glass displayed on rickety shelves, Another had two large Benin bronze head wastebaskets and a selection of really ugly modern African carved stone heads.
Thinking about it afterwards, apart from the general lack of commercial nous, I reckon the problem may be that the vendors don’t have the time to source or scavenge stock. Hence the boring stock.
Booked to do a fair at Lamport Hall at Easter- I learned some stuff yesterday! 🙂
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