Thrift stores thrive in downturn
Brenda Maki, right, hunts for buys with her mother, Donna, at the Friends of the Shelter Thrift Shop in Ponderay (Photo by DAVID GUNTER)
SANDPOINT — She pulled the dress off the rack and turned it this way and that before draping it in front of her to see if it might be a good fit. Then she looked at the tag and tossed the garment over her arm. Sold.
A year ago, this same customer might have been scouting out the pricier corners of an upmarket retailer looking for labels with a high-end cache. This year, she is scouring the thrift stores in search of good deals.
"People who were designer shoppers at department stores are now going to the thrift shops," said Colleen Obaiter-Ross, a counselor at Lake Pend Oreille High School who works with 2nds Anyone? — a Sandpoint thrift store run as a cooperative effort between LPOHS students and volunteers from the Sandpoint Senior Center. "They aren't embarrassed about it anymore. It's in vogue."
"It's getting very trendy," agreed Carolyn Marshall, a volunteer at the Bizarre Bazaar shop in Ponderay, a business operated as the primary fundraising vehicle for the Community Assistance League. Quick to point out that the store is "a cut above a thrift store," Marshall describes it as "upscale resale." Still, the prices are dramatically lower than full retail, often on items that fetched a tidy sum when they first were sold.
For that reason, even shoppers at higher income levels have seen the wisdom in saving a buck by turning to gently used merchandise at a discount.
"The economy is not killing us — we're doing well," Marshall said. "Why not go someplace and buy a dress for $10 that came from Saks Fifth Avenue?"
Business is also thriving at the new Friends of the Shelter Thrift Shop location, adjacent to the Panhandle Animal Shelter in Ponderay. Board member and enterprise chair Elizabeth Willey credits a modern setting and better visibility on a retail corridor for part of the sales increase, but believes the upsurge in bargain hunters is driving most of the business growth.
"We're doing almost double what we were doing in our old location," she said. "And we're definitely seeing a lot of new faces. We now have people from every walk of life and every age group. I'd say that the newer people are also better off — they probably have a larger income."
One reason, apart from economic necessity, that this new breed of customer has discovered thrift store shopping is the industry's recent makeover. Donations might still come in the back door in bundles and boxes, according to Goodwill Industries' corporate communications specialist Diane Galloway, but the merchandise now meets the public on a sales floor that looks pretty much like any other retailer.
"Most of the new folks we're seeing had not been to
a modern thrift store and their image is of the old, musty dusty environment," Galloway said. "The most common comment we hear is, ‘I had no idea.'"
Traffic at Goodwill stores has been on the rise, she added, especially in the smaller communities the organization serves. A poll of store managers revealed that much of the increase is coming from shoppers who came in for the first time, Galloway said.
The recent northerly migration of Goodwill and Friends of the Shelter, however, might have had a negative impact on traffic at Sanctuary Seconds on Lake Street. That shop, which raises money for the Lifetime Friends Animal Sanctuary, used to benefit from customers who made a circuit of Sandpoint thrift stores.
"It's hard to say how much our business was affected when the two major thrift shops moved to Ponderay, but it is down," said Jill White, who volunteers at the store. Donations have dropped, as well, and White said Sanctuary Seconds would welcome an influx of items or volunteers to help cover food and medical costs for the 200 cats that are cared for with funds raised from merchandise sales.
Does the advent of "thrift store chic" among well-heeled new customers mean that lower income buyers might get crowded out of a service they need? Not at this point, according to spokespeople for the shops in and around Sandpoint, who say that they remain well aware of the need to keep things affordable for a broad base of shoppers.
What does worry some organizations is the prospect that a continued economic downturn could mean former donors will be less inclined to buy new clothes, sporting goods, household items and toys and then route the old items to thrift shops.
"That has been our biggest concern," said Goodwill's Galloway. "That's our lifeblood and if we don't have good quality donations, we have nothing to sell.
"In more prosperous times, it was common to get goods with the tags still attached or new merchandise still in the box," she added. "We don't see that as much right now."
Overall, though, the flow of donations continues to stock the racks of local thrift stores as newcomers fuel an upward sales curve. And as a teetering world economy keeps even the affluent on edge, great deals are suddenly a fashion statement.
"It doesn't look like things are going to get better any time soon and it turns out that's good for thrift stores," Obaiter-Ross said. "This is probably one of the few businesses that's actually growing in a tough economy."