Getting Thrifty With It: Cheap Is Chic in Tough Times

By Lauren Saxton
Edited by Michelle Blair

It’s a lazy Portland Sunday. My roommate and I are headed to Hawthorne Street toting a pair of her gold flats and a few other unwanted items. We are in the mood to revitalize our wardrobes, but we, along with most of our generation, along with most everyone, are broke. Broke, but resourceful. We have spent the morning emptying our closets of unwanted items. Clothes that have been taking up valuable room, that have run their course with us, but could find a new home in the closet of another. We pile these into bags and haul them up Hawthorne. The plan–turn our clothes into cash.

I am surprised to see the flats in my roommate’s resale bag. Gold metallic Dolce Vita flats with a square toe and a simple feminine bow. I was with her when she first saw them glimmering on the mannequin in the Nordstrom window. I watched her eyes light up as she coveted them. Only a week later I accompanied her downtown where the time she took from try to buy was almost instantaneous. I can’t say I was the devil’s advocate as she reasoned with herself that they weren’t too out of her price range (they were) and that she would wear them all the time (she didn’t). In fact, I believe I fawned over them as well, gushing that they were adorable and perfect on her and agreed that since she had made extra tips at her waitressing gig that week, they weren’t unreasonable at all. That was then.

After narrowly missing two rounds of terminations at work due to cutbacks and riding out the rise in everything from gas prices to food costs, my roommate has changed her idea of reasonable. So have I. The Nordstrom windows are far from our reality today, and we find ourselves happily crossing the threshold of thrift store doors more often.

Thrift, or second hand, is a tried and tested form of shopping. More than sixty vintage, thrift, consignment, and resale stores are listed on www.shopvintageportland.com in the Portland-metro area, not including such donation mainstays as Goodwill and Salvation Army. Google lists the number of Portland resale shops in the hundreds. The range of these stores is wide and not only dedicated to clothing. Shops like Lounge Lizard and Deco to Disco, both located on Hawthorne Street, deal in vintage midcentury to modern furniture. Antique jewelry and art can be found at a variety of Portland shops such as Avante Guard Vintage and ReRun, while Smut on Southeast 28th Avenue is the place to find all kinds of used trinkets, like a collection of Garbage Pail Kids or a lightly worn Choose Your Own Adventure book. Vinyl is also sold there, as well as in a dozen or more shops dedicated solely to record resale.

On this day, we walk into Buffalo Exchange on Southeast 37th Avenue and Hawthorne and realize we are not alone. The line to resell clothing is ten people deep. Some people have garbage bags full of items. This bright, recession woe beating idea has occurred to many more than just us. According to Sarah Sherman, a manager at the southeast branch who has worked at a variety of Buffalo Exchange shops, this surge is not uncommon. “This store has been around for a long time,” she says, “I feel like particularly in this town, everybody knows about it.”

With a southeast and a downtown branch, the shop is no secret. Buffalo Exchange is now popular nationwide, having originated in Tuscon, Arizona, in 1974 and just recently expanded to the east coast and New York City. According to Sherman, the Hawthorne shop has been in business for more than twenty years. The success of Buffalo Exchange has led to the opening of other resale chains like Red Light, which opened its doors in Portland in 1999 after a successful start in Seattle.

“We have a really diverse clientele,” Sherman says of the shop’s patrons. “We are shopping for moms, teenagers, punk kids, skaters, jocks—a little bit of everything.” She notes that they look for fashions that are in line with trends in retail. “Within any of those little subgroups we are trying to stay current.” A burgeoning culture of dedicated vintage shoppers thrives in Portland and adds to the diverse resale clientele. These patrons are usually looking for fashions that resemble a certain period or older trend. “There are a lot of people who are really into vintage thrift store stuff,” Sherman says. “People who don’t necessarily want to go to a Goodwill and dig. It is almost like we shop for them.”

Resale shopping is a popular trend in part because it can benefit the environment. Sherman hears people say they feel like they’re making a positive difference. “People feel good shopping here,” she says, “We are pretty involved in the community.” Buffalo Exchange offers bins to donate any items they don’t buy to charity. If you opt not to take a bag for your purchase they will donate five cents to a charity. Local causes such as Animal Aid and Oregon State Parks Trust routinely benefit from these proceeds.

The Red Light, just across the street from Buffalo Exchange on Hawthorne is also aware of the positive environmental effect resale shopping can have. On their website they quote the Environmental Protection Agency in saying, “An estimated 11.8 million tons of textiles were generated in 2006, or five percent of total municipal solid waste generation.” The Red Light adds that “buying and selling used clothing keeps it out of landfills!”

While the positive effect on the environment is a definite benefit of the resale scene, the positive effect on the wallet is the driving force behind the shopping trend. Once buyers determine how much your item might sell for, you can get 35 percent in cash or 50 percent in trade for your item at the Buffalo Exchange. At Red Light, the trade value is emphasized at 55 percent. “We have seen a lot more people selling recently,” Sherman says of the economic climate. “Since the economy took a dive people are really interested in getting money, but people are still interested in getting recycled fashions at a good price.” Regarding whether to choose cash or in-store trade, Sherman adds, “It is still pretty even, but I think a lot of people are looking for the money.”

According to a U.S. Census Bureau report, retail sales for January 2009 are estimated to be 11 percent below those reported in January 2008. This trend is evident in the number of empty store fronts appearing in neighborhoods all over Portland, as well as cities and towns across the nation. Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Association of Resale and Thrift Shops and author of A Guide to Opening A Resale Shop, describes the resale industry as one of the few recession-proof segments of retailing. She notes that the resale industry often does better, even thrives during an economic downturn. “People always love a bargain,” Meyer said in a USA Today interview, “Nowadays, it’s just more necessary.”

Although this necessity is apparent in the crowd of shoppers at Buffalo Exchange this Sunday, Sherman says this recession has been different, worse than others. “We didn’t think we would be [negatively] affected by it,” Sherman says of the recent economic woes. “We typically do really well through recessions. We have taken a small up and down, but it has been sporadic.”

The line winds down to us, and I watch as the buyer picks through my items with a discerning eye. She prices a few items and pitches them into a basket behind the counter. The rest is packed into my bags and handed back to me—it is my choice to donate the remainders to charity or to try my luck at another resale shop. Figuring that in this economy someone out there certainly has it worse off than I, I drop my remaining items in the donation bins. At the checkout counter I get in line to obtain my newly earned cash, listening as the seller ahead of me also opts for cold, hard cash over the 50 percent trade incentive. She has a baby in a stroller and a toddler gripping her pants. Beside the stroller sits an overstuffed garbage bag. It looks as though most of her items didn’t make the resale cut. There are rents to be paid and mouths to feed. I glance back into the shop and see my roommate in the shoe section looking at a pair of flats oddly similar to those she just traded in. Those unwanted gold flats were scooped up, priced, and tossed into the bin to be distributed on the selling floor. My roommate’s scrap is sure to be another’s score.

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Lauren Saxton manages a medical publication at Oregon Health and Science University, but likes to moonlight in the literary world during her time off. When not at Portland State University scraping together a master's degree in publishing, Lauren might be found at a Portland coffee shop with her head in a book or skimming the racks at a thrift shop looking for clothing to reconstruct.