For anyone who loves shopping for second hand items at a discounted price, the City of Langley really is “the place to be.”
Stores are popping up all over town, featuring shelves lined with stacks of used plates, tiny trinkets and old CDs, and racks adorned with gently used shirts, outgrown pants and slightly walked-in shoes.
Within the City’s 10 square-km area, there are 10 dedicated thrift stores, and that number increases to 14 when including pawn shops and second hand stores, according to data provided by the City’s business licences department.
That’s roughly one shop per 1,800 residents, or one shop every 0.7 kilometres.
The Township of Langley, by comparison, has seven stores for its 110,000 residents, including second hand stores, thrift stores and antiques shops.
Take a quick walk through the City’s downtown core, and the plethora of discount paradises becomes apparent.
The one-block radius of 56 Avenue, between 201A Street and 203 Street, boasts Hope for Children at one end, and the month-old Thrift for Kids at the other.
Not far away are Bibles for Missions (pictured, left), Value Village, Penny Pincher, Fibromyalgia, Thrifter’s Paradise, Boutique Finds, Thrifty Way, Key Largo, Jack’s Pawn Shop, Crazy Bob’s Music Emporium (second hand music outlet), Creative Bookworm (second hand books) and Langley Gold and More Exchange.
“I love thrift shopping,” said Aaron Schneider, owner of Thrift for Kids.
“You never know what you’re going to find — you never know. It’s hidden treasures, and it’s fun.”
Long before opening his own thrift store with his wife, Lin, in February, Schneider had been a treasure hunter in second hand shops. Countless times he’s found valuable items made of gold and silver that many people often pass right over.
But it isn’t just the excitement of finding a good deal that has lured him in. Schneider specifically wanted to open his own thrift store to give back to the community. Like many others in Canada, Thrift for Kids has a charitable arm, with proceeds going to the Langley School District Foundation.
“We’re trying to keep our prices as cheap as possible to help as many people as we can,” Schneider said.
“It’s not only a place for people to find treasure, but it’s also a way people can get things that are still in great condition that they need, but they can’t afford otherwise. Re-use, recycle, right?”
Customers have come in from across the Lower Mainland, Schneider added, with many from Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission, Vancouver, Richmond and White Rock.
“It’s everything. It’s kids to old kids,” he said.
“Langley is kind of becoming a hub for thrifting because it has such a large concentration.”
Thrift for Kids owner Aaron Schneider with his daughters Chelsea and Erica, and wife Lin. Thrift for Kids is one of the latest thrift stores to open in Langley City. Photo by Miranda GATHERCOLE/Langley Times.
The thrift store business model has also proven to be very lucrative for operators.
Penny Pincher, run by the Langley Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, has done so well, it was able to save enough money to purchase the former Coast Capital building on Fraser Highway in May 2015, all while continuing to contribute donations to the hospital, including $500,000 to the new maternity unity.
“(Thrift stores) are the only real way that you could make enough money that you can donate enough and be able to do some good,” Schneider said.
“Other companies, they just have too much overhead. There’s so much cost for their product that, in the end, they’re not actually making that much. Whereas, when everything is donated to you … you basically just have the rent, the gas and the electricity. And there’s a lot left over for being able to help.”
Thrift stores are just one slice of the vibrant non-profit sector in Langley. In fact, across Canada, non-profits are one of the only sectors that have continued to grow steadily since the Second World War, making it the second largest non-profit sector in the world, with over one million full-time paid employees.
“It’s a really interesting sector because it’s going up when other sectors are not,” said Larissa Petrillo, anthropology faculty member at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and program co-ordinator for KPU’s certificate in NGO and nonprofit studies.
“Typically the thrift stores are set up to support non-profit organizations — not always — but often. And so the numbers of non-profit organizations have been increasing steadily over the last 20 years … and at the same time, we see a rise in the social enterprise avenue of non-profit organizations, whereby they have a profit arm to fund the non-profit activities. This has become a trendy way of funding non-profit activities and so a thrift store really suits that mandate very well.”
Although specific numbers of non-profits are hard to track — only Revenue Canada has relevant data and many non-profits are grouped into the same categories as schools and hospitals — Petrillo estimates there are hundreds in Langley and the surrounding region. Even the Greater Langley Chamber of Commerce has created a non-profit committee to help organize them, of which Petrillo is a member.
“(Non-profits are) stepping in to fill gaps when there is an issue around poverty or the environment … and they’re in line with the social values of the baby boomer generation,” Petrillo said.
“It was a generation where they really wanted to help the world and solve social problems … and it connects very well with the youth generation right now, too, who are also very engaged with trying to help social issues.”
Petrillo polled some of her third year NGO students, most of whom are millennials, on why thrift stores are becoming so popular, and many said that the values “mesh with youth culture right now.”
“They termed it ‘upcycling’ which would be the trendy version of recycling,” Petrillo said.
“It supports the idea of sustainability, which for youth today is a really important social value. Then, as well, it serves to support the ‘hipster’ fashion image. There is often a subset of youth culture that is very counter-current and perhaps avoids typical labels and designer trends and so the thrift stores really serve that ability to find something neat, something that they can use to express their identity in a very characteristic way.”
Several students also talked about the feeling of “being able to do social good” when they donated items, regardless if they were directly to a store, or to something more impersonal like a donation bin on a street corner.
“I think it fits in with Canadian values as well,” Petrillo said.
“People want to feel good when they’re buying something, (especially) if they can buy something from a non-profit. We’re increasingly moving to the social enterprise choices instead, and so we’re seeing a real shift and thrift stores are essentially the oldest examples of social enterprises.”
Used glasses marked at 25 cents each line the shelves of Thrift for Kids, one of the newest thrift stores to open in Langley City. Photo by Miranda GATHERCOLE/Langley Times.