Second-Hand Surge: The Thrifting Craze Prices Out Those in Need
*Article from Lexington Line Spring/Summer 2024 Issue, pages 60-62
Check out the full issue here
Do you know who you’re donating to? Because chances are, that cute cashmere sweater you dropped off at Goodwill last week just sold on Depop for a cool $200.
“We know some customers check for brands that are worth money,” says Upper East Side Goodwill employee J.M. “Sometimes we see a teen come in […] they have money to spend and they’ll leave with large bags of merchandise.”
This new-age cultural boom of thrifting-for-sport, epitomized by TikTok “thrift hauls,” has stolen the experience of shopping quality secondhand for those that rely on it.
J.M. mentions she has heard of cyber consignment shops such as Depop, Poshmark, and Grailed, but hadn’t considered that her customers may be reverse-Robin Hood-ing: buying out the Goodwill to sell those pieces online for multiples of the numbers on the price tags.
Last year, an article in Yahoo! Finance claimed Goodwill is “becoming more expensive than Walmart and Target,” J.M. claims that economic inflation and simple demand are the prime culprits.
“Everything is more expensive now,” she says. “I think we have good prices here, but they could go up. When there are more customers, the company can raise the prices.”
In the words of Macklemore, that’s $50 for a t-shirt; only now, this line applies to the very shops he praised for combating exorbitant retail prices.
Affordable price tags on quality pre-worn clothing are declining rapidly in big-name secondhand attributed partially to the substantial cultural influence of thrift hauls.
According to a report from ThredUp, Gen-Z and Millennials made up 40% of secondhand shoppers in 2021, a percentage that is sure to increase due to the rise of thrift hauls in tandem with the perpetual growth of social media.
Moreover, an interview-heavy LinkedIn article suggests that young adults are interested in buying used goods with the intention of shopping green.
With this shift in Gen-Z’s attention towards clothing sustainability and keeping apparel out of landfills, kids are popping thrifted tags like there’s no tomorrow.
Last November, TikTok user @vpettorelli posted a four-minute-long video to her page, presenting a hoard of pieces she had picked up at a secondhand store.
The footage was captioned “my huge thrift haul” and depicted dozens of garments: a full wardrobe accumulated in a singular shopping trip.
She adds that before you judge the magnitude of her haul, the entire store was 30% off that day, and some of the pieces will be listed for sale on Depop.
Depop, for reference, is an app in which any registered user can operate an online storefront. On Depop, anything from handmade jewelry to custom phone cases can sell like hotcakes. Think if eBay was created by and for Gen-Z consumers.
Many joke that Depop sellers are notorious for up-selling on hand-me-downs or tattered clothing, with one Reddit user noting, “The prices start building up especially if it’s something that’s trending. Some sellers add even more like double the price because they don’t know how old it is or if it’s worth more than what’s liked […] they figure they’ll just bump it up to be and see what happens.”
While some internauts consider this an unethical hobby, Spring’s thoughtful stance on resellers stirs up a fair point.
“It annoys me, but the people that are doing that probably aren’t rich or getting rich,” Spring says. “With that stuff, I think the only way to address it is to put the responsibility on the donator.”
Spring believes that giving your unwanted merchandise to true charity shops is a step you can take to prevent their donations from ending up on a resale site rather than with a person in need.
“Maybe the next level of that is to make sure that you’re donating to a place like Mary’s Place, which supports battered women,” he adds. “Or somewhere where you know that those things are being distributed in a way that is less for profit or [company] growth, and more for a charitable cause.”
And conversely, while the overconsumption aspect of thrifting-to-consign may be considered negative, the resale industry (particularly online) is creating jobs for go-getters interested in entrepreneurship.
For Fordham University student and Depop shop owner Zoe Silva, a thrift trip insinuates strenuously flipping through racks of donated “trash” to discover hidden treasure. She curates high-quality or vintage goods to keep for herself or list on her storefront.
Silva deems her resale business a “side hustle”; college students are constantly searching for new ways to generate income, and Depop has proved fruitful, with a plethora of ways for users to advertise their shops and inventory on social media.
“Well, I don’t go in there thinking I’m gonna spend $300. I usually buy like seven things, then I’ll go and sell a couple of those,” she says.
Silva claims she’s not a die-hard reseller—some of her peers are capable of “clearing out” a Salvation Army.
Further validating thrifting as a fruitful side hustle, a response to a prompt seeking opinions on the ethics of reselling thrifted clothes to make a living by u/LillyWhiteArt on Reddit offers a unique perspective.
Similarly, u/Strawberrynymphet shared that they have severe anxiety and Depop is the only job they’ve been able to hold down “without having constant mental breakdowns.”
Gen-Z is addicted to thrift hauls, yet they condemn clothing overproduction. Only time will tell when they, and the secondhand stores they frequent, will find the sweet spot in this wild, wild West of making sustainability sustainable again.