Secondhand Experience

Drummond now owns The Hoarding Marmot. When he was setting up the business in 2015, his real estate agent convinced him that Northern Lights and Spenard was the right place, not just because of the sporting goods strip but because of the secondhand neighbors. “The ecosystem, the culture, and similar businesses are here,” he says.

Anywhere first-run retail has a foothold, a secondhand store is part of the economy. Willow has one. Talkeetna has one. Bethel has a few. But nowhere in the state is so much secondhand as close at hand as in Spenard.

Lifehack or Lifestyle?

Shoppers not only spend less on clothes, furniture, books, toys, outdoor gear, and more; they can make some extra cash by unloading household surplus. Secondhand stores provide multiple opportunities to stretch household budgets.

During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, Winmark CEO John Morgan stated that people were more likely to sell used clothing to make money and buy used clothing to save money. Thus, the Plato’s Closet business line, dealing in brand name apparel for teenagers and young adults, weathered the economic downturn best.

Pre-owned books are another easy bargain. Libal says Title Wave typically sells for half price or less. “If you’ve got kids in school and they’re having to do lots of reading,” she says, “they’re blazing through ten or fifteen books in a week. Do that with two kids or three kids, all of a sudden it’s really expensive.” By making books affordable, Libal figures Title Wave is promoting a lifelong love of reading.

“Thrifting is trendy right now,” Clancey observes. “A lot of people may attribute the trend to the ‘young people’ looking for cool vintage apparel, but as a local store owner I would say it’s appealing to so many more than that. People over 60 are a huge part of our base, and every age group in between shops with us too.”

Part of the appeal, she believes, is reducing the impact of consumption. “When they thrift, they are giving items a second life instead of items heading to the dumpster,” Clancey adds. “It may sound obvious, but if consumers weren’t willing to come spend their money on secondhand purchases, so many items would go to the landfill.”

Another aspect is the shopping experience itself. “You never know what you are going to find, and seeing all the things brings you joy as you browse,” Clancey says. “For example, we just had in a Bob Ross waffle maker that makes waffles in the shape of his head. It sold fast, and something else completely unique went in its place.”

Libal knows the thrift hobbyist type. “I’ve got a couple friends that live in the neighborhood and know all of the used shops and all of the thrift stores outside of Spenard,” she says. “They make a weekly rotation of, you know, ‘I’m not looking for anything in particular, but I never know what I’m going to find.’”

More serious thrifters practice arbitrage: they buy an asset for a low price and then find a buyer who will pay more. Another friend of Libal fits this mold, hunting for vintage trucker hats to sell online for a profit. She gets flippers at Title Wave too. “We do see a fair amount of folks who do it as a profession, but I’d say the bulk of our customers are families and individuals wanting to turn things over for their own library or collection,” Libal says.

The Hoarding Marmot sometimes takes in goods that have already resold for less. “We have people that hit Goodwill [Industries Alaska], Value Village, and Bishop’s Attic every day (or as much as they possibly can), or they’re buying stuff in bulk,” Drummond says. “They make a little money off of it.”

The store must balance a fair return for consignors while keeping prices low for shoppers. “We want to be seen as an affordable place to get some of this expensive equipment and clothing that’s a barrier for people to get into the activities that we facilitate,” Drummond says. Affordable doesn’t mean cheap; without disparaging thrift stores, Drummond says that’s not what The Hoarding Marmot is.

Discerning Buyers

Not every secondhand store is a thrift store, which connotes a lower tier of retail. And, importantly, not every thrift store sells secondhand merchandise. Items at 907 Overstock, for example, have never been used before. Overstock is defined as excess inventory discarded by a manufacturer or distributor, usually because warehousing the unsold goods costs more than liquidating them to a willing seller.

In publishing, overstock books are called “remainders,” and some of those unread copies end up at Title Wave. Libal says, “New books are more expensive. A publisher sells [remaindered books] to us at maybe 50 percent off cover price. For used merchandise, we’re not paying cover price to customers [at the intake counter]; we’re paying them about half of what we sell it for.”

Libal does not consider Title Wave to be a thrift store. “We want things to be in good condition. Good, for us, means no highlighting, no broken bindings, no rips or tears. Occasionally we might decide to take something that’s a little rough around the edges,” she says. “We pay a little less for it, and then we mark that on the sticker ‘condition noted,’ and it’s marked down.”

Something that’s too rough is simply rejected, which Libal admits can lead to friction when donors expect compensation. All staff are trained to work at the intake counter, and saying “no” is part of the job. Libal says, “We can’t have this slush pile of space set aside to deal with other people’s unwanted things, essentially trash for both parties.”

Items that Title Wave rejects during processing go to nonprofits supporting seniors and children. Some books might end up at thrift stores.

“We prefer to be discerning,” Libal says. “We want to buy things that we are able to sell. If we cannot sell it, we won’t buy it.”

Cash, Credit, or Consignment

Buying from walk-in customers is not the only way that secondhand and thrift stores acquire inventory, but the approach works well for Title Wave.

Libal figures about 95 percent of the store’s used inventory came from customers. “Our intake counter is open six days a week. Cash is always an option; you get about two and a half times more in credit than in cash. We’ve always felt it was important to offer cash,” she says.

Of course, the option of store credit builds customer loyalty. “We always have operated under the model that if you have $25 of store credit, then you have $25 to spend in the bookstore,” Libal says.

Instead of cash or credit on the spot, The Hoarding Marmot takes items on consignment. “We don’t pay them unless the gear gets sold. There’s no money exchanged up front,” Drummond explains.

Consignment makes sense for items that, unlike books, have no retail price printed on the cover. Pricing takes research or experience. “We have a big volume of stuff coming in here, and I don’t know how to give [store staff] the agency to make those purchase decisions without basically low-balling,” Drummond says. “That would work fine for some people; they’re just happy for their stuff to be gone.”

Another reason not to pay cash up front is to discourage anyone trying to peddle stolen property. He’s constantly on the lookout for shady characters. “You make a surface judgment on someone, and you go, ‘Eh, none of this is really checking out.’ I don’t want to be a fencing location,” Drummond says.

Consignors must wait for a payday, but not terribly long, thanks to a steady flow of shoppers. Drummond says, “A really good scenario is, like, a week. If it’s a bike, we don’t have room to store those… Occasionally, that’s the same day.” The bottleneck, he adds, is not the dwell time on the shelf but the delay in processing the merchandise when it arrives. Intake can get backed up in busy seasons.

Some thrift stores pay nothing at all; donated items are essentially contributions to the fundraising aims of a charitable cause. At FashionPact, though, Clancey is pioneering a hybrid approach. Her shop allocates 30 percent of every purchase to a local charity. The donor picks a nonprofit “ally” for half of the payout, and the buyer designates the other half.

“From what I know, FashionPact is the first business with this model,” Clancey says. She could have budgeted 30 percent for cash or credit to donors (or some margin for pure profit), but she believes the charitable angle adds value for FashionPact patrons and drives people into her shops.

“I think our locals thrift because they know their money goes directly into our community,” says Clancey. “Everyone’s favorite secondhand stores are the local ones, and Alaskans care deeply about community.”

New Becomes Used

Alongside merchandise that countless hands have owned, secondhand and thrift stores in Spenard also stock more conventional retail items. The front end at Title Wave, for example, displays puzzles, games, and gifts that have never been unwrapped before.

Roughly 10 percent of clothing and toys at Once Upon a Child are new, and Play It Again Sports allows up to 70 percent of the inventory at its franchises to be new.

The Hoarding Marmot also has items that don’t make sense to resell from previous owners, like food, spare parts, or repair kits. Drummond says his challenge is to figure out what those items are and buy them wholesale. He explains, “Everybody’s got their comfort level with what is an acceptable thing to buy used: a base layer, a piece of mountaineering equipment, a hat, gloves—some people are like, ‘It doesn’t look bad; I’ll wash it and be happy with it.’ Other people are like, ‘I’m just never gonna buy used X, Y, or Z.”

The mix of new and used inventory has shifted since Drummond started The Hoarding Marmot. “Initially, it was maybe 10 percent new, 90 percent used. Right now, from a gross sales standpoint, we’re generally more 70 or 75 percent used, 25 or 30 percent new on any given day,” he says. However, he’s also seen shops trending the other way, adding consigned or used items to otherwise 100 percent new retail, given the ease of online selling.

Title Wave supplements used books with a curated selection of new material. Libal says demand for Alaskana often outpaces intake, so the store will order new guidebooks or maps. “We look at the areas of the store that might be underrepresented by used merchandise coming in,” she says, recalling the sudden demand in 2020 for backyard chicken manuals.

Drummond adds that new merchandise might return to the store when the firsthand owner is finished with it. “You have people who would never buy something used, but they drop off their used stuff. Then they have store credit, and they can spend that in the store,” he says.

The Hoarding Marmot also has plenty of regular customers who only buy, never sell. According to Drummond, “They’re sort of the end of the road for the equipment. These are people that, ideally, never buy new; they use the thing until it’s in the ground.”

Whether in Spenard or anywhere else, secondhand and thrift stores form a link in the consumption chain. Thanks to these merchants, a tennis racket or a rain jacket with a little more useful life can find a new home with a budget-conscious shopper.