I love a second-hand market app. Luckily for me, they’re all over the place now. What began as carboot sales and charity shop rails has evolved into a digital marketplace worth billions, allowing anyone to turn a wardrobe clear-out into a side hustle.
The industry, driven by sites like Depop, Vinted, and Facebook Marketplace, is simple to navigate, relatively low risk for sellers, and far removed from the sometimes intimidating polish of traditional resale spaces. It’s easy to understand their appeal. But when selling your unwanted clothes becomes this accessible, what does that mean for charity shops that rely on these same items as donations?
I’ve been an avid user of resale apps for years. I’d spend hours scrolling through Depop: in English lessons, at the gym, two hours after I was meant to be asleep. Later, I graduated to Vestiaire Collective as my taste became more expensive (not that my bank account has graduated with me). Unless I’m hunting for something painfully specific, I tend to browse whichever platform is easiest and cheapest at the time, and my most notable - and conveniently most recent - find is a Stella McCartney Falabella bag that was severely undervalued by the seller.
For shoppers like me, resale platforms have meant a more sustainable wardrobe without the same strain on my bank account. For charity shops, however, the effects are more layered.
“It’s definitely had a huge impact on us,” Elena tells me, talking about the charity shop she works for in Brighton.
Furniture appears to have felt the shift particularly sharply. With the rise of local resale platforms like Facebook Marketplace, many people now choose to list larger household items themselves. Sellers are able to specify ‘pick up only’, communicate directly with buyers, and haggle! As a result of this, Elena tells me that “the quality of furniture donations has massively deteriorated.”
For clothing, the shift is more subtle. Higher-value pieces are increasingly sold directly by their owners, meaning what arrives in donation bags can be more inconsistent. Alongside this, a new type of customer has become a regular presence in-store: the reseller.
You may have seen numerous video essays online about this profile of shopper known as the ‘Depop girly’. She’s young, perhaps wealthy, stylish, coming in with huge amounts of money to spend in gentrified neighbourhood shops, and can catch a lot of slack. For Elena’s shop, however, the resellers do not match this description.
“We get loads of resellers! But they’re mostly a bit older in age.” She goes on to tell me that these shoppers search for typically ‘middle-aged woman’ brands like Hobbs, Seasalt and Next. They’re dependable brands, and generally priced reasonably. Elena’s chain has even begun to adapt to them, opening specific ‘outlet-style’ shops that sell unsold or deadstock for as little as £1, and have begun attracting bulk buyers.
The bigger challenge, she explains, lies in pricing trend-led brands such as Jane Norman or Custo Barcelona - the brands that the ‘Depop girlies’ would be coveting, and whose online demand can fluctuate at the drop of a hat. To protect as much of their value as possible, the most desirable donations are redirected to higher-end branches, where “people are willing to spend a bit more for a good find”. At the same time, Elena has had to apply some strategy to her pricing: “researching pieces is at an all time high”. Her team uses Google Lens and as such has become more knowledgeable about what they’re selling to make sure they’re not undervaluing items.
The rise of second-hand selling sites hasn’t just had a negative impact on Elena’s charity shop, though. By repopularising vintage brands like Jane Norman and Custo Barcelona, younger people are using charity shops when they wouldn’t have even thought about stepping foot in one half a decade ago. As a result, Elena gets “teenagers that will spend insane amounts of money,” just for a brand name that they recognise. “Even if the items are ugly, I’ve seen them just buying and buying [them], and I know they can’t resell them because they’re not priced cheaply!” These second-hand selling sites have put more respect on these vintage brands, “to the point that you can justify their price when comparing them with something brand new from H&M or Zara.”
It’s a curious and fairly new part of the industry to navigate. Let's be real, nothing beats a mooch around a charity shop. It's impossible to replicate the feeling of finding a diamond among a considerable amount of tat, or coming across a cute set of six second-hand teacups for a humble pound.
The second-hand boom hasn’t killed the charity shop. Instead, it’s made them more competitive and strategic, and perhaps more relevant than ever. In a world where everything has a resale value, even a rummage through the rails has become part of a much bigger market place.