It's not 'all just charity shops now', or at least it soon won't be
Sunday 28 September 2025 at 05:29
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For years, both on social media and in the real world, whenever two people have had a conversaton about the fall of the high street you can guarantee that at some point one party would say to the other 'it's all just charity shops now'.
'It's all just charity shops' has never been uttered in a positive sense, but rather that the high street has fallen. All of the known retail chains are long since gone and all that we are left with is donated clothes and, maybe, new items linked with the charity's primary cause.
It's been a phrase used because, along with Turkish barbers and vape shops, it is commonly believed the fate of the high street just can't fall any lower.
But, and it may have passed you by, the high street can fall lower and it is already doing so as charity shops now start to close.
The disabled people's charity Scope is now well into the process of closing 77 of its 148 shops. Earlier this year the head of the Charity Retail Association said across the top four charity retailers (the British Heart Foundation, Barnardo’s, Cancer Research UK and Oxfam) that challenges in maintain a retail portfolio abound.
There is a perfect storm in the sector. Bills are increasing, whether that is rent, energy or employer's national insurance and donations are reducing as donors sell their clothes on Vinted and other platforms, simply put what is coming in through the door isn't as good as it used to be.
Anyone can see, and rightly so, that charity shops are not run on the same budgets as high end department stores but they do have to break even, especially as charities are effectively underwriting the risk.
The CRA chief Robin Osterley outlined that charity shops generate around £1.4 billion turnover annually with around a third of that going to their parent charities, the challenge is that like for like store income is down marginally at the minute. Clearly stores vary, as do charity operating models, but it's not hard to see in that perfect storm the charitable income dwindling away completely and the charities themselves, rightly, are starting to plan accordingly. Of course a charity should never contemplate subsidising a retail operation, that just isn't their purpose.
What can be done about it?
From our perspective potentially nothing.
As individuals we have little agency in changing national insurance levels or the price of energy bills. We're also human, and let's face it, for most of us donating stuff to the charity shop was always about getting rid of stuff the we didn't want with an implied halo of doing good, but now in these tough times we can make a few quid on Vinted, well that is different too.
And, of course, the same goes for shopping in a charity shop. Who wants to spend hours finding a hidden gem amongst the duds in a charity shop when you can filter and search in seconds on an app?
So, it's very likely that in the next few years when talking about the high street we won't be making those asides about 'it's all just charity shops now' because they will be gone too.
Maybe it's time to stop talking about regenerating the high street, and start talking about what should replace them?
It's not 'all just charity shops now', or at least it soon won't be
For years, both on social media and in the real world, whenever two people have had a conversaton about the fall of the high street you can guarantee that at some point one party would say to the other 'it's all just charity shops now'.
'It's all just charity shops' has never been uttered in a positive sense, but rather that the high street has fallen. All of the known retail chains are long since gone and all that we are left with is donated clothes and, maybe, new items linked with the charity's primary cause.
It's been a phrase used because, along with Turkish barbers and vape shops, it is commonly believed the fate of the high street just can't fall any lower.
But, and it may have passed you by, the high street can fall lower and it is already doing so as charity shops now start to close.
The disabled people's charity Scope is now well into the process of closing 77 of its 148 shops. Earlier this year the head of the Charity Retail Association said across the top four charity retailers (the British Heart Foundation, Barnardo’s, Cancer Research UK and Oxfam) that challenges in maintain a retail portfolio abound.
There is a perfect storm in the sector. Bills are increasing, whether that is rent, energy or employer's national insurance and donations are reducing as donors sell their clothes on Vinted and other platforms, simply put what is coming in through the door isn't as good as it used to be.
Anyone can see, and rightly so, that charity shops are not run on the same budgets as high end department stores but they do have to break even, especially as charities are effectively underwriting the risk.
The CRA chief Robin Osterley outlined that charity shops generate around £1.4 billion turnover annually with around a third of that going to their parent charities, the challenge is that like for like store income is down marginally at the minute. Clearly stores vary, as do charity operating models, but it's not hard to see in that perfect storm the charitable income dwindling away completely and the charities themselves, rightly, are starting to plan accordingly. Of course a charity should never contemplate subsidising a retail operation, that just isn't their purpose.
What can be done about it?
From our perspective potentially nothing.
As individuals we have little agency in changing national insurance levels or the price of energy bills. We're also human, and let's face it, for most of us donating stuff to the charity shop was always about getting rid of stuff the we didn't want with an implied halo of doing good, but now in these tough times we can make a few quid on Vinted, well that is different too.
And, of course, the same goes for shopping in a charity shop. Who wants to spend hours finding a hidden gem amongst the duds in a charity shop when you can filter and search in seconds on an app?
So, it's very likely that in the next few years when talking about the high street we won't be making those asides about 'it's all just charity shops now' because they will be gone too.
Maybe it's time to stop talking about regenerating the high street, and start talking about what should replace them?