In Japan, second-hand stores do not keep a low profile at all, as they join other brands in grabbing the most prominent advertising space at station exits. Chain second-hand stores can often be found on the most popular shopping streets.
Big shopping malls usually do promotions during the Christmas to New Year’s Day holiday, and so do thrift stores – half-price section for used clothing, 30% off for Christmas promotions, 10% off for Apple products, etc. I heard from my friends in Japan that New Year’s Day in Japan is similar to Chinese New Year, and the stores on the street are basically closed and very cold. However, I saw a sale advertisement in a second-hand store that said the store was open for half a day on January 1, and all products were reduced by 10%.
No kidding, I’m more interested in second-hand stores than cultural monuments. I’ve visited at least 7 or 8 second hand bike stores to buy a second hand bike. When I see road bikes that sell for tens of thousands of dollars in China, they are only 20-30% off at second-hand stores in Japan, I really want to cut off my hands.
My favorite place to shop is the famous second-hand store chain BOOKOFF, which I would search for and visit one by one, and even more so if I happened to pass by. This company has been around for more than 30 years, and according to their website, they have about 800 stores in Japan and overseas. It sells not only used books, but also a variety of daily necessities.
There were locals, young and old, and some with children. I initially shopped at second hand stores because they were cheap and affordable of course. I’ve bought household appliances and outerwear, kids’ stationery and so on. Prices were about 20-40% off of new products. For example, a suit from Uniqlo is less than 50 RMB and is in good condition.
Of course there were misses, the batteries in the speakers bought at the second hand store died quickly, and it was really worth every penny. Too bad I didn’t save the slip or I could have returned it depending on the situation.
I’ve also experienced selling things to second-hand stores. It is convenient to take them to second-hand stores instead of Japan’s cumbersome garbage disposal procedures. I wasn’t surprised by the low recycling prices offered by the stores. Considering the disposal and operating costs of second-hand goods, it seems unlikely that they can make a profit without lowering the recycling price. What I didn’t realize was that you have to leave a full set of information such as your name, ID, address, phone number, etc. to sell your stuff here, and sign to make sure that the source of all the goods is compliant.
If you visit second-hand stores more often, you will often see flags outside the stores promoting the circular economy, and there are also 3R symbols on them. 3R refers to Reduce, which means to reduce the use of goods; Reuse, which means to reuse goods, and the use of second-hand goods is a kind of Reuse; and Recycle, which means to recycle and reuse goods that have been used. In short, it is to find ways to extend the service life or expand the use value of items. It is said that the medals of the Tokyo Olympics are made of recycled materials.
Japan is an island nation with relatively limited resources, and perhaps that’s why they have a much stronger environmental consciousness. I’m a big fan of this philosophy myself, but not only because of the environment, but also because of the set of consumerism behind it.
Mr. Miura Zhan, who has done a lot of research on Japanese consumer society, has written a book called “The Fourth Age of Consumption”, which is devoted to sorting out the changes in consumer attitudes in Japan over the past few decades. Simply put, it is from buying, to the pursuit of more fast and good, and finally to saving, very Buddhist saving. The book says that the popularity of Uniqlo represents a new generation of people who have given up wearing designer labels to show off their social status, and are more in pursuit of a consumerism that is practical, unobtrusive, and just as good as they are comfortable. I think the second-hand economy confirms this.
Buying second-hand goods involves accepting that “it’s someone else’s stuff”. How do people use “someone else’s used stuff” to show their specialness?
Exhibit Miura mentions that the purpose of consumption in Japan ranges from building an affluent family to enriching one’s personal life to using consumption as a means of building connections with others and contributing to society. The Third Age of Consumption saw the popularity of expressing one’s individuality, which was at the same time a sign of a lonelier society. In the Fourth Age of Consumption, people begin to value interconnectedness and return to society. I think that the fact that second-hand goods are generally accepted by the public is also related to this change in mindset. Because in the end, the knot to overcome is not rejecting what others have used and being willing to share your used items with others. Of course, this is not simply a cultural or psychosocial problem, but requires a series of systems and mechanisms to ensure that the law, safety, quality control and quality assurance, service, commercialization and other levels should be improved. From this, I admire the businessmen who do second-hand stores, this thing sounds easy, but it is too difficult to do.
I don’t mind using used stuff.
The consumerism of our generation has probably changed the most. When I was a child, I lived at the end of the planned economy era, which was characterized by rationing, monotonous simplicity of daily necessities, and similarity of daily necessities for everyone. The few good things that were available had to be bought through connections, and the occasional item from Hong Kong or foreign countries could be bragged about for a long time.
It’s hard to say there was real consumption back then. It wasn’t until after 2001, when life accelerated, and then Double 11 chopping, that China became one of the most developed and convenient places in the world to consume. Our consumption behavior has changed qualitatively.
When I was a kid, buying a TV for my family was a once-in-a-few-years event, but now it’s a different story – the trendiest items are swiped on your phone for a few minutes, and you’ll receive the goods in a few days at most. And the most intense moment of the pleasurable experience of shopping is probably the unboxing part, measured in minutes.
However, this convenience also seems to mean a price. Firstly, there is a lack of offline experience and perception of the goods to be bought. The main thing is to recognize the product based on the words on the product detail page. Often there is a lack of awareness at the outset, to the point of actually using them and not being able to make the best use of them. In the end, eliminating these products also seems to be a big deal. Individually, each consumption is nothing, but when accumulated, it leads to redundancy and over-consumption in life in general. I am afraid that this phenomenon is very common in Chinese urban families. Second, consumption lacks the spirit of sharing and connecting with others. For some scarce resources, everyone becomes a pure competitor.
Of course, online platforms for second-hand goods have started to appear in China in the past two years. I have also tried them, but the experience of buying and selling is not enough to stimulate me to participate more in the transaction. The cost of communication just to establish mutual trust is not small. I always feel that the biggest scene for second-hand stores is still offline. Used goods are non-standard products, each item is unique, need to be displayed offline, so that users can personally perceive, just rely on the beautiful product details page to pick is not realistic at all.
Another experience I had with thrift stores was to reflect on consumption. over 100 years ago, the department store had just been invented. For urban civilians, consumption was about going to a special space and taking home items that symbolized the good life and social status. With the advent of e-commerce, people took home items by browsing through pleasing videos, pictures and written descriptions. The difference between the two is that one is experienced live and the other through an intermediary medium. After more than a decade of training in the world’s most advanced e-commerce system, we have become very proficient in learning how to make online purchases. However, just through the indirect medium of information does not give us enough understanding of the goods.
In a rapidly growing economy with sufficient resources, these do not pose a problem. If you buy something you are not satisfied with, you throw it away and buy it again. Day by day, I’m afraid that the complexity of the categories of items in a modern urban household is much higher than that of a business, and the number of items must be in the tens of thousands. The problem is that spending power, like double-digit sales, will one day fall off. There will come a time when we will have to learn how to manage our supplies, how to use them more “wisely”, and how to give them away wisely.
In my opinion, this is the nature of consumption.
Some sources say that Japan’s second-hand goods market is growing rapidly and has exceeded 2 trillion yen in size, which translates to a big market of hundreds of billions of dollars. Looking at BOOKOFF’s financial report for the second half of 2022, this group is growing quite a bit faster than Japan’s GDP.
Perhaps it will be more difficult to do second hand stores in China, but there is a common thread of thinking about consumerism and the circular economy. I hope to have a chance to browse China’s own second-hand stores in the future.
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