At the Buffalo Exchange buying counter (image pulled from exploringberkeley.wordpress.com)

I dug up a fantastic article by Reyhan Harmanci for the San Francisco Chronicle, Rag Trade: Cashing in on Vintage, or Just Old, Clothes. The article is written in 2005, but from what I’ve observed personally, here in Austin, the practice of professional pickers selling to BX (Buffalo Exchange) has only grown:

The opportunity to convert used clothing into cash has created a new job: professional seller. Known as “pickers,” professional sellers can be a blessing or a curse to a store, depending on their approach to their line of work and the store’s reliance on their goods. The push and pull at the buy counter between the buyer and seller can be contentious; at its best, it’s a symbiotic relationship, based on a singular love of fashion.

At its worst, it’s a parasitic situation, in which the picker leeches off the store, preying on inexperienced buyers or dealing in stolen merchandise. Buyers, too, can sour the deal by rejecting good clothing to spite the seller or copping an attitude that, as Mascola says, “makes you feel like you’re going to see your social worker.”

Again with the judgement/shame issue I’m mentioned in other BX posts. But where do these professional sellers find enough clothes worthy to pass the knowing eyes of the buyers… and still turn a profit?

Through a friend, he heard that the place to go to was As Is, a nickname for the giant Goodwill on Van Ness and Market streets that wheels out bins of newly donated clothing every morning. “I started to get clued in, looking around at what was current, started reading fashion magazines for inspiration.

“Now I treat it like an art form,” he says, without a smile. Although Mascola has sold clothing at least once a week for six years, it’s never been a full-time job. “The profit margin is too thin; it would be too hard,” he says. “It’s more like a hobby.” He does allow that selling clothes beefs up his income from his retail job in the Castro.

from textile_fetish photostream on flickr

The Austin version of the ‘As Is’ in San Francisco? The Blue Hangar. There, I’ve said it. The secret is out in the open, and surely I’ve made an enemy or two. And the only reason I’m revealing this juicy little secret (that’s sort of out and about with the insiders, anyways) is because my day job prevents me from regular digs and pays me enough to just go buy the stuff for a higher price all pre-picked and sized at BX anyways.

The Blue Hangar on Springdale is supposedly where the clothes that have been sitting unsold on the racks for over three weeks at the regular Goodwills go to be tossed in piles on giant tables and sold for $1.25 a piece. They clear the tables and replace with fresh stock once, sometimes twice, a day and at that point the still unsold goods are compacted into bales and sold as such, often to third world countries. But a few years ago on one particularly stellar run, I quizzed the employee checking me out about the sources and she told me that often when the Goodwill stores were full and they were getting more donations than the stores could process, they’ll send the overflow straight to the Blue Hanger, unsorted. Ah ha! I knew the things that I found wouldn’t have lasted three weeks in the Goodwill store. So folks, right at the end of the month when everyone is moving and ditching stuff is THE time to hit the Blue Hanger.

I’ve shopped there for years, and during my last unemployment stint I’d go and load up with a combination of items for myself… and items to sell at BX. It’s super tricky, because you really have to know what those buyers want. I was pretty much able to break even and cover my costs of the whole run, but then again I took BX credit not cash. I was still out a wee bit of cash overall, but got to shop at BX basically for the cost of my time. I’d occasionally see BX employees there digging, too, but my costumer friend who’s there all the time has said that recently its intensified. And on a recent BX sell, I got into a conversation with a buyer who told me about a friend who was supporting her live music/drinking habit through selling finds from the Blue Hanger to BX.

Which brings up an accusation I’ve heard many times that BX employees favor their friends, or friends of friends, or ‘cool people’ when buying. Of course there’s no way to objectively verify this and I guarentee you this is not a BX corporate policy, but when you one is shopping BX and running across WAY too much Mossimo and super lame stuff you gotta wonder. Granted, the following story is a dozen years old, but I have a friend who told me tales of taking bags into the BX Tuscon, having all of it rejected, then walking out the door, handing it to her cute friend who walked back in and sold most of it. I think that as much as BX tries to be objective, I don’t believe it’s humanly possible not to at least initially size someone up as they’re walking to the counter. After all, that’s the whole purpose of fashion and dress - to send coded signals to others. I’m sure that buyers are pleasantly/unpleasantly surprised all the time by buys, but that intial frame is still there. (Note that I don’t believe true objectivity is ever possible when humans are involved, even in science. so there’s my bias.)

Barger says there are various kinds of pickers — or, as she says “more politely,” professional sellers. “There are the travelers, the people who have a true love of clothing and go to rag houses, for vintage clothing mostly, all over the West. They sell less frequently, maybe like once a month when they come through the Bay Area.”

More on rag houses in a future post. In a nutshell, they are the wholesalers to thrift stores. Didn’t know they had them, did you?

“When sellers are good, it’s a great experience,” Evilsizer says. “I even have some people I can call, like my men’s shirt guys, who will come in with whatever size or style we’re low in. Most people, though, will just bring in a million of the same thing. I mean, when I say, ‘Don’t bring in any more ’80s pumps,’ and you bring in another bag of ’80s pumps,” Evilsizer pantomimes frustration, gesturing with her palms outstretched, “that’s just not respectful. You’re not listening.

“You can tell who has no interest in the clothing by what they bring. Some people, instead of looking around the store or keeping up on trends in magazines, just keep asking, ‘What should I bring?’ They’re looking for the formula,” Barger says, laughing, “which doesn’t exist.”

Amen. I keep asking the buyers, too, although more pointed and detailed questions mostly to gain info about current trends, what’s coming in or, more interestingly, what’s going out.

“Picking in Berkeley began when Buffalo Exchange, which was the first buy- sell clothing store of its kind in the East Bay, opened near People’s Park,” she adds. “There was this rather noble project, the free box, where people could put clothing for people in the park. It’s a great idea, but this,” Barger stops, choosing her words carefully, “cutthroat, really cutthroat, hierarchy of pickers emerged over who got to take the free-box clothing to sell.”

Doesn’t this always happen to hippie dreams?

Mascola said there isn’t any camaraderie among professional sellers. “God, no. These people are not your friends. It’s very, very, very competitive.”

Mascola describes the environment of As Is, where most daily pickers get the goods they will take around town, as hostile. “People go crazy going for the best stuff. I got in a girl fight,” Mascola says, laughing. “A real girl fight. You know, I don’t hit women. I’m not a misogynist — I mean, I emulate some of them, some of my idols — but this woman was no Debbie Harry. She dropped an article of clothing and left it on the ground, so I bent down to pick it up, and she grabbed me by the hair! Grabbed me from the back of my head!”

Mascola refused to disclose the current sources of his finds, even off the record for fear of word leaking out. “It’s just something you don’t want to talk about.”

Now do you see why it’s such a big deal for me to out the Blue Hanger? Why I’m worried about the wrath of my friends who still make regular runs, for whatever reason? I suppose it’s also why I find the second hand supply chain issue so fascinating; it’s really difficult to truly research because NO ONE wants to really tell you how to do it. Okay, I’m also fascinated so I can find stuff for me, too, but the process is extremely time consuming with low profit margins (as noted) so you really gotta be in it for the love and personal wardrobe finds as well. Gotta support the habit. And this is coming from someone who’s been flat broke for the better part of 20 years but ALWAYS managed to keep a steady stream of new-to-me clothes coming my way to play with.

And no full-time clothing seller agreed to speak on the record about his or her livelihood.

See?

Bobby McCole, a former manager at used-clothing chain Crossroads who also has worked as a professional seller, says, “You form relationships with the buyers and other sellers when you are selling, but it’s not friendship. It can be cordial. I definitely have a lot of respect for the people who are in the bins, finding stuff every day, but it’s always business.”

McCole began his retail career on the West Coast at Mars, a vintage- clothing store in Berkeley that bought over the counter until recently. “At a certain point, I realized that the people selling every day were making way more money than I was,” McCole says, laughing. “And they were doing it with very little creativity or talent. I thought, ‘If I could do that with an actual interest in fashion, I could do really well.’ ”

McCole’s expertise and interest is in vintage clothing, which he found “pointless” to hunt for in the city. Having worked at buy-sell stores, he says that the key to being a good seller was good relations with individual buyers. “This sounds awful, but it really is a game. You get to know what people like and start buying things you know (a specific buyer) will go crazy over, or leave when you get a bad buyer.

All buyers are not created equal, and are going to see through their subjective taste filter no matter how much training they have.

Barger maintains that Buffalo Exchange would exist fine without professional sellers. Julie Brown-Lome, district manager of Crossroads, concurs, noting that since her store “doesn’t focus on vintage, we provide even less incentive for dealers to sell to us. It’s rare, too, that someone will bring in a Gucci shirt that they bought from Goodwill.”

McCole and Mascola say that without professional sellers, the quality of store inventory would plummet. Barger, though, maintains that “90 percent of what we get from a picker is going to be filler. When we buy one of a certain style, you just know they’re going to come back with 18 more in their next bag.

Ah yes, the filler. Anyone who’s shopped at BX - or the mall, for that matter - knows what this means. Sometimes I come home with that fabulous find that will be with me forever (yeah Ferragamo boots!) but then there’s also a big stack of clothes that are just basics that happen to fit well and are cheap.

McCole only sells occasionally now, from his “vault,” but Mascola has no plans to stop. “I love clothing and fashion. I really do,” he says, wrapping his scarf around his neck and pulling on his gloves. “I’m not rich. I’m not well educated. But I’ve always had a natural instinct when it came to style.”

Natural instinct. Nothing objective about that.

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