Article: Charity shops face bargain stores threat; High-street discount clothing stores now so cheap they match second-hand prices

Britain's charity shops face an uncertain future due to the explosion of deep-discounting high street fashion stores like Primark and Matalan and supermarket fashion lines.

The Association of Charity Shops' annual conference this week will set a challenge for future survival: how to persuade customers to buy second-hand clothes for the same price as new ones.

John Tough, retail director of British Red Cross, said: "There are more and more discount shops on the high street. They are so competitively priced that they are a real threat to charity shops whose main interest is clothing, such as ours. People can buy new clothes for a lot less than they could 10 or even five years ago, so their ...

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