Charity Stores Fight it Out Over Second Hand Clothes
The competitive but potentially incredibly lucrative second hand clothing market has lead to a turf war amongst charity stores.
Recycling banks and door collections have been on a massive rise as charities struggle to gain the edge over their competition and keep a continual amount of quality clothing stock coming in.
The Association of Charity shops believes that charities entering into partnerships with commercial companies in order to increase door to door collections has lead to problems:
?The largest single threat to the profit charities with shops get by door-to-door collections is by commercial textile merchants entering into partnerships with charities, many of whom do not own shops.? said Paul Tate, merchandising manager of charity the Children?s Society.
?While there is no question of legitimacy, the ‘donation’ made by the textile collector to the charity is as little as ?50 per tonne.?
The concern raises the problem of transparency in clothes sales, with many consumers unclear of the amount of money that ends up going to the charity on a normal clothes purchase.
Clothes given directly by donation can make a far greater estimated profit in the region of ?500 or more per tonne, depending on the quality. However, the ACS believes that the rise of commercial partnerships has meant a drop in the amount of people handing over full bags from door-to-door collections.
The Textile Recycling Association disagrees with the ACS and links the lack of donations with the recession. Alan Wheeler, TRA spokesman said:
?The value of a tonne of clothing collected door to door is high, but so is the cost of collecting, storing, sorting and other associated costs. We estimate that this cost amounts to over ?500 a tonne.?