Ketchikan’s non-profit Rendezvous Thrift Store recently reopened as a private business – The Thrift Store. Meanwhile, the Salvation Army Thrift Store has remained closed since last summer. But that could change this spring.
Ketchikan’s Salvation Army Thrift Store has been closed since last August. Captain David Vargas with the local church says there were several reasons for the closure. First, there was a transition period between the time the former Ketchikan officer relocated to Idaho and Vargas and his wife took over as officers in the First City in July.
The store also ran into financial challenges. He says the thrift store typically loses between $2,000 to $3,000 each month in the winter due to the cost of paying employees, keeping the lights on, and low sales. Vargas says they normally make up for that loss in the summer, but not last year.
“And so within that transition I think there were closed doors, and, I’m not really sure what really transpired during that time. But, in all of that, we lost somewhere between $10,000 to $15,000 for the year, even including our summers,” Vargas says.
Profits from the thrift store help pay for the church’s daily meal program that serves Ketchikan residents most who are housing insecure.
Vargas says when he arrived, the thrift store had only one employee who needed assistance. Vargas also worked at the store, but because of his other duties, store hours were inconsistent. When the August 2024 landslide happened, the Salvation Army was called to help.
“All these kinds of things were happening and I had to be out of the thrift store so I no longer could have opened the store. It became a problem with me having to be there every single day. I’m also the Corps’ officer. I’m one of the administrators that have to do other work beside being in the thrift store. And so the hours became more sporadic. And when people don’t know if you’re open or not, they won’t shop,” he says.
Though a troubled 2024, Vargas says there are plans to reopen the store in late spring and see if it can make a profit through the summer.
“The thrift store is intended to help our feeding program. The cost of supplies has gone up. We feed Monday through Friday every single week. And so, that’s what it’s supposed to be supporting and unfortunately it’s barely supporting itself in the current model.”
He says he’s hoping the store can stay open in the winter, staffed by volunteers.
“It takes a while to really build a good, firm foundation of volunteers to be able to come on a weekly basis a few hours a week or what have you. But that’s still in the process. But yes, we will be open starting for sure in April, tentatively, hopefully we’ll start a little bit sooner than that,” he says.
Vargas says he’s hoping to recruit reliable volunteers. He says everyone who volunteers will need to go through a background check, but mostly they’re looking for friendly people who can help customers, sort items and run the cash register after training. He says ideally, people would commit to four-hour shifts.
“The goal is to reach out, to spread out, to let everyone know if this is the program that we want to have running, then we’ll just need a little bit of help in order to maintain. And then you can take the summer off because at that point we’d be able to hire people and still be producing the way we’re supposed to”, Vargas says.
In addition to the thrift store closing, the Salvation Army did not sell Christmas trees last year. Vargas says it costs about $16,000 to purchase and ship the trees, and they didn’t want to get further in debt to only make a few thousand dollars. Vargas says if the thrift store does well financially this year, they plan to bring Christmas trees back next November.
