More second-hand outlets badly needed

Let’s just look at one item: wires for digital devices. Every so often a person or business needs a connecting wire for a computer, phone, camera or other hand-held device. There are roughly 50 million consumers in Thailand. Each has between five and 50 connecting wires they probably no longer use. That’s roughly 250 million to 2.5 billion second-hand wires jumbled in boxes or corners.

On the other side of the equation, there are folks who may need a particular wire that has been lost or is malfunctioning. Yet none of those millions of wires are available. The person needing a wire will have to purchase retail. I just bought a simple connecting wire, retail. The cost: Bt195. Only the sixth store I went to had the wire, but that’s another story.

To look at it another way: if a person is looking for such a wire in the US, he could go to any of tens of thousands of thrift stores located everywhere. Cost: about 15 cents or Bt5. And each of those thrift stores would likely have dozens or even hundreds of connecting wires available.

We’re just looking at one item and referencing only thrift stores. There are thousands of other types of second-hand outlets all over the US, and there are tens of thousands of other second-hand items available in them. Thailand doesn’t have thrift stores. Neither does it have yard sales, or bulletin boards (where locals can post info), and few other types of second-hand outlets.

This topic is more than just about saving billions of baht for consumers; it also involves trash. When a person buys secondhand, it avoids the obligatory packaging. The wire I bought has a large plastic holder which will possibly be part of the “Great Pacific Trash Vortex” (Google it), where half of Asia’s plastic trash winds up. There are other advantages to having second-hand items available to consumers, but Thais won’t know unless they’ve resided overseas, because retailers in Thailand have a choke grip on consumer spending. 

Ken Albertsen

Chiang Rai