Charity Shops?

beautybargainer

Hi all,

I am soon to be opening a charity shop in Lincolnshire.

There has been quite a debate recently about charity shop prices and I want to make sure our prices are fair. I would love to know peoples opinions on prices for things like shirts, dresses, jumpers, trousers and coats.

Thank you all.

xx

Flyonthewall

I don't know what prices are like around there, but why not go around local charity shops, take note of the prices and price yours similar?

What is considered fair will depend on who is buying it. One person may love a top, but not be willing to pay more than £3 for it from a charity shop. Another may love the same top and be willing to pay £8 because they don't care about where they're buying it, they're basing the value on the item itself and how much they like it. The same person may not be willing to pay more than £5 for another top they don't like as much. Then you may get someone inbetween who's willing to pay £5 at most because although they like the item they may think such an item isn't worth more than £5.

When I worked at a charity shop we had prices for general clothing items and then a list of prices for designer clothing which varied.

Rosemary7391

Make sure that any plain t shirts etc are actually cheaper than they are new - some of the supermarket ones are surprisingly cheap, especially if they're on offer!

This_Year

Depends where in Lincolnshire

Joking apart, as pp says, visit a few in your chosen location and get an idea of pricing.

One near-ish us looks like an upmarket boutique/antique shop but their prices are amazingly low.

I do like a good charity shop day!

knightstyle

One example of poor pricing is books. One charity shop charges £1 for 3 paperbacks and a few doors away they are £1.60 each!
Guess where I buy!

StumpyPumpy

I would suggest that on the whole you look at income per square foot rather than trying to maximise the income from an individual item no matter how long it takes and be prepared to reduce goods that don't shift quickly.

To explain by an idealised example: imagine you have a coat on a rail that everyone agrees is worth £20 to the right buyer. If that buyer turns up straight away you are quids in. However, if that buyer turns up after 2 months, you've had a coat sized part of a rail earning £10 a month. If the coat had been reduced to, say, £10 after a week and then sold straight away you would be able to fill the space with something else worth £20 which also sells at £10 after being reduced a week later and so on. That way your rail space will earn you £40 a month. Plus a higher turnover keeps your shop interesting so regulars will turn up and spend more frequently increasing turnover even more.

As a real world example: A shop by me had a nice dresser at £250 in pride of place in their window display for over 6 months. They got a new manager who reduced it in stages and after a week it sold for £50. A large portion of their window display only earned £50 in 6 months simply because the previous manager was too obstinate to lower the price. (In truth it probably was worth £250 but it was such a niche item that the chances of selling it in a village high street at that price was next to zero).

Be aware that while visiting other charity shops in the area can give you some idea on price, all it really tells you is the price of things they haven't actually sold yet and may never do so. This is a common tactic of Daily Mail articles such as the near legendary "Princess Di Beanie Baby" article that lead readers to believe that just because someone had listed an item on eBay for a large sum of money, that was how much it was worth (I don't believe they ever sold it for any amount btw) It is also good sense to try to work out the general wealth of your area. Whilst a Primark T-shirt won't sell anywhere for £10 neither will an Armani T-shirt if all the customers can afford is £1 for the Primark one.

SP

forgotmyname

Some are super rip offs. Selling books for £2.50 when the books had an ASDA label on saying 3 for £5?

George clothing selling for more than they sold at ASDA when new?

If your items sell then they were priced correctly or too cheap, if they dont sell then your overpriced.

So many variables. More affluent areas can be a bargain hunters paradise, but other shops know people in that area have money and will pay over the odds for some stuff.

I miss proper old fashioned 2nd hand shops. Saturday morning used to be a visit on the way to the butchers and greengrocers etc.

All gone now.

theoretica

Where is the stuff you are selling going to come from and how much of it can you get? No point selling everything very fast and then sitting with empty shelves or the dross people don't want at any price.

The charity shops I like best are the ones with a range of prices - 50p clothes for people who just want something cheap, but nicer stuff priced accordingly, so it stays on the rail after the first ebay reseller looks through the shop. While it is more effort, I do admire the shops with a transparent system of discounts (I have seen this done with coloured tickets) - full price for the first month or week, then 75%, 50%, 25%, 50p so if you quite like something but not at that price it brings you back to see if it is still there, and if you just want a cheap shirt there will be something. This also works if you aren't sure what something will fetch.

Contains_Mild_Peril

As others have said, a lot depends on which other charity shops are in the area and what they charge, and also to some extent on how cheaply new goods are available locally (e.g. if there's a Poundland nearby, there's no point trying to charge £1 secondhand for the things they sell, but if there's no £1 shop in the town you might be able to get £1 for the same items). Another consideration is what happens to unsold items? Are there recycling companies in your area which will buy leftovers/unsalable stuff in bulk? This might influence how much and how soon you want to reduce prices of things that don't sell quickly, which of course is also likely to depend on what sort of volume of donations you get relative to the size of the shop.
In my town (Dumfries in Scotland) I usually expect to pay about £3 each for ordinary tops, trousers etc from charity shops (less for cheap T-shirts etc, more for really posh or brand new stuff) though I'm a big fan of the sale rails with clothes at half price or £1 each. Paperback books are about 50p-£1 each in most shops, though the local Oxfam shop which charges £1.99 for most of them specialises in books so stocks a wider range and is pickier about condition etc (common books which don't meet their standards are sold in bulk to a company which resells some and recycles what they can't sell). LPs and CDs are usually 50p-£1 each in charity shops round here, and music cassettes about 4 for £1 in shops which still them.
Our local Cancer Research shop covers a very wide price range, from 50p for cheap bric-a-brac up to (occasionally) £150 for posh coats (they're in a prime location with big display windows, which probably helps), with ordinary coats and jackets usually about £5-12.
The Salvation Army gives a £2 voucher if you bring one of their big 99p bags full of donations, and you get the bag back. This is a good way to encourage donations, though if you're the only charity shop in town you won't really need to compete for them. They also have a loyalty card which you can get stamped every time you spend £5, and when you have 10 (I think... might be 12) stamps it's worth £5 in the shop.
I've generally found independent charity shops tend to be cheaper than the big chains.

hollydays

Train your staff to look at what the clothing is made from.
If it's woolly, pure new wool, tweed , virgin wool, merino wool and cashmere usually indicate a higher quality item.
Same can go for silk, and leather as in bags- ( find an exposed seam and look to see if it's got a vinyl backing )
Even if the staff don't all recognise designer brands, they can look for the textile content and price higher ( much higher)
To check on Ebay, don't forget to look at what the item SOLD for, not what it's listed at, and to select new or used in the search

FatVonD

Not specifically a pricing issue but I can't be bothered to look at clothes where the sizes are all mixed up, I'd rather not see something I like then find out it doesn't fit.

Re the prices of books, paperbacks seem to be £1.50 where I live. I wouldn't pay any more than that for them.