Shopgoodwill.com: buy weird crap from the kinds of people that will NEVER use the internet
Tonight, I realized that I now buy nearly everything online. In fact, I really only have IRL shopping experiences at thrift stores, Asian/Mexican bazaars here in the Mission District, or Walgreens (the place that bleeds me dry when I purchase something I need urgently enough not to buy it online). It's impossible to replace the ambience of the bazaars with a website, and Walgreens is necessary for stated reasons, so I decided to look for online thrift stores.
After a quick Google search, I stumbled upon this site, Shopgoodwill.com, and I thought to myself "uh oh... this could be a pretty important find." I made a mental note to blog about it if it were, indeed, a pretty important find. And here we are.
It didn't take me long to find the Men's Clothing section, and I wasn't disappointed to find this:
Mens XL Disco Shirt DESCRIPTION: This shirt needs cleaning.
Then, in the Women's Clothing section, this:
Fake Fur Vest
However, the clothing selection here suffers from the same thing as Goodwill's brick and mortar incarnations: the inverse bell curve. See the following graphs:
As you can see, at Goodwill, more people fit into the 'WTF' size range or the ~0 size than anything else (the second graph). Because of this polarized populace, there are remarkably low numbers of size 'M' people at Goodwill, considering that this is the size most represented in the population as a whole (the first graph). And, I assume as a result of this, the number of size 'M' garments is also dangerously low. This inverse bell curve, I found, applies to both the selection and the people at Shopgoodwill.com.
I left the clothing section behind, happy with what I found there.
At first, the weirdness of the crap I was digging through felt like an adventuresome treasure hunt and yielded hilarious results, like any reasonably good day at the real thrift store. This is a ringing endorsement -- I had found a new hobby! However, as my search went on, the item selection deviated increasingly from the norm:
Newspaper Clip in frame from 1936
Two Old Hand Saws
Oil Painting of a Girl on a Beach
Case of 500 - 3"x2"x2" Boxes
This is brilliant! I'm finding more and more bizarre crap -- the kind that is definitely not available for purchase on other websites, because the people selling this crap aren't the kinds of people that use the internet in the first place. These products are provided by people dumping their junk off at several federated Goodwill locations nationwide -- and many of these people aren't advanced enough as netizens to become sellers on sites like eBay and Craigslist. But Shopgoodwill.com lowers the barrier to entry for the internet economy, if only in this weird little niche. Some Goodwill dumpers are people moving house (or, hopefully, moving trailer) with a need to offload a ton of junk quickly. Others are donating the contents of the storage shed of a recently deceased uncle -- perhaps one with oil paintings? Most are probably thrift store community members who have no idea that there's even an online component of the system that sells their bizarre crap.
This bizarre crap is mixed with another kind of crap -- the kind that, while it may be available on eBay from time-to-time, I would never find because it's not like I perform constant searches for items like these -- these are the kinds of products that I don't know I want til I see them.
And for that kind of impulsive and weird consumer, vintage and thrift stores have long been a haven. Shopgoodwill.com is a kickass extension to that.
If you find weird junk at the site, post it in the comments!
After a quick Google search, I stumbled upon this site, Shopgoodwill.com, and I thought to myself "uh oh... this could be a pretty important find." I made a mental note to blog about it if it were, indeed, a pretty important find. And here we are.
It didn't take me long to find the Men's Clothing section, and I wasn't disappointed to find this:
Mens XL Disco Shirt DESCRIPTION: This shirt needs cleaning.
Then, in the Women's Clothing section, this:
Fake Fur Vest
However, the clothing selection here suffers from the same thing as Goodwill's brick and mortar incarnations: the inverse bell curve. See the following graphs:
As you can see, at Goodwill, more people fit into the 'WTF' size range or the ~0 size than anything else (the second graph). Because of this polarized populace, there are remarkably low numbers of size 'M' people at Goodwill, considering that this is the size most represented in the population as a whole (the first graph). And, I assume as a result of this, the number of size 'M' garments is also dangerously low. This inverse bell curve, I found, applies to both the selection and the people at Shopgoodwill.com.
I left the clothing section behind, happy with what I found there.
At first, the weirdness of the crap I was digging through felt like an adventuresome treasure hunt and yielded hilarious results, like any reasonably good day at the real thrift store. This is a ringing endorsement -- I had found a new hobby! However, as my search went on, the item selection deviated increasingly from the norm:
Newspaper Clip in frame from 1936
Two Old Hand Saws
Oil Painting of a Girl on a Beach
Case of 500 - 3"x2"x2" Boxes
This is brilliant! I'm finding more and more bizarre crap -- the kind that is definitely not available for purchase on other websites, because the people selling this crap aren't the kinds of people that use the internet in the first place. These products are provided by people dumping their junk off at several federated Goodwill locations nationwide -- and many of these people aren't advanced enough as netizens to become sellers on sites like eBay and Craigslist. But Shopgoodwill.com lowers the barrier to entry for the internet economy, if only in this weird little niche. Some Goodwill dumpers are people moving house (or, hopefully, moving trailer) with a need to offload a ton of junk quickly. Others are donating the contents of the storage shed of a recently deceased uncle -- perhaps one with oil paintings? Most are probably thrift store community members who have no idea that there's even an online component of the system that sells their bizarre crap.
This bizarre crap is mixed with another kind of crap -- the kind that, while it may be available on eBay from time-to-time, I would never find because it's not like I perform constant searches for items like these -- these are the kinds of products that I don't know I want til I see them.
And for that kind of impulsive and weird consumer, vintage and thrift stores have long been a haven. Shopgoodwill.com is a kickass extension to that.
If you find weird junk at the site, post it in the comments!
Labels: autobiography, observations, products, social commentary, web
posted by Kyle Wild at
12:03 AM
4 Comments:
I think your theory about goodwill people sizes is off, and by off I mean completely backwards. I would guess the reason for a lack of normal sized clothing is that there is highest demand for normal sized clothing at goodwill (the opposite of what you said). The normal stuff doesn't stay on the shelves long because people buy it. The freak-sized collections sit there forever though, growing and growing because no one wants that stuff. Goodwill doesn't cater to meet the demand of their customers like normal stores because their inventory based on supply and they have less control over it.
Michelle:
You could be right. However, I swear that when I go to Goodwill, there are no medium-sized people to be seen (and a surplus of 'WTF'). Maybe that's just the nature of southeast Missouri =D
(near where I grew up in Illinois, southeast Missouri was the site of most of my Goodwill adventuers)
adventures
Sucks that you can't edit comments after you post em, eh?
I'm too scared of Goodwill type places.
I guess I've come to realize why: it's because I'm scared of WTF-sized people.
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