One man’s trash is Buffalo Exchange’s treasure

The store will forgive a little fast fashion in exchange for style

By Hope Rasa

The Buffalo Exchange store on State St on Feb. 22, 2025, in Bellingham, Wash. The store is open from 11-7 a.m. seven days a week and accepts walk-in clothing sales during all operating hours. // Photo by Hope Rasa. 

Buffalo Exchange (BE) often leaves people baffled over what items they buy versus what they reject. BE is a secondhand store chain with a Bellingham location that sells a blend of staples, trendy items and vintage pieces. Every day, open to close, BE welcomes people to sell clothes there for cash or store credit. 

Anyone can sell at BE; an employee will sift through what you bring in and decide if it meets their standards. These employees are called “buyers,” and they’re trained to spot clothes that belong on BE’s racks. 

Trying to sell clothes at BE can be a humbling experience. Sellers often leave the store hat in hand, literally. BE usually doesn’t buy everything you bring in. 

Disgruntled sellers often puzzle over which items BE rejected. Patagonia sweaters in excellent condition, Doc Marten’s with no scuffs, brand-new Levi’s jeans; BE frequently tosses perfectly nice pieces back into the water. 

That’s their right, they don’t have to buy anything they don’t want. But sellers can’t help but wonder why BE turns its nose up at clean clothes from decent brands in good condition so often when they allow their racks to fill up with tacky garbage. 

Skylar Bunn goes to the Bellingham BE often, maybe twice a month. She likes to sell clothes there for store credit. Lately, she’s noticed a lot of BE’s inventory is fast fashion. 

“I’ll see like SHEIN or Forever 21 a lot in there now, so I’m like kind of less interested to buy there and more interested in going to a vintage store,” Bunn said. 

BE won’t take your good clothes, but they’ll take your bad ones. They’ll reject your nice wool sweater, but they will take your 100% polyester shorts from Fashion Nova.

Jessica Pruitt, BE’s marketing assistant manager, said BE cares about how much of its inventory comes from fast fashion brands. 

“Items like that, we’re going to be a lot more selective with,” Pruitt said.

However, Pruitt said that if a fast fashion item is basically in perfect condition and has a desirable style, BE will still take it. 

A big part of what makes a style “desirable” is how trendy it is. Trendiness is a big factor in what makes the cut BE. Buyers stay informed on trends, which influences what they take from your pile.

“There’s this sort of ongoing learning process that we have in place, kind of self-educating,” Pruitt said. 

To keep their finger on the pulse of what’s trending, buyers will do online research and work in every part of the store to see what customers are interested in. 

“You’re seeing the items as they sell, and you’re seeing the items that don’t sell too,” Pruitt said. 

Other factors, like material, also influence whether BE wants an item; trendiness isn’t everything.

“I wouldn’t say that’s the top focus — having the trendiest possible item,” Pruitt said. 

Buyers are trained to tell if a piece is high quality just by looking at it, and materials are a big giveaway. For instance, wool is more expensive and typically higher quality than polyester, so a wool item is more likely to be accepted than a polyester one. Fast fashion items tend to be made with poor materials, usually polyester, which reduces their quality. Bunn said she doesn’t want to buy fast fashion from BE for this very reason. 

“I know that after a couple washes, it’s going to be disintegrated, and it’s just not something I would like to spend full price on,” Bunn said. 

As is the case with brands, the style of a piece can make up for underwhelming materials. 

Fast fashion is so incredibly abundant. BE is drowning in it when people bring items in to sell. That’s why some fast fashion lands on BE’s racks. To their credit, reselling fast fashion is better than letting it rot in a landfill. However, as a secondhand clothing store, BE attracts a clientele that tends to be anti-fast fashion. BE is on thin ice with the amount of SHEIN and Princess Polly it can allow to occupy its hangars before customers get annoyed.