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Issue 202 August 27 Op Shop (til you drop!)Once dark stores selling musty old items, opportunity shops have had a makeover in recent years. Ian Kenins explores the new world of second hand retail.Seventy year old Maureen Jellett dresses herself on a Wednesday afternoon as would a younger woman trying to impress a prospective partner on a Saturday dinner date. Resplendent in a green silk, mid-length dress, leggings and leather dress shoes, a light cardigan decorated with a wide necklace, Maureen has spent the afternoon minding her eight year grandson, whose cold has kept him away from school. Maureen’s clothes fill three wardrobes – "And half in bloody mine!" says her husband, John – as well as fifty pairs of shoes in several drawers and cupboards throughout the house. But the former waitress is far from being a spendthrift middle class housewife. The Jelletts have lived the last 49 years in a simple rented house in Norlane. Almost all of Maureen’s extensive clothes collection are second hand items purchased from op shops, as are her porcelain dogs (several hundred), teapots, cups and saucers (several dozen) and the faux colonial dining table set. "I’d never been to an op shop until ten or so years ago," says Maureen. "And my mum never stepped foot in one." It was a friend who first brought Maureen into that musty, second hand world frequented by retro-fashioned youth, fancy dressers, hopeful collectors, the poor, and, increasingly, middle-class bargain hunters. Now, Maureen admits, she’s got a problem. "I’m a junkie. I’m on first name terms with the staff at op shops, especially the Salvos in North Geelong." When her pension arrives each Tuesday, she’ll do the rounds of local op shops, and used to go on op shop tours of Melbourne or Ballarat with a busload of friends. Despite her "addiction," Maureen points out that she’s proud of her purchases, as is her husband, who heads into the bedroom, returning with a leather bag which he excitedly unzips. "She got me this set of lawn bowls and the bag. What do you reckon you’d pay for these - $900? Nope - $60! She supplies everyone, and friends have lists of things for her to look out for." However, ticking off cheap items from that list is becoming increasingly difficult. Exiting the Salvos store in Thompson Road, North Geelong, last summer I passed a forlorn looking couple in their early 20’s. As is the way with despondent people, their gaze was towards the ground, until they reached their early model Ford Laser, when the male looked up at his partner and said, "We can’t afford to buy nothing in there, any more." A similar scene was repeated on the other side of town only recently, when I overheard two elderly women exiting the South Geelong Salvos store in Barwon Terrace. One bemoaned the fact that the store had little in the way of worthwhile goods, while her friend added, "No that we could afford anything at those prices." Maureen says op shops are all big business now, so she keeps mostly to the smaller, church-run stores, "They don’t know the value of things." Allen Dewhirst, the CEO of Australia’s southern territory Salvos stores, says last year’s 25 cent rise per clothing item was the first such increase in ten years. However, Dewhirst pointed out, Salvos Stores were no longer op shops – "We’re now a chain of second hand retail stores." Twenty years ago our mission was to sell goods to people who couldn’t afford to buy anywhere else. Now they’re to provide for (Salvation Army) services within our Christian harmonious programs. We don’t hide from the fact that we sell high priced goods." Salvos Stores, says Dewhirst, cater for all income types, and clothes that aren’t sold after three weeks on the racks are discounted by up to fifty percent for the fourth week. He also points out that the higher priced items help fund a voucher program the Salvation Army offer destitute people. With amounts up to $100, these can be used to purchase items from Salvos stores. Occasionally the organisation receives goods of extremely high value. Store staff, forty percent of which have a Coles-Myer background, says Dewhirst, are trained to assess each item’s worth. "If we get a piece of real value, we sell them to auction houses. Four months ago a vase we received sold for $4,000." In 1990 a Gold Coast couple purchased a $15 painting they later learned was a Charles Blackman, whose works fetch a few million dollars. But quality items are increasingly rare. Once a potential gold mine for collectors of retro fashion and furniture, in the current climate of "what’s mine and old is now worth money," on weekends the bins outside op shops have become tips for unsold garage sale items. Dewhirst says, "In terms of quantity, particularly in Victoria, donations are the highest they’ve been for some time. Quality wise clothing continues to be good, but with furniture it’s not so good, especially with cheaper furniture in vogue." A visit to several Salvos and Vinnies stores in Geelong will confirm that. In North Geelong, a bland laminate table and six un-matching chairs, three with varying degrees of upholstery damage, had a $120 price sticker. In Pakington Street a small, faded outdoor table worth $30 in K-Mart was being sold for $30. At the Vinnies store in Fyans Street, South Geelong, a simple timber table was being offered for $50. According to Allen Dewhirst, 70 percent of donations make it to the stores. The organisation has no repair facility, so damaged items are sent to recycle centres. Torn clothes, or those missing buttons or with broken zips are sold to a rag dealer who exports the bundles to Asian recyclers, where the materials are sorted by colour then cut to size and imported back to Australia, for use as cleaning cloth. Dewhirst denies that e-bay and garage sales have had a major impact on the Salvos’ operation, other than in the bric-a-brac, of which he says, donations are down. What bric-a-brac, and ephemera, does make it into Salvos outlets gets the kind of price sticker that would deter even a serious collector. Amongst the items in a locked glass cabinet in the Fyans Street Vinnies store were a 1960’s flyspray can ($25), an incomplete set of 1980’s cricket cards ($25) and an old meat mincer ($35). To stay ahead of the competition, Dewhirst says the Salvos will be selling such items from an e-bay site to be opened within four months. Vinnies, the retail arm of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, are likewise undergoing a makeover. Recently a new store opened in Moorabool Street next to Fletcher Jones, and the shop’s layout, and items on offer, give the appearance of boutique retail. Word of its collection attracted the attention of Jess Riches. Being a painter, illustrator and designer has given Jess Riches somewhat of an eclectic taste. Being an artist - the lowest professional income earning group in Australia - has also given Riches a justifiable reason to op shop. "The big Salvos shop in Barwon Terrace is my favourite. I’ve bought frames, books, antiques, washstands, taxidermy. The peacock is my favourite. I got that for $50, and they normally go for around $1,000. I go through phases." So does her taste in fashion, also eclectic, but suitably stylish. Like Maureen Jellett, Riches is another whose wardrobe has been purchased almost exclusively from op shops. Attractive and attractively-dressed, the 29 year old is something of a pin-up girl for a chain of stores that haven’t entirely cast aside their image as outlets for cast-off clothing. Jess was first dragged into one by her mother, when just a young girl, returning with her sister to shop for clothes during their teenage years. "It depended on what phase I was going through – the skatey period, or retro, vintage stuff. At the moment, it’s anything goes. I don’t feel guilty op shopping because I don’t have a lot of money. But sometimes you’ll see a Mercedes drive up and think, that’s wrong – you shouldn’t be here." Perhaps they’d come to buy a vase. |
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