National Thrift Store Day is celebrated on August 17 in the United States, with the aim of raising public awareness about the work of the charities that finance these establishments.
Because the theoretical objective is to help the most vulnerable communities and redistribute products that would otherwise end up in a container or in one of the gigantic landfills spread around the world that digest the garbage of the richest countries.
They do it too, and in industrial quantities, but American consumers have, let's say, the first purchasing option.
In addition to being supportive, the volume of this market has become a business
per se
: there is some charity, yes, but there is also a purely commercial nature.
Motivated by price, to give the environment a break or to overcome the bad conscience about working conditions in Asian factories, the clientele is consolidating: the world second-hand market is expected to double in the next three years and reach $350 billion in 2027, according to a 2023 report from the
online
resale website ThredUp.
Although there are no total figures of what the second-hand market represents in the US, Future Market Insights points to a potential growth of 15% in the next decade in clothing alone, with a business volume of 283 million by 2032. As the headquarters of the largest textile market in the world, the US is also the main exporter of used clothing.
But in second-hand stores there are not only rags.
The range of products is as wide as the imagination: furniture, household and office furnishings, tableware, toys, books and records... even a collection of
vintage
wedding dresses , like the one stored in a curious store in Jersey City, in the twin state of New York.
According to the official business registry for 2021, there were then 18,640 used goods stores, with a total of 189,892 workers, in the country.
Small letter
Other businesses are more informal.
Real estate agencies, for example, notify their new clients of the liquidation of furniture for others in the process of moving (without warning about the fine print of shipping costs, which has increased by 20% since the pandemic and can multiply the price by three). paid for an old but well-preserved sofa).
True to its spirit of solidarity, one of the large chains in New York, Housing Works, allocates most of its profits to supporting homeless HIV-positive people.
Depending on the neighborhoods, the offering in their shop windows ranges from cheap and bargain to great bargain.
In the establishment on the very bourgeois Upper East Side, several pairs of Chanel shoes, two Hermès bags and luxurious mahogany furniture stood out this week, as well as a lacquered Japanese sideboard, all in perfect condition.
“In New York there is a lot of money.
And people who have it quickly get bored of what they buy because they have everything, they don't value anything.
That's why we receive luxury brand clothes and shoes, paintings and furniture that would cost several thousand dollars in other stores, like the Japanese sideboard," explains the manager, Jeremy.
Individuals who get rid of things can receive a small compensation, always negotiable, or donate them outright.
Far from appearing poor, the regulars of Goodwill, an NGO that is financed by its chain of used clothing stores, brag about their purchases on social networks.
The posturing about bargains does not give up, although it is not even comparable to that of an even cheaper phenomenon: the so-called
stooping
, which means something like bending over more than 45º to pick up something from the ground, and which in New York describes the discovery of some wonder left on the sidewalk by its former owners: sofas, beds, tables, chairs, sideboards, small appliances in use, even the occasional piano — then transported by hand along the street, or the subway — that are offered free to pedestrians .
The phenomenon is so popular that there are several accounts on social networks dedicated to alerting about the findings.
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