Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

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Super S
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Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by Super S »

I have noticed over the last few years that the Salvation Army has gradually shut down most if not all of their thrift stores in the Portland area, and have not noticed any that are still open when visiting other areas. I was in Boise last week and noticed the location there on State Street has closed, and at one point there were locations on Fairview as well as Overland which are long gone. I have not seen any of their thrift stores still open elsewhere in Washington or Oregon in recent years. They had a couple of larger stores in Vancouver as well as Gresham, both of which were portions of old Albertsons stores, both are now gone.

Just curious if this is happening elsewhere.
Alpha8472
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by Alpha8472 »

Competition from other thrift stores is killing a lot of these stores. Goodwill is notorious for giving less than one eighth of its profit back to programs to help the less fortunate. Goodwill is technically a non-profit, but they take donated goods and sell them for a profit. The good stuff often gets sold online and the junk gets put in stores for the common people to buy.

Goodwill is all about advertising how they help people, but most of the money is taken up by highly paid executives. There is minimum wage exception for disabled people which Goodwill uses to pay people only 22 cents an hour.

The selection at Goodwill is awful. You find better deals at not for profit places such as local thrift stores that benefit local charities.

The big chain thrift store chains have become corporations pretending to be non-profit. Technically they have the legal non-profit paperwork, but they are making tons of profit that goes to questionable people in the company.

The Salvation Army stores face resistance from cities. A Salvation Army store near me sat unopened for years. The residents nearby did not want homeless people to invade their neighborhood once the store opened. The city also put up resistance as thrift stores have dumping problems. Many people dump junk at these stores and it causes problems for the city to get rid of old mattresses and other hazardous materials.
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by Mgomrjsurf »

Savers might be hurting them to.
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by Super S »

Alpha8472 wrote: June 12th, 2022, 10:33 pm Competition from other thrift stores is killing a lot of these stores. Goodwill is notorious for giving less than one eighth of its profit back to programs to help the less fortunate. Goodwill is technically a non-profit, but they take donated goods and sell them for a profit. The good stuff often gets sold online and the junk gets put in stores for the common people to buy.

Goodwill is all about advertising how they help people, but most of the money is taken up by highly paid executives. There is minimum wage exception for disabled people which Goodwill uses to pay people only 22 cents an hour.

The selection at Goodwill is awful. You find better deals at not for profit places such as local thrift stores that benefit local charities.

The big chain thrift store chains have become corporations pretending to be non-profit. Technically they have the legal non-profit paperwork, but they are making tons of profit that goes to questionable people in the company.

The Salvation Army stores face resistance from cities. A Salvation Army store near me sat unopened for years. The residents nearby did not want homeless people to invade their neighborhood once the store opened. The city also put up resistance as thrift stores have dumping problems. Many people dump junk at these stores and it causes problems for the city to get rid of old mattresses and other hazardous materials.
I think Goodwill specifically is a big part of why they have disappeared from the Portland area. Goodwill varies from region to region (More about this in a minute) and the Portland division (basically any stores south of Longview, WA) almost always insists on building brand new stores. This is reflected in their prices (which are sometimes more than comparable items new) and how picky they are with donations. Yes the stores are nice but the bargains aren't all that great. Value Village (Savers) is down to one store in the Portland area, and there are a handful of scattered thrift stores. Deseret Industries still has one location.

Where I live, in Longview, WA, there is less competition. the Goodwill store is an old building that has seen uses as a grocery store and a bingo hall, and while it has had basic remodeling, isn't quite as fancy as the Portland area stores. Longview is operated by the Tacoma division, which uses existing buildings that are remodeled for their needs. They even use different interiors and logos. I have also found they are much less picky about donations.

I mentioned that I was in Boise last week. Boise has had Salvation Army, and Deseret Industries, which at one point had two locations, both of which have closed. Idaho Youth Ranch has several locations, and there is an Animal Rescue thrift store on Vista. I was surprised to see a Goodwill in Boise, which never had much of a thrift store presence, on State Street, in a former Quisenberry's/Emporium. I stopped in, and you can tell that this is another division that does things their way. The logo and interior looked closer to those of the Portland area, but the lighting was definitely old...rows of 4-tube, 4 foot fixtures which only had two tubes in each one and no covers (These might have been original to Quisenberry's). It did have a slightly better variety than the Portland stores.
Mgomrjsurf wrote: June 13th, 2022, 7:04 am Savers might be hurting them to.

I am not a fan of the Savers/Value Village locations. They seem to be scaling back a bit, at least in Oregon and Washington. Savers has one location in Boise on Fairview, in an old Albertsons (in the same strip mall as one of the Youth ranch stores) I went inside and wasn't that impressed, and was surprised to see that they actually went to what looked like 100% self-checkout, which I thought was odd for a thrift store, period. (Especially in Idaho where minimum wage is still low at $7.25 an hour) Portland is down to one location, in Tigard, that is nearly identical in building design to the Boise Savers. Locations in Milwaukie, Salem, and on 82nd Ave. in Portland all have closed, as has a location in Vancouver, WA.
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

There was a local Goodwill store along NYS Route 30 in Amsterdam which has been closed for probably a few years or more but the Salvation Army store in a run down building in downtown Gloversville has been there forever and is still going strong. I can recall years ago my Mother found brand new clothing with tags there for next to nothing. You can find a little bit of everything in there. Kind of reminds me of going into local dollar stores before the chains took all the fun out of it by standardizing the product mix.
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by buckguy »

Salvation Army doesn't seem to have closed stores in the DC area. Savers and its other banners are largely concentrated in some of the Maryland suburbs. I noticed that Salvation Army includes other charity shops like the Christ Child Society when you look in other cities. They have been doing more alliances with organizations like Rotary and with corporate sponsors than in the past so I would guess that their business model has been changing and it may vary more by region.

I have noticed that smaller non-profit thrift operations have closed----the orgs are still around but the stores aren't. It may be too difficult to make this generate much income even on a volunteer basis. It's also clear that non-profits have gotten much more specific about donations, focusing on what they can directly furnish to their clients or what they need to run their office.
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Re: Salvation Army Thrift Stores disappearing

Post by storewanderer »

Salvation Army opened a supermarket in Baltimore and it was supplied by C&S. It opened in 2018 and closed in 2021. As usual with C&S there was little to no support (didn't even get the store shelf tags... no clue how they ordered stuff).
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