The State of the Thrift

Summer is my peak thrift adventure season, so it’s a good time for a check-in about the State of The Thrift. What’s new, what am I seeing, what’s happening? Well, a few things; let’s unpack.

By now, I assume everyone knows that the parent company of Value Village (Savers in the US) is the Walmart conglomerate. What you may not have heard is that the Savers Value Village company, as it was recently renamed, issued its own IPO and is now trading on the stock market. And doing well, it seems. What this means for thrifters remains to be seen. The linked Globe & Mail article talks about plans to expand “boutique” stores in Canada, which is a concept I hate. Goodwill already jumped on that idea years ago, and their execution has been abysmal; thrift stores simply don’t have the knowledge and quality control to offer a well-curated secondhand shopping experience. They’re thrift stores, not consignment stores, and should stay in their lane.

As far as impact of the IPO on VV prices, who knows? I always assumed that, even before going public, the profit motive was strong at VV because of its connection to Walmart. It’s probably even stronger now because they have their own shareholders to please. I did notice a general price increase trend at VV a few years ago, but prices have actually been coming down (in my experience here) in the last year or so. Contrast that to Goodwill, which seems to be aiming to take their prices to the moon. That’s not to say that VV doesn’t thrift grift – i.e. arbitrarily jack up prices on some more “desirable” items – too, but it’s not as egregious as Goodwill, in my experience.

I think it comes down to this: thrift stores have to find the right balance between getting as much money on each item as they can, and moving a lot of inventory quickly (because so much stuff gets donated all the time and there is only so much space in a store). Price too high, and things sit too long. Price too low, and your profit margins shrink.

My sense – and this is just my gut – is that VV tends to favour volume of sales over price margins a little bit more than Goodwill. I find this especially true for housewares. Books, on the other hand, are an infinitely better deal at Goodwill currently; they are flat-priced at $2 a book, whereas VV prices books individually and often for more than they sold at retail (you can still see the original stickers sometimes which annoys me so much). Clothing-wise, 6-7 years ago, Goodwill offered much better deals than VV; now, they are generally on par except when it comes to Goodwill’s list of “premium brands” that are priced individually and way too high without regard for actual condition, quality or style. It’s also worth noting that, in Edmonton, Goodwill’s prices now start at $7 per item (tank tops, regardless of brand) and go up from there. At VV, it’s possible to find clothing items as low as $3-4.

So, yes, it will be interesting to see what happens with thrift prices over the next year or so. Increasing prices have been a trend across North America, if thrifting sub-Reddits are any indication. I am hoping this trend starts to reverse (or at least stabilize), particularly given what I am also seeing as far as the quality of inventory. Let’s talk about that next.

2018-2020 was peak Thrift Times in Edmonton. The amount of high end designer clothing you could find on a regular basis was INSANE. All of my best thrift scores are from that era. Nowadays, designer stuff is vanishingly rare and what can be found is generally a tier or two down from premium. Think Nordstrom Rack, not Neiman Marcus. Moving down the scale, even nicer mall brands in good condition – Anthro, Aritzia, J. Crew, etc. – are getting rarer. Zara and H&M are now some of the “best” trendy pieces to be found on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Shein is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Some of this can be attributed to what I call the Poshmark Effect – more people are selling their nicer pieces rather than donating – and some of it just reflects the clothing retail market. Shein and its ilk are suffocating the fashion industry (not to mention the environment).

Right now, the best bang for your buck, IMO, is the vintage 90s and early 2000s stuff that can still be found from time to time, assuming that suits your aesthetic. The quality is phenomenal when compared to current day items pretty much across the brand spectrum – and I am talking about non-fancy stuff like Gap, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, and so on. But this won’t last. I think we are seeing the last of these vintage remnants. In a few more years, people will have run out of 90s clothing to donate. The problem is that the quality of clothing started to go down beginning in the late 2000s, so what will get donated will be lower and lower quality as time goes on … until thrift stores will be nothing but racks of Shein.

This applies to housewares too, by the way. Lots of boomers are currently downsizing, so there is a steady influx of mid-century modern stuff making its way to thrift stores. Furniture is harder to come by, mostly because I think that gets sold on Facebook Marketplace or snapped up at estate sales (always worth checking!). But, again, as time goes on, I think we will see a trend of mass produced, cheap goods replacing the quality of yore.

Am I being too pessimistic? Maybe. But my advice right now is: get out and thrift while you can.

Aja Barber recently made a post on Instagram where she talked about how luxury fashion is more sustainable simply because people treat their expensive purchases differently than cheap ones; they buy less, wear more and take better care of the “nice stuff”. Yes, this is inherently classist. But the point is that anything can be more sustainable if you treat it like it. Decent quality can be found at various price points (including fast fashion brands like H&M) but you need to be able to recognize it and, once acquired, to know how to take care of it so it lasts.

You might think that thrifting contributes to an everything-is-disposable mindset, but in my experience that hasn’t been the case. I appreciate the clothes I thrift because it takes more effort to find them than walking into a retail store and picking something off the rack. In a way, each item is a “one off”. Even though I spend comparatively little money on each piece, I take a lot of care to maintain them in good shape so that, if and when they no longer serve me, I can donate them back knowing that they can be used again. My goal is to donate things in a condition where I would not be embarrassed to offer them to a friend. I think people who treat thrift stores like a garbage dump tend to be people who don’t actually thrift themselves, and that’s a shame.

And that’s my pitch for why thrifting is a great way to increase the sustainability of your closet: it’s not only a form of recycling, but it can encourage an attitude shift that also contributes to circularity. Win, win. So, what are you waiting for? Thrift, baby, thrift!