26 Aug September at Experienced Goods Thrift Shop

by Jennie Reichman

It happened in early August while I was out on my morning run, an incongruent splotch of scarlet on the grey pavement at my feet. Summer was in full swing, the air was warm and humid at 6:30 am, but there on the ground was a small, brilliant red maple leaf. I stopped running, picked it up and turned it over in my hand, fascinated. Then I put it in my pocket, out of sight, out of mind, denial is 90 percent of pretending that summer will last forever. That first harbinger of fall, early as it was, got me to thinking about the ritual of going back to school as a child after a luxurious 3 months off. Sometime in August my mom and I would start shopping for school clothes for me, and as I grew into a fashion conscious teenager who wanted to dress just like my friends did, we had some epic arguments about everything from the length of my skirts to the style of my shoes and whether Levi’s button fly 501s were appropriate school attire. When I started working at summer jobs at around age 15 I had my own money to spend on clothes, and the long arm of my mom’s law had a little less influence. But from childhood on she had also raised me on thrift store shopping, so I was no stranger to the fun of the hunt for stylish clothes at bargain prices, culled from the racks of local second hand stores.

Great clothes for our teen shoppers

Here at Experienced Goods, it’s always fun to watch teenagers shop. They often travel in packs and shopping is a group activity involving a lot of giggling and playing dress-up, assuming varying personas with each new outfit. Even in this strange new era of masks and social distancing, they manage to make shopping here into an impromptu performance. It’s hard not to want to join in, and it definitely generates smiles behind the masks of those of us over the age of 20. It shines a light on the potential for fun and joy during trying times.

As I write, we are just passing the month and a half mark of being open after 4 months of quarantine. After the herculean effort of restructuring and reinventing the store to meet Covid-19 safety protocols, we have been delighted and humbled by the overwhelmingly positive responses we’ve heard about how the store looks and feels. Every day customers tell us how happy they are that we are open, how much they missed us, and how clean and safe the store seems. People love the new floor layout designed to allow for social distancing, and have commented that the clutter and feeling of disorder has been greatly reduced. Merchandise is easily visible and enticingly displayed. Experienced Goods has always been a place where people come for “retail therapy,” but now we seem to be an oasis of calm relaxation in an anxious and chaotic world.

From the perspective of the staff at the store, the appreciation goes both ways. We are

Try a fun new bracelet

so thankful to our loyal customers who patiently waited for us to reopen and now have been supporting us in spades by shopping with enthusiasm. With very few exceptions, shoppers have been compliant with all safety protocols, even when those protocols are inconvenient or hard to get used to. No dressing rooms? No problem! Separate doors for entering and exiting the store? Happy to walk a few extra feet. It seems to have had no impact on shoppers’ enjoyment of the store or willingness to support Brattleboro Area Hospice with their purchases. Somehow out of all of this adversity we have hit upon a formula for running a store during a pandemic that may just be the best incarnation of Experienced Goods yet. Every day after the store closes and the staff spends an hour cleaning and organizing for the next day, we talk about how the day went and what we need to tweak, what we could do better or make more user friendly. It always comes down to this: Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, the totals from the cash register tape are encouragingly high, and we are grateful for the community that loves and supports the store and the organization. Living through a pandemic, you take things day by day, doing the best you can and knowing that the future is uncertain. So far each day at Experienced Goods has been a bright spot, much like that pretty red leaf, a hopeful indicator of a community that pulls together, adapts and evolves.