Charity shops are in crisis, but are resale platforms to blame? It's complicated.

Hi there, longtime Good On You readers and new friends. In case you missed it, we recently announced the launch of anxiety.eco from the editors at Good On You with this long-form essay.

This week, both of us here — JD Shadel and Amy Miles — went on charity shop crawls and found ourselves in conversations about the state of such British high street institutions, as one chain announced major closures and cited consumer shifts as a cause. 

So, today we bring you a Behind the Seams briefing, where we connect the dots between what’s happening in the news and where it sits in the broader fashion and cultural landscape. Below, we look into the crisis secondhand and charity shops are facing.

Will charity and thrift shops succumb to the threat of online resale? Not necessarily, but, as Amy explores, a fundamental change in the way they operate is crucial to beating fashion’s race to the bottom. 

Thanks for reading! Find the full briefing below.

Amy and JD

Charity shops appear to be closing left, right, and centre. Earlier this year UK chain Scope announced broad closures. And last month, Cancer Research said it’d shut nearly 200 stores in the next two years due to “rising costs, inflationary pressures and changing consumer habits — including reduced footfall, higher national insurance contributions and growing competition from online resale platforms,” it claimed in a press release. None of those challenges are unique to secondhand retail — except for resale platforms, that is.

Charity shop managers suggest that today, more people are buying and selling their best wares on Vinted, Depop, eBay, and the like instead of browsing in or donating to their local thrift or charity shops. For instance, one independent charity shop that closed recently said the newfound popularity of re-commerce had caused declining quality of donations. 

As the online resale market continues to grow (it expanded by 15% in 2024 alone) charity shops are increasingly left only with the stuff people can’t sell online: the SHEIN dress that ripped on a night out, the Boohoo sweater that went bobbly after one wear. 

Ascendent resale platforms are easy to blame: one could see them as tech companies disrupting yet another corner of society. But that’s not exactly what’s going on here.