In the past 10+ years I’ve seen the thrifter community blossom so incredibly.
This side of the market has produced apps, websites, search engines, clothing rental sites, traveling pop-up shows like "Thrift Con," & yet with all the increase of interest in thrifting, this area of the market can't make up for what is being pumped out.
🪞Let's Face the Facts: Clothes are being dumped into thrift shops on a daily.
Most of these secondhand clothes will not find homes, they will be sourced out, 88% of them to be exact will end up as textile waste.
Specially when it comes to fast fashion brands, they purposefully decrease the value of their merchandise in order to sell mass amounts of low new quality clothing, creating a flooding cycle of fast fashion brands throughout thrift shops.
When you see stack on stack of fast fashion brands while thrifting, it's not because "those thrifty resellers took everything good," it's because there is literally a mass flooding of lower quality clothing coming in daily.
It can suck thrifting items you want that are priced higher than you’d like them but only so much quality is flowing in at a time and many thrift businesses have had to take notice of this cycle change in order to keep business alive.
Unfortunately, over the decade I have seen tons of unsuccessful thrift shops shut down, having low pricing or high pricing, in good areas or bad areas, mobile locations, brick & mortar locations, it really doesn’t matter the details, owning a thrift shop is a tough experience.
As a thrifter & reseller, it’s frustrating to see this shift in the past few years as I thrift through aisle & aisle, store to store, seeing low quality branded clothing on the stacks, knowing the fact that this is just another bad habit.
There are a handful of large businesses benefiting off this bad habit of selling new trendy low quality items with no care or social responsibility towards what happens when the low quality clothing end up in landfills &/or polluting water, it's just another real annoying fact of life.
But guilt isn’t what we should feel here, awareness is key when it comes to what we are consuming.
Creating your personal style through thrifting is the magic trick to creating a lasting iconic style you love while helping you earn some extra good karma points!
If you'd like some help with thrifting your style, I'm the stylist for you!
🛒Crystal’s Tips for Affordable Thrifting💁🏻♀️
- Outlet Thrift Shops are your BFF, having you shop by pound VS. Per item.
- Call ahead or check online for the discounts of the day, week, month.
- Some thrift shops offer discounts when you drop off a bag of donations to them!
Remember only 12% of secondhand goods are being recycled, leaving us with TONS of opportunities to find something sweet!
I hope I inspired you to get thrifty.
With Love Your Friend,
Crystal Rey
P.S. Interested in starting your own secondhand business? I’d love to be your Creative Consultant. Book a Creative Inquire Call or follow @ThriftFashionBrand for more insights!
SOURCE: https://instagram.com/slowfashion.movement?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF FASHION CLICK HERE: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/13/to-make-our-wardrobes-sustainable-we-must-cut-how-many-new-clothes-we-buy-by-75