Goodwill’s sales up, donations down

By Bryan Gentry

Published: December 2, 2008

When her mom first suggested they should start shopping at thrift stores, Cris Crawford wasn’t comfortable with the thought of wearing other people’s clothes and eating off of used plates.

Now a veteran Goodwill shopper, the Rustburg woman has gotten over that feeling. “You just take it home and wash it up, and go about your business.”

She said that shopping at thrift stores is making more and more sense in a cash-strapped economy. She stops in at the Goodwill store in Forest occasionally, and has picked up some Christmas gifts there this year.

“The way the money situation is now, if you can find something for $5 instead of $50, why not?”

In the summer and fall of this year, local Goodwill stores saw a surge of customers shopping for bargains. However, they have also seen a decrease in donated items.

From July through October, sales were up 8.6 percent in the Goodwill stores in the Lynchburg area, compared to the same time period last year, said Kelly Sandridge, community relations director for Goodwill Industries of the Valleys.

The story has been different at the two Disabled American Veterans thrift stores in the area. Donations are up, said Brian Beagle, assistant general manager at the Timberlake Road store. Although the store still sees a lot of customers come in, many aren’t buying anything.

The DAV furniture store downtown is doing well, though it doesn’t see much traffic, he said.

Goodwill Industries of the Valleys, based in Roanoke, operates one store each in Lynchburg, Forest, Bedford and Madison Heights. It has 27 stores in an area that takes in 31 Virginia counties.

Because the stores sell donated items, their prices are low: $4 for a pair of jeans, $2 for shoes, 50 cents to $1 for books, and an assortment of prices for books, handheld games and decorations.

Sales started going up significantly in July, Sandridge said. That’s the month that gas prices peaked, and for several months the price of food and other items had been on the rise, too.

“We’re seeing more and more people shopping in our stores,” she said. “They can’t afford to go out and buy the clothes they need at the higher priced alternative.”

Around the same time that sales started to go up, donations started to decrease, Sandridge said. The number of donors has not changed much, but the amount they give has decreased.

“People are still being very generous. They just don’t have as much to give in this economy,” she said.

Goodwill’s warehouses, where it stores donated goods until they are taken to stores, are not as full as they normally are this time of year, Sandridge said. That poses a challenge “because obviously we have more people relying on the great, low-cost alternative for shopping … but when you have less (donations) going in, it makes it more difficult,” she said.

“We’re not panicked, by any means,” Sandridge said. “We just know there is a higher demand for people shopping in our stores, and we want to be able to continue to give the quantity … that they’re used to getting.”

Local Goodwill stores aren’t running short yet. At the Wards Road store and the Forest location this week, clothing racks are still full.

Thrift shoppers in the Forest store Tuesday morning said coming to Goodwill is nothing new to them.

J.R. Mink said he grew up frugally, so shopping at stores like Goodwill is second nature to him.

But a year ago the Liberty University student hit on an idea for a business venture. He started buying items at Goodwill to resell on the Internet auction site eBay.

He gets books, including textbooks, electronics, toys and anything else he finds in the store that he thinks could sell online. “This helps pay the bills” while going to school, he said.

Becky Burnett is like a walking advertisement for Goodwill. She and her husband, who own a farm in Bedford County, buy a lot of clothes at the Forest store and brag about them.

Looking through a rack of clothes Tuesday morning, she was wearing a green sweater she bought for $3.50 a year ago. “This sweater was made in Ireland,” she said. “Do you know how much they would charge for this in Ireland?”

She wasn’t sure how much the sweater would have cost new, but she was sure it was more than $3.50.

She said a friend of hers recently got remarried in an $800 wedding dress that cost $50 in a boutique located upstairs in the Forest Goodwill.

Burnett was carrying a pile of Christmas decoration lights that didn’t have a price tag, but she said she got a good deal on Christmas lights at Goodwill last year, too.

She said there’s an altruistic reason to shop at Goodwill: the profits from the store are used to support programs that train people for employment and help with job placement.

But the real reason she shops there is to save money.

Ronnie Wilmore, of Lynchburg, said he visits the store twice a week. He said he has seen more people shopping there lately, but not as many as he would expect.

“I don’t understand why people who have kids and can’t afford stuff, why they don’t buy all these toys,” he said. He pointed to the back wall of the store, where shelves were filled with dolls, piles of games and other toys.