Second Chance Thrift Shop Update

The Second Chance Thrift Shop has taken over nearly half of the Foothills Community Center. The planned building expansion project will solve this issue by adding a 6,250 sq. ft. addition to the back of the building.

​by Russ Alman, Communications Director — 

It has been a couple of years since our last update on our Second Chance Thrift Shop. I thought it would be helpful to talk with our store manager, Shannon Port, to address some of the Thrift Shop’s current needs, and also answer some common questions we field in person and on social media.

The Thrift Shop needs additional staff and volunteers. Some current employees will be leaving at the end of the summer and will need to be replaced. These will be primarily cashier positions, 20-25 hours per week, working three shifts on a rotating schedule. Applicants should be willing to work Monday through Saturday. “They are cashier positions, unless I found somebody that… has a little experience with pricing stuff that could jump right into a role like that,” Shannon said.

Listen to the interview on our Spotify podcast.

“I’m also looking for volunteers to do like three hour days one day a week or two days a week, and those times are 9-12 or 1-4,” Shannon said. Volunteers will be “sorting clothes, hanging clothes, tagging clothes, steaming clothes…” Shannon laughed. “It’s a lot of clothes! Clothes are our biggest seller, so there is definitely a need for that all the time.”

If you or someone you know is interest in paid or volunteer positions, please see Shannon in person.

Quality of donations is an ongoing issue. The Thrift Shop is appreciative of the amount of donations that the community brings; however, it’s important that people use discretion. The reality is that a significant amount of the donations we receive are not in saleable condition.

“We lost our place that we used to send stuff to recycle clothing, so we don’t have an outsource anymore for clothes that are ripped and stained, dirty. We don’t do much laundry here, so everything needs to come in clean,” Shannon explained. “A lot of the clothes right now — I hate to say it — but they’re going in the garbage because we get a lot of stuff, unfortunately, that is just not usable.”

“We wash a little bit of the dishes [that are donated], but a lot of times when stuff comes in so dirty, it’s just not worth the time it takes to clean them,” Shannon said. 

It’s very time consuming and it’s not cost-effective, especially with our limited staff and volunteers. Items that are chipped or broken cannot be sold. All of this extra garbage is a huge expense for Foothills Community Center. “We spend over $14,000 per year on garbage pickup and nearly 75 percent of that comes from discarded Thrift Shop donations,” said Lisa Blair, Executive Director of Foothills Community Center. “We very much appreciate the donations people bring us, but we ask that they avoid bringing us items that are damaged, broken or beyond their usable life.”

“We got our dumpster emptied last night, and we probably have it at least halfway full already,” Shannon said. “We just had to go to a bigger dumpster. And we share that with our kitchen. The kitchen has priority because of meeting health codes, so we’re the ones that end up sitting on our garbage if it can’t fit in there.”

Overflowing garbage is also a security issue for the Center. There are people who roam the neighborhood after hours and break into the garbage to take things, leaving a mess.

For the same reason, it's important that people do not leave donations after hours. Leaving items in front of the donation area attracts thieves. 

The Thrift Shop accepts donations from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Monday through Friday. They do not accept donations on Saturdays due to limited staff. The donation area is at Suite D, which is the farthest door on the right side of the building. There is an A-board indicating the location.

Donation restrictions. There are times when the Thrift Shop receives donations faster than they can be processed. Unfortunately, this means that they occasionally need to restrict donations of certain items. For example, for most of last June, they were unable to accept clothing. Due to limited space and personnel, they only have so much room for intake and processing.

We understand that this can be frustrating. When there is an extended restriction, we post the details on our social media accounts and on the Thrift Shop page on our website at foothillscenter.com/thriftshop. 

Pricing at the Thrift Shop has not changed. “Very few things have changed with our pricing since I’ve been here. That’s 13 years since we really haven’t made any big changes,” Shannon said. “We’ve never sat down and and decided we were going to increase our prices. It could just be that maybe we’re getting some nicer things and there are higher quality items that we are putting out.” Name brand, designer clothing, for example is going to demand a higher price than lower-quality, discount brands.

“We want to sell stuff and we want to move stuff, so we try to be real reasonable,” Shannon said.
The Thrift Shop also sometimes receives “vintage” items, collectibles of higher value, and those are priced after researching their market value.

For example, most drinking glasses in the store are priced at 50 cents. However, there are some collector glasses and ones from the 1950s. There is a collector’s market for these and they are priced higher. Even then, these items are priced lower than online venues, like eBay.

Is there a schedule for sales? The short answer is no, sales are not usually planned far in advance. Instead, Shannon decides on sales based on incoming donations vs. how inventory is moving.

At the same time, it’s a safe bet to expect sales during certain times of year. For example, by mid-summer, the Thrift Shop typically discounts summer clothing to make room for fall clothing. This year in particular, they received so many donations of summer clothes that they have been running a 50 percent off sale on summer clothes for over a month.

Also, the last few days before and the week following a major holiday, remaining themed items for that holiday are sold at a discount.

The Thrift Shop no longer has dressing rooms. A few years ago, Shannon made the difficult decision to close the dressing rooms. While this can be frustrating to shoppers, it was necessary for security reasons. 

“We had a limit of three items. People never listened to that. Our dressing rooms were clear around the corner so we can’t watch them,” Shannon said.

“We also had a lot of theft in there unfortunately. I need one volunteer all day just to deal with the dressing rooms. I have so many other things that take priority. Without having someone to monitor them, it was a big loss for us.” She laughed, “If somebody wanted to volunteer to just manage the dressing rooms, that would be great.”

The building expansion project will resolve many issues. Once Foothills Community Center has completed its planned building expansion, it will create a large, open retail space that will resolve many of the issues currently facing the Thrift Shop.

For example, the shop currently uses a number of converted activity rooms, which creates a very difficult floor space to manage. Having one large retail space will be more efficient and secure. It will also dramatically increase available square footage.

“I didn’t make a lot of friends after [the Center reopened from the COVID-19 pandemic] because I took over so many rooms. But our Thrift Shop makes a lot of money. Each room that I have is worth thousands of dollars a month,” Shannon said.

In fact, the Thrift Shop generates nearly two-thirds of the revenue needed to operate the Community Center. Without it, the Center couldn’t exist.