I've shopped here three times, and every time I've found at least one item that I thought was good…read morequality, useful, and well priced. Yesterday I found a merino wool/silk pashmina shawl for $4.95. It was marked "Vintage," even though these shawls are still in production. But the marking suggested that whoever priced it recognized that it was something special.
There are lots of employees working hard to stock and tidy the store. They are polite and helpful when asked a question. It is a large store, with mostly clothing, shoes, purses, and linens, plus a smaller selection of appliances and other hard goods. There is no furniture. I like their colored-tag system, where each item gets a colored tag and merchandise with the oldest tag color is discounted.
They also have a "Best" area with designer labels. A lot of the items I looked at were priced around $20, although some were higher--for example, I saw a Johnny Was jacket for $69.
My main criticism is the amount of stained clothing that is priced quite high. I think this is something management should take a look at. Most people don't want to bargain at the register, so those stained, overpriced items just sit there. The result is that the clothing racks are very full, which makes it harder to sort through them and see what is actually worth buying.
For people who are complaining about thrift-store prices, I do understand why prices have gone up. Thrifting has become much more popular, we're dealing with inflation, and minimum wage is now $16.90 an hour. I don't object to paying a fair price for something genuinely desirable. But I do agree that it is disappointing to find high prices on damaged merchandise, and it makes it harder to find things you would actually consider buying.
And part of the fun of thrifting, at least for those of us who do it as a pastime, is finding a bargain. Current pricing strategies at many thrift stores are making that harder and less fun. I think thrift stores need to have some true bargains for people to discover. That's what keeps the hunt interesting.
I volunteered at another thrift store, the Bargain Box, for 10 years, so I have some experience with this. Our general policy was that an item in perfect but used condition was priced at around one-third of the new price. Dated clothing was priced lower. Stained items or things with missing parts were sent to another thrift store, sold to a recycler, or discarded if they were hard goods. That approach kept the inventory moving at a reasonable rate.
For vintage or designer items, we would look them up on online resale sites such as Etsy, eBay, ThredUp, or Poshmark, find several comparable prices, and then price the item below the lowest price we found. Often we priced it a little lower than that because a brick-and-mortar thrift store with limited foot traffic doesn't have the same customer base as an online reseller.
I'll definitely be back to the Arc Foundation store. I've already found some good things there, and I'm hoping to find more.
