RANDOLPH — Ten minutes before the doors opened, a line of a dozen or so customers had already formed outside Gifford Medical Center Auxiliary Thrift Shop in Randolph on a gray September morning.
When the clock struck 10 a.m., customers quickly filed inside. Some beelined for a table of Halloween decorations, others disappeared behind racks of clothes and $3 pairs of shoes. Still more paused to peruse rows of glass vases marked $1, used kitchenware, books, mugs for 50 cents and antique ephemera going for a couple bucks.
At first, the small store was quiet as customers scanned the items on display. But it wasn’t long before regulars and store volunteers began to catch up with one another amid the shopping.
“I come for the fellowship,” said Marcia Eaton, a retired Randolph resident who stops by the store about five times a week. Eaton also comes for the deals, which in her mind are part of what makes the Gifford store “the best thrift shop for miles around.”
For many, especially families in need, shopping at thrift stores such as the one in Randolph has long been a way to source clothes and household goods at an affordable price.
But for some, visiting thrift shops, or their cousin, vintage boutiques, is more than an occasional errand, it’s a dedicated pastime. Generation Z’s environmentally conscious shopping habits have only made the trend grow.
In the Upper Valley, the options for secondhand goods are vast and varied. The scene appears to be in a state of flux, with a number of traditional thrift shops shuttering in recent years while vintage boutiques have set up shop in their place.
Still, a cohort of dedicated shoppers have remained.
Located on the same lot as the medical center, the Gifford shop is one of the Upper Valley thrift stores that often draws a crowd. Founded in 1906 as the Randolph Sanatorium Ladies Aid Society, the store has remained faithful to the original notion of what a thrift store is: a charity or nonprofit-run enterprise where people in need can source clothing and household items at an affordable price.
Prices at the store typically hover around a couple dollars, or less. Profits go to funding the medical center.
“You have to have the community in mind when you do that,” store employee Hannah LaPlaca said of the shop’s low prices.
“It’s a real community-based space,” she said.
Among the store’s dedicated following of shoppers is Kenny Benoir, 64, of Randolph, who treats the space like an art supply shop. On that September morning, Benoir had stumbled on a bag of Lincoln Logs he planned to use on one of his bird houses, which he sells to friends.
In the past, he’s bought antique tea cups at the store to turn into candleholders. He estimates he’s made about 20 of them at this point, and a number of whirligigs, too.
“My house looks like a museum,” he said.
For customers who are retired, the Gifford store offers an opportunity to socialize and build structure into their day.
It’s “part of people’s social schedule to come through and that’s what makes it amazing,” said Ann Hunt, a community health worker at Gifford who’d stopped by on her break to scope out the Halloween decor.
She often tries to source holiday decorations at the store. “That way you’re not buying new stuff,” she said.
Tough margins
While thrift shops like Gifford’s auxiliary store have the infrastructure to maintain a steady flow of business and donations, several independently-owned businesses have recently closed their doors.
Among them are the Thrifty Fox in South Royalton and Consign and Design in West Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Gail Egner is on the fence about whether to keep the lights on at Uplifting Thrifting, her storefront in the train station in White River Junction.
A practice manager at a recovery center and a member of Hanover dispatch, running the store for the past six years has been Egner’s “happy heart project.”
She’ll often work directly with families in need within area school districts who are looking for shoes and apparel.
Usually Egner makes enough to cover the store’s monthly rent of over $1,800, but sometimes she’s had to pay some of it out of pocket.
Things have gotten tougher in the past month or so, since a construction project at the train station has caused foot traffic to slow and blocked customer parking. Some days, she makes just $40 in sales.
On top of that, the Town of Hartford precludes street advertising, so directing people to the store, which sits slightly off White River Junction’s main drag, has proved a challenge.
Egner recently reduced the store’s hours of operation to some weekends while she decides what to do next.
Curated selections
While some Upper Valley thrift stores are struggling, a handful of secondhand boutiques touting a more curated selection, often with a higher price tag, have recently set up shop.
In August, Lyme couple Kristyn and Greg Smith opened vintage and sustainable clothing store Rue and Ren on South Main Street in White River Junction, just a short walk from Uplifting Thrifting.
The Smiths both enjoy the challenge of rummaging through a thrift store’s supply for a rare or specialty item at a low price. Sometimes they play a game where they each pick an item out of a Goodwill bin and see who can make a bigger sale.
But they recognize that not everyone shares their passion for the hunt. “So that’s what this shop is kind of for: People who like that look or like that vibe, but they don’t want to go dig around for maybe a piece,” Kristyn Smith said.
A native of Maine, Kristyn Smith has been thrifting since high school. She runs Lucky Star Stables in Lyme in addition to Rue and Ren.
In college, she sold shoes on eBay to pay for her own horse, whom she named after the website. For his show name, she chose Buy It Now. Selling vintage clothes online helped her cover the cost of caring for her horse as well as other daily expenses.
By now she’s amassed a big enough inventory to stock the store for about a year. “I like to dig, and I like to find treasures. But I don’t want to keep the treasures,” she said.
The store’s prices run the gamut from $25 for a graphic T-shirt to $70 for a men’s L.L. Bean jacket and $200 for certain vintage sweaters. In general, the couple tries to price items below the going rate on eBay in order to keep stock moving.
Rue and Ren also carries clothes from 10 or so vendors who pay a monthly fee to rent rack space at $100 a rack. Vendors have to sell enough to cover their rent, otherwise, after two months, they’re asked to make way for someone new.
“If you want this type of curated vintage, you go to Boston or Burlington. There’s nothing in between. So that’s kind of our aim, to be that in between,” Kristyn Smith said.
Co-owners Madison Boardman and Bar Dadon have a similar goal for their vintage store, Mahshu, which they opened in Woodstock a little over a year ago.
Like the Smiths, the couple got their start selling secondhand finds online, mainly through Instagram, before opening a small storefront in Enfield and eventually moving to the Woodstock location, a ground floor unit on Maxham Meadow Way, just outside of town, that they purchased for $200,000.
A Stevens High School alum, Boardman, 30, would often rummage through the dense collection of knickknacks at a nearby secondhand store during lunch.
“I got really drawn into finding things,” she said.
Dadon, meanwhile, grew up enmeshed in skate and snowboarding culture in Worcester, Mass.
“Skateboarding isn’t a mainstream thing, so you didn’t want to be wearing what the masses are wearing,” he said.
His family didn’t have a lot of money, so shopping at thrift stores became an affordable way to build his own style. Even if something wasn’t his size or vibe, he’d pick it up for a friend who might like it.
After years of rifling through estate sales, yard sales, thrift stores and online shops, the couple have become experts in unearthing vintage finds.
“I can spot a pair of Carhartt’s through the aisle,” Dadon said.
They’ve both noticed prices increase at area thrift stores in recent years, while the quality of the clothes has diminished.
“I feel like people have caught on to the trend of vintage and that has made a lot of secondhand skyrocket,” Boardman said.
“It’s really frustrating,” Dadon said, to devote time to rummaging through racks of clothes for a high quality item only to find that the thrift store has already marked up the price.
“Why did I just spend all my time looking through the rack? I could have just gone to a curated store, saved my time and shopped a nice collection,” he said.
The clothes at Mahshu represent a version of that nice collection. The compact store is filled with stacks of Levi’s 501 jeans, graphic T-shirts, vintage designer sweaters, secondhand lace tops, denim vests, trucker hats and retro Dartmouth crew necks.
A few weeks ago, a sale rack at the front of the store offered one item for $25 and two items for $40. Other pieces, like their selection of Levi’s, sell for $100 or more, and one-of-a-kind and designer garments creep into the $500 range.
The store’s main clientele include Woodstock tourists traveling from New York, Boston and Texas.
The couple often joke that they opened the store to make friends, Boardman said, and they hope to host social events in the space in the future.
Mahshu “fills some void that I think we both have just being in rural America,” Dadon said.
Clean outs
While the Gifford store offers low prices through a charity model, and Rue and Ren and Mahshu sell a handpicked, albeit pricier selection of vintage goods, KIS Thrift, short for Keep It Simple, in Wilder, is built around the business’ clean out operation.
In 2021, couple Sam Freihofer and Margaret Pridgen started offering a clean out service at people’s homes after watching their own family and others’ be overwhelmed by the process of downsizing as parents enter old age.
The couple started selling the unwanted items — furniture, clothes, home goods — at a small storefront in Hartford Village. In March they moved to a larger space on Hartford Avenue in Wilder that they purchased for $800,000.
In August, the business completed their 1,000th clean out.
While KIS is a for-profit endeavor, the store generally keeps its prices pretty low to ensure people in need can get what they’re looking for and to keep stock moving.
The store is chock-full with kitchen appliances, work tools, furniture, blankets, clothes and wall art. Bookshelves against one the walls advertise five books for $1.
Store manager and former Valley News editor Maggie Cassidy noted that as much as KIS is a place to source household goods at a reasonable price, it’s also a “third space” for people to hangout and socialize.
Wilder resident Lily Hempt, 39 stops by KIS multiple times a day to browse and chat with the store’s employees. “If I’m not working, I’m coming here,” she said.
Hempt grew up attending auctions and antique sales with her mom. Now a jewelry maker, she finds inspiration in the antique textiles, books and magazines she discovers at KIS.
“It’s the treasure hunt,” that appeals, she said, and at KIS, she always knows she’ll find something good.
Hempt also has made a thrifting friend through her trips to KIS. The two join each other on thrifting runs, and he’s helped answer questions about certain items that come across their path.
Their outings reflect LaPlaca’s observation at the Gifford store that September morning that thrift stores offer “Good, clean fun…You don’t have to break the bank to put a smile on someone’s face.”