The Wonderful Shrimp Necklace or the Trip to Value Village.

Value Village is a large chain of charity based stores in Canada, under the US based Savers Corporation. Under Savers’ business model, the company partners with local non-profits by purchasing and reselling donated items. The non-profits collect and deliver donated goods to Savers, which pays them for the items at a bulk rate regardless of whether they ever make it to the sales floor. Donations are also collected at stores directly, and the company makes payments to its non-profit partners when it receives goods this way. Savers has more than 160 non-profit partners throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, which it pays more than $117 million annually.

Items deemed resalable are displayed for purchase in stores. Savers has an aggressive recycling program and attempts to recycle any reusable items that cannot be sold at the stores, as well as any items that do not sell over a period of time to make room for fresh merchandise. Savers has buyers for its recyclables throughout the world and attempts to keep as much donated product out of the waste stream as possible.

My daughter and her friend asked me to take them to Value Village so they could look for Halloween costumes, a ruse to get me to take them to shop. This is a suburban teen’s version of slumming I think, or just bargain shopping. My last trip there with her was our first and I had hoped my last. I found it creepy, and one woman stopped talking to her daughter as I approached, because she was explaining that some people really had to shop here because they were poor, but as she neared me she was afraid to offend me, clearly expecting me to be one of “those people”. It just is a bit over the top for me, looking through and trying on used clothes.

First of all, the “bargains” were not much to be found, as most of the stuff I looked at was available at about the same prices on good sale days and at discount stores, but new! Secondly, most fat guys (for some reason) are short, so all of the pants that can get on me look like Capri pants!

The girls were delighted, and while I offered to take them to a new Value Village Store in the “burbs”, they chose to go to an old one to shop assuming the best old stuff is in the old store, which could be true.

I expected top find my own clothes there as most of my clothes end up in charity drop boxes and eventually end up here.

They were happy to shop and try on sweaters and skirts and left with good stuff, all of which delighted them.

However, the shrimp necklace is a gem!

UPDATE - It can be purchased new at: http://www.mardigrasoutlet.com/catalog/356.html