s Thrifting + Reselling Ethical? | The Gentrification of Thrifting

Let's play devil's advocate today. Lately, I've seen a lot of content around the ethics of thrifting, both for individuals thrifting for themselves and resellers. Thrifting has become incredibly popular over the years, and critics argue that this popularity has led to the gentrification of thrifting. Basically, this means that it's been made inaccessible to the working class and taken over by the middle and the upper class. While thrifting is generally encouraged for environmental reasons, some people are now claiming that we should stop thrifting or stop reselling as it's hurting these low-income communities. While I think these arguments come from good hearts and real concerns, I don't think they get to the root of the issue. So I want to talk about the ethics of thrifting and reselling in this video, plus give some tips for thrifting more consciously. If you're new here, my name is Lily, and I talk about sustainability, travel, and running over at my blog ImperfectIdealist.com. My blog is way more active than this channel, so feel free to check that out. Before we dive in, I also want to say that I don't have much of a personal stake in this. I do try to thrift when I need to buy clothes, but I don't go very often, and I'm not a reseller. I feel that resellers have been mischaracterized in a lot of recent content on thrifting, so I'll be bringing one on later in this video for a mini interview segment. So please stick around to learn about the other side of reselling. So let's first start with the four main thrifting issues that have been called out recently. The first issue is the rising prices. There's no doubt that prices generally have been on the rise. If we take a look at the 2010 and 2020 Goodwill valuation guides, we'll see that Goodwill now recommends ranges instead of a flat base price. The upper end of the 2020 range is often three times as much as the 2010 base price. People blame the rising prices on the popularity of thrifting, but I think it's a lot more complicated than that. The argument is that increased demand leads to scarcity, which results in increased prices. The thing is that most thrift stores have a huge excess of clothing. Only 20% of clothes donated thrift stores is actually sold. The rest is thrown away or sold to developing countries where it puts local textile workers out of jobs. So in this case, higher demand isn't actually leading to scarcity, so the demand isn't directly causing higher prices. We have to take a step back and think about some other potential factors, like increased operating costs. We can't forget inflation, which is around 19% accumulated over 10 years. That means that the value of $10 in 2010 is about $12 now. Beyond that, thrift stores' rent has certainly gone up, and we like to hope that employees' salaries have also gone up, though corporate thrift stores have a lot of labor issues which we'll talk about later. But it's only normal that prices have increased at least a little bit. But of course some people are witnessing larger jumps that can't necessarily be explained by inflation. In that case, I think we have to look at the decisions of these stores' corporate offices. The 2020 Goodwill Valuation Guide shows, with their ranges, that Goodwill wants to get the maximum possible payment for their product. Sometimes people will even notice that Goodwill prices an item with original tags higher than the price on the tag, which is kind of outrageous. So instead of blaming individuals for thrifting, maybe we should blame corporate greed. After all, the CEO of Goodwill made $730,000 in 2018, all while paying workers with disabilities sometimes less than a dollar an hour. So overall, I don't think it's entirely clear where we should be pointing fingers, but I don't think increased demand is the biggest culprit for these higher prices. The second argument is that thrifting for fun takes away high-need items from low-income communities. I already kind of addressed this argument in the previous point, but to reiterate, there's generally a huge excess of clothing at thrift stores, so there's more than enough to go around. You might argue though that higher demand is leading to scarcity of the good stuff. Maybe all the leftover clothing is actually ratty and disgusting. But Leah Wise, a sustainability blogger and former thrift store manager, says that most of the excess items are in good condition, at least in suburban and urban stores. She says that even at her low-volume thrift store, they didn't have enough space to put out 30% of sellable items. I'll link her post below as a resource. Of course, if you're going to low-income or rural communities, they might actually have a scarcity issue. That's why it's important to be mindful of where you shop. But if you're thrifting in the suburbs or in the city, scarcity is generally not a problem. Beyond that, people from different income brackets are often looking for different things. I'm not trying to say that lower-income people can't have nice things or don't want them, but if you're thrifting out of absolute necessity versus thrifting for fun, you're probably not purchasing the same things. Those of us that thrift for fun probably like to think that we need what we buy, but did we actually need that ridiculously sequined jacket or a shirt with a cat shooting lasers out of its eyes? Probably not. The third main criticism is very valid and it gets at the culture around mainstream thrifting. All those huge thrift hauls on YouTube aren't really about shopping in an environmentally conscious way. It's only promoting overconsumption and the idea that we need endless closets. I actually wonder if sometimes people go thrifting just for the content and not because they actually need clothes. I also wonder how much of that clothing they actually wear. I'm not saying that every thrift haul video is bad. I actually have one myself on my channel, but it's a review of all the clothes I bought in a year and it's not excessive. If you're sharing a reasonable amount of clothing and encouraging people to buy secondhand, there is nothing wrong with that. It's just another thing to buy literal carfuls of clothing because it's cheap or trendy, show it off, and then never actually use it. In that case, someone else might have benefited from it more, especially if you're buying high-demand popular pieces. Of course, buying lots of clothes does support the charity behind the shop, so we can't say that this is entirely bad, but the overall message of overconsumption is unhealthy. We don't know what these people are doing with these clothing hauls and they could just be throwing them away. All of this only reinforces the idea of high turnover, disposable fashion. The final criticism that's popped up recently is that thrifting and reselling is unethical. To be fair, I actually used to think that reselling was somewhat questionable, but I've now changed my mind and I'll explain why. When it comes to reselling, people often make the same arguments that we've covered already. One, that resellers contribute to rising prices, and two, that they're taking away clothes from low-income communities. Things become a little more complicated when we're talking about reselling versus thrifting as individuals, though. When it comes to increased prices, I again don't think we can directly point fingers at any group for the reasons I mentioned already. But because of resellers, you might say that it's clear that people can and will pay more for second-hand items, leading stores to raise prices. But you could also argue that the items in a thrift shop versus a reseller's shop are almost different items, even if they're exactly the same. Let me explain. Say you find a black dress in the thrift store. To get that dress, you had to go to the thrift store, sift through racks and racks of clothing, try on a bunch of things, wait in line to check out, and then go home. If you find that same dress in a reseller's shop, you didn't have to do any of that. You're basically paying for two different shopping experiences. So resellers and thrift shops aren't necessarily direct competitors. Okay, but what about the resellers who overprice their products or scam people? This is obviously a problem. It's not necessarily related to thrifting directly, but let's talk about it. It's first important to point out that resold products should be marked up, at least enough to account for the time and labor put into getting the item, cleaning or repairing it, listing it online, interacting with potential buyers, etc. Otherwise, resellers would be operating at a loss. Beyond that, keep in mind that most reselling platforms charge commission and shipping fees, so the price you pay isn't anywhere near what the reseller is getting. Poshmark, for instance, takes a 20% cut with a minimum of $3 and you must use your shipping labels, which are $7. So if I list an item at $10, the buyer pays $17 and I only get $7. Of course, there are some questionable sellers who try to sell Walmart pants for $40 or try to pass off a 5-year-old sweater as vintage. That's just scammy. But we need to understand that there's a difference between ripping people off and running a legitimate business. So what about resellers taking away clothing from the local community, though? Since resellers tend to buy more than individuals, isn't that a problem? Again, there's still such an excess of wearable clothing in thrift stores. I don't think this is cause for concern. Unless, of course, you're literally buying entire sections of a store, like all the kids' shoes. In some ways, reselling can also make second-hand clothing more accessible. At this point, I actually want to bring on a reseller to chat with us about her experience running her business, how it's impacted her life, and some benefits of reselling. A big thank you to you, Jade, for joining us today. First, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your reselling business? Hello, everyone. My name is Jade and I run Lavender Haze LA on Depop and Instagram. I'm 23 and I'm from Los Angeles and I've been reselling my clothing and thrifted clothing on different marketplaces on the internet since I was 11 years old. But nowadays, I'm primarily on Depop and Etsy where I work as sort of like a personal stylist curating style boxes based on my favorite 90s TV characters and Instagram fashion bloggers, which is so much fun. I put these looks together from clothing that I sourced from thrift and consignment stores as well as online marketplaces. I'm starting my last year of undergrad in the fall at UCLA and I'm so very lucky that my reselling business has kept me afloat throughout my six years as a college student from community college all the way to UCLA. And through reselling, I was able to quit my retail job and focus on school, which has been a big help and has kept me motivated. What inspired you to get into thrifting and reselling? Thrifting has been a part of my life for honestly as long as I can remember. My mom would bring me thrifting all around Los Angeles as a child. We had to shop secondhand for home goods that we needed and clothing, but my favorite was always checking out the stationery and toys. But as far as reselling, I was inspired to get into it mainly on Facebook when I was in middle school. I noticed girls trading and selling their clothing and I thought it would be like a cool, interesting way to get more trendy clothing as my family didn't really have a lot of money to buy new all the time. So from selling my pre-owned clothing and upcycling some thrifted items in school growing up, I officially started my reselling business in 2016 when I was in community college. I started after watching the True Cost documentary on Netflix, which honestly really introduced me into the world of sustainable fashion. And I learned a lot about the fashion industry also through fashion school and I was just so upset with how things were going and I thought that there needed to be a change and that secondhand clothing should be thought as more cool and it needs to be more accessible and for young people and for people shopping online. So from there I started my eBay and it has evolved into what it is now on Depop and Etsy. How would you say thrifting and reselling has impacted your life? So before I was really cognizant about the importance of buying secondhand for sustainability reasons, I definitely feel like thrifting clothing instead of purchasing new as I grew up helped me to develop my own sort of personal style. And this is because I couldn't really follow all the trends because I was basically limited to what I can find thrifting, but that did lead me to like finding different styles and silhouettes that I felt comfortable in that felt like true to me. And as far as reselling, I think it gave me a purpose in one of the most confusing points of my life, which was when I was starting college and getting out of an abusive relationship and just being completely dissatisfied with the industry that I had thought I wanted to be a part of as a career. I kind of realized that I could have an impact on something that was important to me, that I enjoyed, and I can make an income for myself while I could focus on college and transferring to university. Now as my business evolves, so it's helped me to identify my creative and personal strengths and work on those every day and it definitely keeps me busy during this quarantine. And last question, I feel like the reselling community has been unfairly criticized lately and we don't often hear about the positive side of the community. What is one way you feel that reselling has positively impacted local communities or the sustainability movement? So this has definitely been a hot topic lately and it's kind of discouraged me in certain ways, but I do overall believe that there are a lot of positives for individuals, communities, and the overall sustainability movement. Firstly, if we want folks to shop secondhand, I think it's important that we make secondhand clothing as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. And that's just because not everyone has a thrift store near them or is able to stand and shift through clothing for the amount of time it takes to find something that you like in a thrift store. And resellers are doing a lot of that work of finding items, repairing them, and taking photos of them and listing them on these marketplaces where people can purchase instead of buying new. Also, many resellers are from the lower and middle class and they're operating their own small businesses. They're people like myself who use this income to get through college, stay home with children or with an elderly parent, or just have a more flexible work schedule that's important for people with disabilities of all kinds. So I really hope people will see the value that resellers bring to the sustainability movement by populating these clothing on marketplaces and maybe even try it out for themselves because I do believe that there's room for everyone and the more the merrier. Again, a big thank you to Jade for making this appearance. Please check out her Depop which will be linked below. I hope that mini interview segment gave you a better understanding of reselling and how it can be a legitimate way to earn a living and increase accessibility to secondhand items. I just wanted to add that I can see why some people think that reselling is questionable because I think the logic is that by taking this item from a thrift store and raising the price even a little to a reasonable point, you are alienating some lower income people because they can no longer afford that item. So while you are making it more accessible to people who can't physically go into thrift stores, there are some people who no longer can access that item. But at the same time, since there are so many items in these thrift stores that go unsold, I don't know that this is a huge problem. I think this is a very complicated topic and it's very unclear what the answers are and I think that as long as resellers are sourcing their items mindfully, then I really don't see a problem with it. Next, I wanted to talk a little about the history of thrifting and how its normalization can actually be a good thing. Time magazine reports that back in the day, there was a stigma attached to wearing used clothes that had been owned by a stranger. Not only were the items themselves a sign of a lack of money, but there was also bias against the people selling them. Used clothes were often available from push carts, predominantly started by Jewish immigrants, whose professional options were often constrained by anti-Semitism. The prejudice rubbed off on their wares. For example, the May 3, 1884 issue of the Saturday Evening Post ran a satirical story about a girl who bought smallpox from a dress she bought from a Jewish-owned resale shop. Nowadays, there still may be some stigma attached to thrifting, but it's definitely more accepted. People who grew up low-income often mentioned how they used to be ashamed to thrift. People had mentioned literally hiding in stores when they saw people they knew, and how their parents used to make them call Goodwill the boutique so that other kids wouldn't know they shopped secondhand when they asked where their clothes were from. This is based on some comments on Sarah Hawkinson's video on the ethics of thrifting, which I'll link below. But basically, now that thrifting is normalized, people tend to feel less ashamed about it. So just wanted to add that it's pretty icky that it's only gotten cool because wealthier people have started shopping there. But overall, I think the normalization does still have some benefits. We also can't forget that charities are often behind thrift stores. The stores themselves aren't necessarily the charities. Shopping there helps support their programs. For instance, at Out of the Closet, a thrift store chain, they say that 96 cents of every dollar collected at their stores directly fund AIDS Healthcare Foundation's HIV slash AIDS programs and their new housing services, as well as on-site pharmacies and free HIV testing. Of course, the big corporate giants like Goodwill and Salvation Army have a lot of controversies and might not be as charitable as we think, so this doesn't always apply. But if you're shopping at a store backed by a reputable organization, your dollars are probably doing a lot of good for the community. It's obviously not good that the prices are rising because at that point, it's actually hurting the community, especially the low-income community. So I think it's really up to these thrift stores to decide what a good equilibrium point is as you have to find a balance between serving the low-income community, being able to provide them affordable clothes, but also being able to support your programs like providing housing or HIV testing, etc. This brings me to the final part of this video, which are some tips for thrifting as consciously as possible. In general, I really don't see a problem with thrifting and reselling, but there are ways to be especially mindful of populations in need. Number one, as individuals, buy what you need and know you'll wear. This helps ensure that you're not stuck in this endless cycle of overconsumption and disposable fashion. Number two, if you want to be super careful, shop at consignment or vintage stores. Some people have recommended buying from a sustainable brand if you can afford it instead of going to thrift stores. I disagree with that as secondhand shopping is always better sustainability-wise than buying new, even from an ethical brand. If you're especially worried about taking away clothes from the needy though, there is a better solution. Just avoid thrift stores in low-income neighborhoods and instead shop at higher-end consignment or vintage stores. Thanks to Jade for this tip. Number three, avoid buying high-need items in low stock. There are some items that are in higher demand and those tend to be plus-size clothes, professional clothes, and winter jackets. I don't necessarily see a problem with buying these things for fun if you'll actually wear them, but try to be mindful of the stock available and maybe don't purchase them in bulk. Also, this should go without saying, but don't take advantage of free clothing charities if you aren't actually low-income. There are some organizations that offer free professional clothes or prom dresses, and those are specifically targeted towards people in need. Going there when you can pay for your own clothes is just wrong. Number four, if you need to donate clothes, choose reputable local orgs. Donating is not necessarily the best way to get rid of old clothes responsibly, as we know that most clothing in thrift stores is thrown away. I actually have a blog post about other options for cleaning out your closet, which I'll link below. Some ideas are using Facebook Marketplace or a site like FreeCycle.org to give your clothes away. If you've exhausted those other options, though, try to donate to small organizations that you know are doing good in your community, like homeless shelters or domestic violence shelters. The gentrification of thrifting is a pretty complicated topic, and I think that a lot of recent criticism doesn't capture its nuance. At the end of the day, I don't think mainstream thrifting or reselling are as problematic as they've been made out to be. Secondhand shopping is always better for the planet and can help support organizations doing important work. Reselling also gives people a flexible way to earn a living and can make it easier for people to buy used clothing. This is, of course, my opinion based on my research, so if you have a different one, please feel free to share. I also want to clarify that I'm definitely not trying to minimize the impact of these rising secondhand prices. While I don't think these rising prices are any particular group's fault, the fact is that these prices are rising and that thrifting is becoming less accessible to some communities. I don't have a good solution to those rising prices other than to maybe try to give your clothes directly to people in need through community events or local organizations. And I always want to emphasize that we should never shame people for buying fast fashion, as sometimes that's the only affordable option. Let me know if you have more ideas in the comments, as I'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you want a text version of this video to read over again, it'll be over on my blog, which is linked below. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you all next time. Bye!