Heck yeah we do! Here's why.
Because the closest place to get used or inexpensive clothing is ~10 miles away from Talent and many of our residents can't easily get to a store in Medford whenever they need something.
Because the population of Talent is increasing and a lot of folks are living in reduced-rent and government-subsidized housing, which means they're likely to be on a tighter budget and would certainly benefit (as we all would!) from more options for affordable goods right in town.
Because a welcoming, unique, low-priced secondhand shop will bring in foot traffic from neighboring towns, which will benefit other Talent businesses and contribute to the downtown commercial district revitalization effort.
Because thrift store prices are getting seriously out of hand. Have you seen how much a shirt costs at Goodwill these days? A ton of people rely on thrift stores to find affordable, non-disposable clothing, and lately a lot of those stores have now become too expensive for them to shop at. We need an alternative to fast-fashion garbage and over-priced used clothes. We need decent-quality clothing to be affordable and easy to attain.
Because it is the most sustainable and environmentally-friendly clothes shopping option available to us. If each person bought just one used garment instead of a new one, it would lower CO2 emissions by more than 2 billion pounds, take 76 million cars off the road for a day, and save 23 billion gallons of water (Source-PDF). According to Earth.org, in the U.S. about 11.3 million tons of textile waste are sent to landfills every year. And the number of times a clothing item is worn has declined by 35% in the last 15 years.
Because a lot of people would prefer to donate their previously loved items to a locally-owned establishment that directly helps the people who live here and isn’t disproportionately raising its prices in order to make its senior executives even wealthier.
Those are some pretty great reasons to open a thrift store in Talent, am I right?
A few years ago my dog/life partner Forest and I went on a 7-week cross country camping road trip in my minivan. We visited far away friends and family, saw up close so many of the places I’d heard about and had always wanted to experience. It was a breathtaking, challenging, life-affirming adventure. It also made me all too aware of a terrifying invasive species called "Dollar General" that appears to be taking over the country.
It was honestly shocking how many of those things are out there, in the farthest reaches of America. So I did some research on the company to try to understand what was happening and, well, let’s just say I’m definitely not a fan of their business model or many of their practices.
So then, imagine how much it pains me to admit this: I’m glad they opened up a store in Talent. I'm happy that there's at least one place in town that those of us on limited budgets can get things like shampoo and socks and dog food. That store has been such a blessing for a lot of Talent people.
We’re often rightly encouraged by our community leaders and conscientious friends to ‘buy local’ as much as possible, meaning patronizing locally-owned businesses in order to help keep them open and keep revenue here in town. It is indeed a great way to support Talent, practice ethical consumerism and feel good about where your money is going. But we don't often see much acknowledgment of the fact that it is not particularly easy to do so when you don’t have a whole lot of money you can spend. The truth is, Talent in general is simply not a cheap place to shop, eat, or live in, and no matter how much someone wants to support their local small businesses, they just can’t always, or even sometimes, afford to do so right now. Over the last few years - with inflation hitting even middle class Talent residents hard enough to send many of them to the Food Pantry for groceries for the first time - it's been tougher than ever for our lower-income residents to make ends meet.
In other words, when shopping in Talent means having to spend twice, even 3x as much money on a few bags of groceries than you would at Walmart for the same items, can we really blame anyone for not keeping it local?
So then, Dollar General. Perhaps the only place many folks in Talent can afford to shop at regularly. That's...not great! Wouldn’t it be nice if there were another? And wouldn’t it be cool if that place were owned and operated by Talent people, collected its inventory donations from Talent people, employed Talent people, provided volunteer opportunities to Talent people, and existed for the purpose of helping the Talent people most in need? That's why the Worthwhile Mercantile was established, right there.
It was literally made for Talent.
If you have thoughts about this, or anything else you'd like to tell me, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at tammy@worthwhilemercantile.com