This situation is getting worse and worse. Another new charidee shop has opened in our town. Barnardos this time. Beautifully done out shop, all proper professionally done with a posh frontage and stylish lighting. It's outdone the newly opened Oxfam, with its window displays of £300 sofas etc. Prices are SKY HIGH. Silly prices. Like £10 for a shirt. Second hand and used. Often washed out. It's cheaper in the normal shops in the sales. Ciff says the women's stuff is even worse. These places used to be ramshackle jumble sale type amateur affairs with bargains galore. A sort of bring and buy for the community and a great resource for poor people. Most especially for things like kids' clothes and shoes and school uniforms etc. Now it's been taken. We know for sure (and confirmed by a friend who volunteered at one for a while), that the people who work there help themselves to the best stuff and put the cráp out for sale. We know for sure that they flog the stuff on ebay and at boot fairs. We know that they dodge their business rates and don't pay their staff and they get their stock for free, so it's pure profit. We know how much the charidee CEOs are paid. They're so rich and rolling in stuff that they arrogantly post notices on their door listing the very few hours when they'll deign to accept stuff. Won't have anything electrical at all. Won't have anything that isn't the very best and absolutely mint. Ciff says the best way to tackle this problem is through boycott, picketing and possible arson attacks. However I reckon the local Council ought to rent a big warehouse on one of the industrial estates and run their own bring and buy. 50p an item. Enough to cover their costs. It's needed now in these hard financial times. It's urgent. The charidee buccaneers can either reduce their prices to compete, like capitalism demands, or go out of business and think up some other way to scam people.
I have a friend who works for a major charity and overseas a number of shops. She admits they have sales targets and put pressure on their full time paid shop managers to achieve them. Unfortunately many of the shop managers are happy to take the lower pay of charity shops because they really aren't very good at retail management and simply can't get work in other retail outlets. My friend admits that all but one of her charity shops has lost sales in recent years and most are barely breaking even. The problem, imho, is the top dogs in the charity "industry" are trying to run the charity retail businesses like other businesses that they have been involved in. What I think they need to do is concentrate on turnover. As you say, their stock is "free" so it's better to (as Tesco founder Jack Cohen famously said) "stack it high and sell it low" not try and maximize "profit per unit".
I'm going to write to the council I think. Maybe it's an outlandish idea and the charidees would certainly bleat about it, but the charity is needed at home. I'm sure the richie residents would be more than happy to know their cast offs are going to us less well off at very reduced prices, rather than being sold expensively to fund CEO salaries, street chuggers and the never ending avalanche of TV advert begging appeals.
To an extent I can’t blame them for selling stuff at top dollar. I know someone who owns a ‘Vintage clothing brand’ which is essentially her raiding charity shops for things they don’t know are valuable, then selling them on Instagram and Vinted for 10x the price to unsuspecting mugs. Better for the shop to do it than those parasites.
Independents and small charities is where it's at. The rest these days are businesses which donate a percentage of their proffits. There are of course some exceptions. So I would suggest doing your research if your primary purpose is the donation, not just getting cheap stuff. This is a decent article: https://www.theweek.co.uk/fact-check/98581/fact-check-how-do-charities-spend-your-money
That is another thing that annoys me. Charities "competing" with each other and spending a small fortune on marketing campaigns, enriching marketing and media companies along the way. They would argue that they are generating more income than the cost of the marketing. But are these new charitable donations or are they donations that would have just been made to a different charity or cause? Personally, I think "generating income" costs should be capped to prevent this "competition".
I think it is less of an "issue" these days as charities tend to filter their stock before it's put on sale. I know for instance the "World of Books", the second hand online book business, works with several charities to identify valuable books before they are put on sale. Tbh though I think charities would do best to just concentrate on turnover and not worry too much if people are getting bargains or "experts" are identifying rare and valuable items and making a profit from them. At the end of the day it's free stock for the charity so anything they make from it is profit.
Many moons ago I was acting manager of the Thresher's Wine Shop (not and Offie) in the small picturesque fishing village I'm from. It was a boiling hot summer ('94?-'95?) and during the day I got to know the regular customers from some of the surrounding shops (the chippie, butchers, greengrocers, Blue Arrow temp agency and a Banardo charity shop). I mentioned that I would do tasting sessions of summer drinks (something I had the discretion to do and I wanted to get inside the knickers of the babes ingratiate myself with Blue Arrow (if I needed their services). Various cold wines and stuff were offered on the slow period of the week (Thursday/Friday at 3pm) which actually generated sales. Small talk often centred on business notably the extremely high rents on Shenley Road (because of the footfall). One day talk turned to the incredibly hot weather and how that was affecting takings. The manager of Barnado's (mum of an old schoolfriend) let slip what her average takings were - there was stunned silence in the room, the other shop owners became extremely angry and stormed out. Our small tasting club ended and visits from the other shops would usually end in rants about how much money Barnado's was 'stealing' from them.
Charities are businesses and in competition with each other. They all have to maximise their revenues and profits to cover the cost of expensive tv advertising films, celeb voiceovers, and booked advertising tv slots. Afterall, we can't afford to save ALL the snow leopards, donkeys, children, cancer victims, dogs, starving, drinking-water-free African villages, forests, etc hence the rush to give our generous donations to the TV companies to beat the competion to our £10/month conscience-easer. Sad Really.
How can Barbados ‘steal’ money (customers) from a butchers, a chippie, a greengrocers and a temp agency?
I've given up giving things to charity shops - the staff are always so bloody rude and ungrateful, I prefer to take stuff to the council dump and give it to the blokes who work there and sell anything half decent themselves for beer and fag money
Keech in Cwood used to be great for me getting kids books. I'd buy a load, for under a fiver, they'd read them and then I'd donate them again. Nowadays they're a couple of quid each so I'm not doing that.
