A charity shop (British English), thrift shop or thrift store or opportunity shop or op-shop is a retail establishment run by a charitable organization to raise money. Charity shops are a type of social enterprise. They sell mainly used goods such as clothing, books, music albums, shoes, DVDs, toys, and furniture donated by members of the public, and are often staffed by volunteers. Because the items for sale were obtained for free, and business costs are low, the items can be sold at competitive prices. After costs are paid, all remaining income from the sales is used in accord with the organization's stated charitable purpose. Costs include purchase and/or depreciation of fixtures, operating costs and the building lease or mortgage.
Claire's is an American retailer of accessories, jewelry, and toys primarily aimed toward tween and teen girls. It was founded in 1961 and is based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The company is primarily owned by Elliott Management and Monarch Alternative Capital, but, in 2022, announced plans to go public with an initial public offering.
Urban Outfitters, Inc. (URBN) is a multinational fast-fashion company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Operating in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, select Western European countries, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar, the Urban Outfitters brand targets young adults with a merchandise mix of women's and men's fashion apparel, footwear, beauty and wellness products, accessories, activewear and gear, and housewares, as well as music, primarily vinyl records and cassettes.
A reseller is a company or individual (merchant) that purchases goods or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. Individual resellers are often referred to as middle men. This is usually done for profit. One example can be found in the industry of telecommunications, where companies buy excess amounts of transmission capacity or call time from other carriers and resell it to smaller carriers. Resale can be seen in everyday life from yard sales to selling used cars.
Used goods, also known as secondhand goods, are any item of personal property offered for sale not as new, including metals in any form except coins that are legal tender, but excluding books, magazines, and postage stamps. Used goods may also be handed down, especially among family or close friends, as a hand-me-down.
Zara is a Spanish multinational fast-fashion company. It sells clothing, accessories, beauty products and perfumes. The head office is located at Arteixo in the province of A Coruña, Galicia. It is the largest constituent company of the Inditex group. In 2020, it was launching over twenty new product lines per year.
Thrift store chic refers to a style of dressing where clothes are cheap and/or used. Clothes are often bought from thrift stores such as the Salvation Army, Goodwill, or Value Village. Originally popular among the hippies of the late 1960s, this fashion movement resurfaced during the mid-1980s among teenagers, and expanded into the 1990s with the growing popularity of such music and style influences including the grunge band Nirvana. Thrift store chic can be considered as an anti-fashion statement because it does not follow fashion trends and does not attempt to look expensive or new.
Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property and retains full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, goods transfer, or putting something up for sale in a consignment store. The owner of the goods pays the third-party a portion of the sale for facilitating the sale. Consignors maintain the rights to their property until the item is sold or abandoned. Many consignment shops and online consignment platforms have a set time limit at which an item's availability for sale expires. Within the time of contract, reductions of the price are common to promote the sale of the item, but vary by the type of item sold.
Vintage clothing is a generic term for garments originating from a previous era, as recent as the 1990s. The term can also be applied in reference to second-hand retail outlets, e.g. in vintage clothing store. While the concept originated during World War I as a response to textile shortages, vintage dressing encompasses choosing accessories, mixing vintage garments with new, as well as creating an ensemble of various styles and periods. Vintage clothes typically sell at low prices for high-end name brands.
WE, also known as WE Fashion, is originally a Dutch fashion chain which sells clothing, shoes, bags and other accessories. WE has approximately 240 shops and 3,000 employees in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Switzerland. WE is part of the European fashion conglomerate Logo International, which also owns the brands O'Neill and Van Gils. WE is a company with a vertical organisation that designs its collections in-house. Advertising, marketing and store concepts are also developed internally. WE has a sales training programme called WE University.
A second-hand shop is a shop which sells used goods.
Off-price is a trading format based on discount pricing. Off-price retailers are independent of manufacturers and buy large volumes of branded goods directly from them. The off-price retail model relies on the purchase of over-produced, or excess, branded goods at a lower price, thus being able to sell to consumers at a discount compared to other stores which purchased an initial run. Among the largest retailers of this type are TJX Companies and Ross Stores. The model is more common in countries that import fashion-oriented or household goods, as the discount role in producer countries is usually filled by factory outlets or small-scale open-air marketplaces.
Twice was an online marketplace for buying and selling secondhand apparel based in San Francisco, CA. The e-commerce platform was created to make selling used goods easier and shopping used like buying new. Twice manages the selling process for the customer, such as pricing, shipping and merchandising. Twice vets each item to ensure it meets “like new” standards. The company currently buys and sells men's and women's clothing as well as women’s shoes and handbags from popular retailers and brands.
Winmark Corporation is an American franchisor of five retail businesses that specialize in buying and selling used goods. The company is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Winmark was founded in 1988 as Play It Again Sports Franchise Corporation by Ron Olson and Jeffrey Dahlberg after they purchased the Play It Again Sports franchise rights from Martha Morris. They renamed the company to Grow Biz International Inc. in June 1993. Grow Biz went public in August 1993. In 2000, John Morgan replaced Dahlberg as CEO and renamed the company to Winmark in 2001. Morgan rescued Winmark from the verge of bankruptcy by selling financially failing franchise concepts and stores and replacing the management team. The company's strategy was to move from owning stores itself to having franchisees own all the stores.
Tradesy was an online peer-to-peer resale marketplace for buying and selling women's fashion. The company was headquartered in Santa Monica, California.
Rebag is a New York-based online and brick-and-mortar retail platform, founded in 2014, for buying, trading, and selling luxury handbags, accessories, watches, fine jewelry, shoes, and select apparel.
The COVID-19 pandemic affects the global fashion industry as governments close down manufacturing plants, and through store closures, and event cancellations to attempt to slow the spread of the virus. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on fashion brands worldwide. At the same time, the fashion industry faces challenges in consumer demand. New opportunities are also presenting themselves as fashion brands shift to making fashionable COVID-19 face masks. Domenico de Sole, chairman of Tom Ford International, remarked that "I have seen a lot of difficult situations in my long career and this has been the most devastating event, not just for fashion and luxury, but all industries."
The retail format influences the consumer's store choice and addresses the consumer's expectations. At its most basic level, a retail format is a simple marketplace, that is; a location where goods and services are exchanged. In some parts of the world, the retail sector is still dominated by small family-run stores, but large retail chains are increasingly dominating the sector, because they can exert considerable buying power and pass on the savings in the form of lower prices. Many of these large retail chains also produce their own private labels which compete alongside manufacturer brands. Considerable consolidation of retail stores has changed the retail landscape, transferring power away from wholesalers and into the hands of the large retail chains.
Shein is a fast fashion retailer. Founded in Nanjing, China, in October 2008 as ZZKKO by entrepreneur Chris Xu, Shein grew to become the world's largest fashion retailer as of 2022. The company is currently headquartered in Singapore.
Thrilling is an online marketplace for vintage clothing, apparel and home goods. The company partners with independent vintage and secondhand clothing stores that use the platform to list, sell, and ship inventory. Thrilling was founded by Shilla Kim-Parker and Brad Mallow in 2018, In 2021, the company received $8.47 million in series A funding.
