Are Thrift Stores Safe? Vintage Shopping During COVID

Gabe Misael, who owns and operates popular Depop shop Geeb Clothes!, regularly wore a mask and gloves while sourcing pre-pandemic, but while that aspect of his process hasn’t changed, a lot about his other sourcing habits have. “Before the shutdown, I was hitting the thrift stores almost every day, attending huge events like ThriftCon and flea markets, as well as having private wholesale bulk buy deals with other daily vintage suppliers to get new inventory,” Misael says. “After the shutdown, however, all those things came to a hard stop. My private dealers had no new inventory and all the events and stores had closed.” To continue bringing in money — Geeb Clothes! is Misael’s main source of income — he had to get creative. “My sourcing process is now more streamlined with more consistent sources of wholesale and buyouts,” he says. “Instead of the individual pieces that I was looking for every day in stores, I can now sort through bulk of hundreds of items, and I do more buyouts of inventory and personal collections.”