Nextdoor, for those that don’t know, is one of those local social media apps. It can be a great place to find out local news, although the number of posts about cats being run over can be depressing. The other day I saw a post that depressed me despite featuring no dead pets. A presumably well-meaning lady asked, “Would it be unreasonable to remove the shop brand labels on clothes that I want to give to local charity shops?” She had observed that some people buy clothes with prestigious labels from charity shops or second-hand clothes apps such as Vinted and then sell them at a profit. She wanted to prevent this happening.
Several people challenged her view. “Why would you take the labels out if you are donating to a charity?” said one response. “The charity could make more money with the labels in”. That seemed to be the majority opinion. But a distressingly large minority clearly felt that reducing the charity’s income from selling donated clothes was worthwhile to ensure that no “spivs” could make any money from selling them a second time.
” But a distressingly large minority clearly felt that reducing the charity’s income from selling donated clothes was worthwhile to ensure that no “spivs” could make any money from selling them a second time.”
It depends what you consider the main purposes of selling secondhand clothes are. For some it would just be raising of funds for the charity in question. If so then yes, you wouldn’t have a problem if a multi-national corporation bought every item of clothing donated and fed them all into a big mincer and turned them into roof insulation. What happens to the clothes is immaterial, just that the charity gets its moolah first.
If on the other hand you consider that a decent secondary purpose (maybe even rivalling the money raising one) is that people with not much money can find decent quality clothes at cheap prices, then what happens after the monetary transaction DOES matter. If clothes are being bought and immediately resold at higher prices then they won’t be going to those at the lower end of society – those people will be being priced out. Many people might consider that not acceptable, especially the donors. They might consider that they are donating to two ‘good causes’ – the charity itself AND the person who gets to have a nice thing for a cheap price. They might not appreciate a third party trying to make a quick buck on the back of their donation, and at the expense of the potential impoverished buyer.
I’m not saying I necessarily agree with the latter argument, but I do have some sympathy for those who would make it. I don’t think its as morally clear cut as you make it out to be.
What @Jim said. People have a perfect right to direct their charitable donations where ever they want, and if their goal is to provide people poorer with nice clothes at a lower price rather than having them skimmed off for a profit by some enterprising “dumpster diver” equivalent in a charity shop, then this seems a perfectly reasonable strategy to me.
As long as it isn’t Oxfam. Nobody should be giving anything to those bastards.
There is a work-around.
A local thrift shop near me has people knowledgeable about clothing doing their pricing. When designer clothes come in, they price them high – high enough to capture the excess profit that the resellers seek.
And they actually sell them quickly at those higher prices, as more and more less-poor people shop for nice clothes in the bargains.
So the shop captures the profit inherent in selling luxury items that were donated. Win/win.
Read ‘Secondhand’, by Adam Minter. The trade in second-hand clothes is about 46x more-sophisticated than most people realize, and I very-much doubt that very many people are making very much money by the process described. Most-likely, it’s being operated by staff or volunteers at the charity skimming the donations, a real problem that all the big operators and especially Goodwill try mightily to prevent but cannot eliminate entirely.
llater,
llamas
I recreationally thrift shop. Some primeval “thrill of the hunt” impulse?
I also buy used clothing online. When I find that something is really comfortable or useful or gets compliments, I usually try to replace it with the same before it wears out.
At one huge US thrift store I was browsing the books on a day when the books were all discounted to $1. I could see a man moving quickly down the row of shelves, scanning each level with his eyes and pulling out several on each shelf to check with a barcode reader on his phone, then either putting them in his trolley or back on the shelf. I stepped back to allow him to browse the shelf in front of me, and it took mere seconds for him to determine there was nothing of interest to him and get out of my way.
In reflecting on my lack of criticism on this dude exploiting these donated items for his own commercial gain, some of my thoughts were:
• When I’m looking for a specific book, I can often find it cheaply because people like him have moved it from a thrift-store shelf to the online market.
• The thrift store does dollar-book days because they get too many and having dead unmoving stock decreases sales. It’s also a waste problem for them.
• If you look at the reports of charities running thrift-stores, they don’t tout “dressing poor people” except for programs that give clothing to people for free. They insted tout that sales from their thrift stores are
• funding their good works
• providing needed job-training to hard-to-employ people
• reducing the amount of waste generated in a consumerist economy.
The people I know who have worked in thrift stores say that the longer anything is in the store the more likely it is to be damaged and need to be thrown away. They consider any sale a good sale, even if they know it is to a reseller. They just hate rude and inconsiderate people, and donors of damaged, dirty, or worn-out items.
If you think that, then there is no reason to object to resellers profiting from charity shops. People in need of decent second hand clothes do not need second hand designer labels. ‘Spivs’ won’t target the same brands as poor shoppers. And, as Bobby notes, charity shops generally realise that a ‘designer’ t-shirt will fetch more and price it accordingly.
In any case, the supply of clothes to charity shops outweighs demand, which is why they are so strict about donations.
My thought is just why can’t people just mind their own business? Is re-selling charity shop bought clothes illegal? No.
Are these people doing any actual harm? Debatable but why do you think that it is your problem either way? I would have thought that it is in the best interests of the shop to keep stuff moving. They price their goods with that in mind. If someone can seek out customers who are willing to pay more, I would say good luck to them.
Sorry to get all Tim Worstall on you, but price is a consequence of scarcity and the second hand clothing is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. If the shop applied that thinking correctly there would be less profit for any reseller and the shop could maximise its returns.
“My thought is just why can’t people just mind their own business? Is re-selling charity shop bought clothes illegal? No.”
You could equally say if the donors want to remove the labels to deter resellers, then thats their business too, and none of yours to criticise.
Yes, but all that I am doing is passing comment, I’m not taking any action that would affect the outcomes in any way.
Is it possible that the “spiv” buying at charity shops and re-selling for a profit is out of work, down on their uppers, and making a few bob to buy food for their hungry family?
As I suspect Tim Worstall would agree, market segmentation is a real thing. The reseller is providing a useful service to the charity shop by targeting a segment less likely to wander into a charity shop. Indeed, I actually had this conversation with the quite savvy manager of the Red Cross charity shop on Old Church Street in Chelsea some years ago. They price designer goods to hit a sweet spot as they receive a remarkable selection of posh gear donations due to their location. They in effect allow young local aspirational return customers (her term) looking to score a high value item (like a Rick Owens blouse) to fight it out with prowling resellers. These items sell fast, making the label very useful to the shop.
There is, in Britain, a bizarre hated of “trade” – of people making a profit. It was associated with snobbery in the aristocracy in the late 19th century, but it is now general – indeed people lower down the social scale seem to sneer at trading far more than any aristocrat I have ever met does, indeed all the members of the Gentry and Aristocracy I have met seem very level headed, sensible and decent – and, although I am very poor, I have never experienced any snobbery from them against me.
I do not really understand this hatred of trade – and it is very harmful.
The simple answer is to donate “label” items to a store in an affluent area where the staff will be more likely to recognize their value.
THIS!!
@Perry de Havilland (Prague)
I don’t doubt what you say may well maximize the income of the shop but in a charitable situation, for the giver anyway, that is not necessarily their goal. It may be, but it also may be that their donation is to provide clothing for people who can’t afford it, and the expensive stuff is all they have. They may well find the idea of others profiting from their charity quite distasteful (even the shop profiting, since they expect a charity to be non profit), and so have a perfect right to make adjustments to optimize for THEIR optimal outcome.
Of course they also might just want to get rid of old clothes and hope that it “does some good”. But it seems to me that they are perfectly within their rights stipulating how their charity is used, and the removal of labels seems a good and simple lever of control to achieve that end.
Let’s say I want to donate to the local animal shelter, but I secretly hate cats. I can chose to give dog food to the shelter to achieve my goal without having to support those fuzzy, feral felines. It seems to me to be quite similar to the case Natalie referred to in the OP.
FWIW, I actually really like cats.
Fraser Orr: Just for clarity, my local thrift shop takes in donations of saleable stuff, gets the highest return it can get, and the resulting “profit” goes directly to the local food shelf. That seems to be the norm for such shops around here.