Would you buy nearly new goods for your baby?

belfastgirl23

I think there might be more of a market from 6mnths up - a lot of people get tiny baby clothes as presents and because they're worn so little, they're often passed on. Just a pointer if you're doing research in your local area, might be worth asking about ages of the kids.

sooz

Spendless wrote:

Hi, you asked for some feedback.

Something that has come on this board before by another member who would have liked to have bought a 2nd hand xxxxx (can't remember what:o ). She was told by the owner of a similar shop that with the £500 surestart grant there wasn't as much demand for 2nd hand stuff.

The area where you are thinking of opening will play a part though, if it's an area where a lot of people get the £500 grant, you may find the same thing, if it's an area where the residents are wealthy you may find not enough business, ideally something in between, too 'rich' to get the £500 and too 'poor' to be able to affor brand new prices

you can tell who got the £500 grant near me......in almost all cases they bought a bugaboo!!!

Spendless

There was a shop like you've described in my town. My friend used it a lot when her youngest ones were born in the mid 90s. They would also sell your stuff and give you a %.

When my eldest was born his pram was a present from my parents, and everything else had been passed on, mainly from my BILs sister, whose baby was 9 months older than mine,and with DD we had most things left over so I didn't use this shop much.


Thinking of this thread, I went past and into this shop today. It's changed hands and called a different name and no longer sells 2nd hand stuff. There were certainly cheaper items in there perhaps end of range stuff and really nice blankets etc that you don't see in places like Mothercare.

Whether this change is due to lack of demand or purely because it's a different business I don't know

Carmina_Piranha_3

we used to have a second hand shop in my town and i bought a lot from it when i had my first baby. i also bought some things out of the newspaper second hand sales section. my eldest is ten and back then there was no advice against buying the cot mattress or car seat second hand either, although mine came through family so i knew they were okay (the cot had only been slept in once or twice by a baby who didn't like it and ended up sleeping in mummy's bed with daddy kicked out into the spare room!).

with the second baby i used my sister's car seat (i knew she bought it new and it hadn't been in any accidents) but i bought a new cot mattress even though i was offered one that had had very little use (used as a spare at grandparents house and they'd only had the child to stay a handful of times).

as has been said, knowing what the advice is nowadays means acting upon it, in my case anyway. if my baby had died from cot death i could never forgive myself if the mattress had been second hand.

everything else can be second hand. i wish we still had a shop like this because the NCT sales are only 6-monthly and with ebay you can't look at things first.

Carmina_Piranha_3

it might be me spendless is thinking of - the shop in my town stopped selling second hand things because there just wasn't a market for them. the mention of the surestart grant was the shopkeepers words, not mine. although £500 seems a huge amount to me i can see that it wouldn't buy everything new unless you were budget buying and didn't want a nursery with matching border and quilt etc.

BusyLizzie_3

I had twins and a singleton in the space of 2 years and bought almost everything second hand, for both financial and recycling reasons! I used washable nappies which I bought new for my twins (had a grant from the local council), although if I was doing it again now would have no hesitation in buying them second hand if they were in good condition. I did buy new car seats and new cot mattresses. Clothes have come from friends, NCT sales, twinsclub sales and ebay mostly. I know relatively few people who've been able to claim the surestart grant, and quite a few who have applied for it and been turned down because their income was slightly too high.

I guess the nature of this website means that most people on here won't be averse to buying second-hand baby items, so I wonder if the feedback you're getting is biased in that direction. Have you done some research on other more general parenting sites as well?

Good luck with the new venture!

Carmina_Piranha_3

one thing - the second hand shop we had hardly ever sold clothes and she said it was a bit of a disaster - people don't want to pay more than charity shop prices but the sellers want something back. if you are selling a swing you can expect at least a quarter of the price back but with clothes you wouldn't get anywhere near that amount back.

unless you wanted to only sell certain brands that hold their value i suppose.

Jet

I've had quite a bit of second hand stuff for my son. Most of his clothes are from his cousins and lot's of his Xmas and birthday pressie's are from e-bay.

I have a friend who thought it was "disgusting" that people hand down clothes from one child to the next. She didn't think it was fair that the youngest child always had the "hand me downs". Now perhaps I can understand this thinking when the children are older, but she refused to hand down even a babygro to her youngest.

This is a woman who's on income support! :eek:

Carmina_Piranha_3

i know people who think like that, even on income support. i'd rather use second hand clothes and any money saved can pay for us to go swimming. babies don't know they are in second hand clothes, and when they are under 6 months you can't really tell anyway because they get such little wear out of them. two or three previous owners won't make the clothes look scruffy or old. i had new newborn, 0-3 and 3-6 clothes for roo (i bought some new things and had lots given to me - everyone knew i would buy second hand and wanted me to have something new for hospital!) and he went through the lot before he was 6 weeks old. he was in 6-9 month clothes at 6 weeks old so anything that had been worn had barely had a chance to get washed.

if you search ebay there are things listed that have been worn once or never because people have so much or they buy in the sales but their baby's size isn't what they expected when summer arrives etc. i take the tags off new clothes and wash everything before it goes near my baby so the unworn clothes can't be returned to the shop. whoever buys them off ebay gets a bargain!

sooz

Jet wrote:

I've had quite a bit of second hand stuff for my son. Most of his clothes are from his cousins and lot's of his Xmas and birthday pressie's are from e-bay.

I have a friend who thought it was "disgusting" that people hand down clothes from one child to the next. She didn't think it was fair that the youngest child always had the "hand me downs". Now perhaps I can understand this thinking when the children are older, but she refused to hand down even a babygro to her youngest.

This is a woman who's on income support! :eek:

i remember reading in the papers something similar. the family in question had 13 kids and were on income support, but were very very proud that each child had had totally new clothes and and a new buggy. i remember thinking "WHY?????"