29 Jul August at Experienced Goods Thrift Shop

by Jennie Reichman

Hello, and welcome to Experienced Goods! Face mask? Check. Hand sanitizer? Check. Willingness to maintain the six-foot distance protocol? Check. So excited to be shopping again at the world’s best thrift store you can barely stand it? Double check!! On Tuesday, July 7, Experienced Goods reopened after being closed for almost 3 ½ months due to the Covid-19 pandemic and statewide lockdown order. It was a long period of thrift shop abstinence for our devoted customers, and at 9:30 on the morning of the 7th, there was a line outside the front door waiting for us to open at 10. Customers entered to find the same wonderful thrift store they remembered, but much improved. Clothing racks are spaced farther apart and are less tightly packed. Housewares, books, jewelry and linens are neatly displayed and organized to allow shoppers to look without crowding each other. Helpful signs inform shoppers of prices and store entrance and exit directions. Surfaces and door handles are clean and sterilized to the best of our ability. The time capsule that was Experienced Goods for 14 weeks has been unlocked and we are back in business.
We who work at the shop saw this time of quarantine as an opportunity: A time to rethink how Experienced Goods operates and is organized, how best to comply with the new protocols designed to keep shoppers and staff safe, and how to creatively reinvent the store so shopping and working there is both fun and healthy. We spent many hours brainstorming and designing the new and improved Experienced Goods. There were several long discussions with staff, ideas were floated, long-held desires for inventing a more efficient, streamlined store were considered, new systems invented. Eric made beautiful, hand-lettered signs for the clothing racks and yours truly wrote a couple of press releases to keep the public informed as to when we would open and what would be changing.
Arguably the biggest change we made was to move donations away from the retail store and to a separate facility at 80 Flat Street, the C.F. Church Building. We reduced donation hours to Tuesdays only from 11 am – 3pm, which allows us to better monitor the influx of donations and allow them to sit untouched for 2 weeks before sorting, pricing and displaying them in the retail space. It also minimizes the direct contact staff has with donors and allows us to focus our energy on maintaining a clean, well-organized store, minus the giant mountains of goods that had taken over the sorting room in the past. Some things have changed about how we receive and process donations, so if anyone has questions about anything regarding donations or how and when to donate items, please call Experienced Goods at 802-254-5200 during regular business hours. A staff person will be happy to answer your queries and explain any changes or new developments.
We also restructured our work hours. The store is open from 10 am – 4 pm Tuesday through Saturday, but staff arrives at 9 am each morning to assess the need for fresh product on the floor and organize the retail space. We all stay for an hour after the store closes to clean and sterilize all areas that customers and staff have physical contact with, and to prepare product for the next day. This system has worked incredibly well so far, not only giving us a chance to clean and organize the store, but to talk about the events of the day, discuss what is working and what needs tweaking.
As with any new or reconfigured endeavor, we all had the jitters about opening day. Would customers be willing to wear masks and use hand sanitizer? Would they be upset that we took away the dressing rooms in the interest of avoiding virus transmission? Would they shop 6 feet away from each other? Would they understand why we were closed for so long and would they be disappointed that we had reduced our daily hours of operation? Would they understand why we are limiting the store capacity to 20 shoppers and 5 staff members? Happily, all of our worries were put to rest within the first hour of being open. Customers expressed over and over how happy they were that we had reopened, how much they missed us, how great the store looked and felt. There have been very few instances of someone entering the store without a mask or refusing to wear a mask, and each time they have been willing to comply after a short, friendly discussion with a staff member. Shoppers and staff are all complying with safety protocols and have adapted smoothly to the new routines. It’s left all of us feeling like this pandemic has allowed us to create the best version of Experienced Goods yet, created out of necessity in the face of a crisis, and able to carry us into the future better than ever.