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AUSTRALIANS are searching for their nearest op shop at an all-time high rate according to the latest statistics from Google Trends.
Another interest rate hike has brought Australia to its highest level in 15 years. Combined with cost of living pressures and a push towards a less consumeristic lifestyle to cutdown on landfill, and you get nearly the perfect storm for the second-hand goods market to boom.
An investigation pitted two of Australia’s biggest chain op shops, Vinnies (run by the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul) and Salvos (run by The Salvation Army), against the generic “Op Shop” search term.
Results show an increasing interest in all three search terms in the past decade, rising and falling concurrently throughout the years.
Unsurprisingly, all three search terms suffered during COVID-19 as lockdowns especially in Victoria kept people inside their homes, but each recovered quickly.
Since 2022 however, the search frequency for “Vinnies” and “Salvos” has steadied, while general “Op Shop” searches have continued to rise, consistently outperforming the other two terms over the past four years.
The “Op Shop” search term recently hit a peak interest of 100 in January this year, signifying the highest search frequency out of the three terms since Google Trends began collating this data.
Peaks for “Salvos” and “Vinnies” came in December 2023 and June 2020 respectively, with the “Vinnies” search interest coinciding with an industry-wide bounce back following the early months of COVID-19 lockdowns and the announcement of the first Vinnies CEO Sleepout fundraising event.
On a smaller scale, peaks and troughs of interest are evident each year. Peaks often coincide with the December-January holiday period, while troughs usually follow in the months of February and March.
Christmas appeals run by both The Salvation Army and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in the lead up too the festive season would influence their earlier peak in December, while the post-holiday clean out leads people into op shops in January more than any other time.
Interestingly, search interest varies significantly across the nation, with Victoria joined by Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania as the “Op Shop” searchers, while New South Wales, Northern Territory and the ACT look for “Vinnies” above the other two options since 2015.
South Australia is the only state or territory that searched more for “Salvos” in the surveyed period.
This builds quite a strong correlation between search interest and the number of stores in a particular state or territory. For example, New South Wales and the Northern Territory both have a significantly higher footprint of Vinnies, hence a higher search interest, while Salvos stores are more prevalent in South Australia which is reflected in the data.
Without an obvious end in sight for Australia’s inflation, it’s likely that op shops and other second-hand goods retailers will continue to see more people coming through the door looking for a bargain, and people will keep searching for their nearest stores.
