> You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.
Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?
> Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]
Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?
Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.
Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?
Thrift store pricing is pretty good IMO. At least real thrift stores - those more curated vintage stores are, obviously, going to be higher priced.
But if you know how to check for quality materials and craftsmanship you can find really, really good clothes and furniture for unbelievably cheap.
The thing about fast fashion is, well, the clothes suck. They're more plastic than fabric, they fall apart, they look awful, they're not breathable, and on. You don't actually want to thrift those, because their lifespan is approximately 5 washes. Yes, it's that bad with some brands.
But if you can find nice cotton trousers or a great trench coat for 8-10 bucks you're golden. Just have them dry cleaned, press them, and you're going to be getting a piece of clothing that's higher quality than anything you can find in stores.
I found a great 3 piece brown tweed suit a bit ago. Miraculous all three pieces are there, dated somewhere in the 1970s. The construction was sturdy, the material was thick and rough, but everything was lined with viscose. The buttons were actually wooden, shaped like little hot buns. Multiple sets of them too, large ones for the pants and suit jacket and little tiny ones for the waistcoat. A suit like that made today would be at least 800 dollars. I got it for less than 50.
Point is, old stuff isn't low quality. Over the past 50 years, clothes have progressively gotten poorer in just about every metric. Yes, buying new cheap junk is sometimes cheaper than old stuff. That's because the new stuff is just so incredibly bad.
The stuff you're buying on Temu, Shein, H&M, whatever - is not competing with quality garments from decades past. They're not just not in the same category, there's many categories between them.
Oh, there are still good finds to be found, no doubt. Some people have fun searching for designer pieces - and they can still do that. My objection is more to crude pricing - which ends up alienating plenty of people it doesn't need to.
The thrift store has never been about getting cheap junk, it's about getting second hand clothing. They're not competing with the likes of Shein because they can't. Ultimately, those consumers who do want cheap junk should be alienated, because that don't offer what they're searching for.
When I read things like this, I laugh when people think that it's possible to bring much manufacturing back to the US.
The thrift store I volunteered at was for an animal charity. After paying rent and some salaries, the general rule of thumb was that we were able to convert volunteer hours to profit at about minimum wage rates (and I mean ~$8/hr rates, not "living wage" rates).
So, to be honest, your post made me unreasonably angry. No, thrift stores are not a front, they're not stupid, and they have certainly noticed the cheap crap from Shein and Temu. The issue is that crap is produced incredibly cheaply - literal peasant wages and zero pesky things like environmental regulations.
So where I volunteered, we originally had standard prices for all non-designer clothes, e.g. $5 for short sleeve shirts and shorts, $7 for pants, etc. It would simply take much too much time to try to price everything individually. And, for most clothes, these were great deals. But when cheap fast fashion came along, we had a rule we would just throw away any of that shit. But every now and then something would make it onto the floor, and we'd have an irate customer basically say what you are saying, "How can you charge $7 for this pair of pants when they're like $10 new." So then we'd apologize, and explain that we usually threw that stuff away. People just couldn't understand that we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.
> People just couldn't understand that we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.
Let's also watch out how we think about enterprises. (1) The customer - most anyway - isn't concerned with the purpose of the thrift store, with whether it's making a profit, or even really with how the store gets the product. They are looking for the things they need, at a better price than otherwise. Some costumers are exceptions, sure. (2) The thrift store needs to make money to pay a few employees, the lease, and its sponsor if there is one (like this animal charity). Running a thrift store does not garantee that it will make this much money. (3) Even the people providing the stuff have a choice of places where they can do that, including putting it in the trash or listing for free on Craigslist & Co. They may want to favor the thrift store but if the thrift store makes itself sufficiently difficult or irrelevant, they will choose another way. (4) Even you volunteering for the thrift store as a way to donate to the animal charity have choices: You evaluate that volunteering your time provides about minimal wage to the animal charity. This may or may not be your best deal on how to convey money to that charity.
More generally these are fundamental points of economics: (a) wishing for things doesn't make them so. (b) The economy is the result of a lot of independent people thinking for themselves.
> The issue is that crap is produced incredibly cheaply
Not all of this is crap, far from it. I am selective - and get good results buying online (no choice - brick-and-mortar stock is sad and too uniform.)
But thing is, "incredibly cheaply" is the reality of the world. We can ignore it or we can live with it.
To reconcile with you: more freedom in pricing by whoever does that task might make sense. And some sections here do have a more interesting strategy where clothes are priced higher initially, then come down in price systematically week after week. Which the tableware departments never seem to use.
> we couldn't sell it for less without essentially making the thrift store not turn a profit, even though the products were donated.
And then you do have a problem also, because the result is no-sale, less-traffic and sending people to fast fashion, and Ikea.
>> "incredibly cheaply" is the reality of the world
We, via our government, could also insist on trading partners having and enforcing environmental standards and fair trade practices. But that means higher prices for which people will vote against, environment be damned.
> You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.
Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?
> Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]
Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?
Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.
Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?