SEASIDE — In the past year, Seaside has seen an emergence of thrift shops and similar stores, and many store owners see that as an opportunity to give locals and visitors a multitude of inexpensive options.

There are at least 10 thrift stores in the area, not including a children’s consignment store in Gearhart, antique stores and nonprofit clothing exchanges, like Father’s Closet at Welcome Home Church. Other stores that opened last year, such as Nature’s Spirit, came and went in a matter of months, along with the Helping Hands Thrift Store, which closed in September.

Cheryle Barker, Seaside’s Tri-City Spay & Neuter Thrift Shop board president, said there has not been a time in recent memory when this many thrift shops were in the area. When she started volunteering at the Spay & Neuter Thrift Shop about 15 years ago, Rag and Bone was the only other thrift shop she can remember. The Spay & Neuter Thrift Shop is the oldest in the city. The store started in 1968, moved to its Broadway location in 1988 and got its current name October 2013. Rag and Bone was established in the mid-1990s.

At the start of each summer, Barker creates a brochure of thrift, resale and consignment stores in Gearhart and Seaside. The rapid addition and subtraction of several shops in 2014 made the brochure outdated before the end of summer.

“I have no idea why they’re springing up,” Barker said, though she thinks many people still are struggling financially from the economic downturn and can’t afford to purchase things at big box stores, so they’re turning instead to thrift shops.

Hank Horlings, owner of Seaside Thrift Store on South Roosevelt Drive, agreed it likely has something to do with the economic recession, which has driven people to seek good deals. Thrift stores also tend to feature American-made and unique items, and give owners and customers alike the opportunity to up-cycle, refurbish or re-create used products.

He opened shop in the spring of last year with the intent to liquidate his inventory from several properties on the central coast near Waldport. Over the months, the store became self-perpetuating, and he intends to continue it.

Linda Iles-Martin, owner of Linda’s Rag and Bone Thrift Shop, said she personally hasn’t noticed any economic or social trends that could be the impetus for the stores opening in 2014 in particular.

“This (past) summer, I was surprised to see so many thrift stores,” she said last fall.

The key to success

Sometimes people have a dream of starting a thrift store without realizing the hard work necessary for its success.

“Having a secondhand store is like having a garage sale every single day of the week,” Iles-Martin said. “I work really hard at it. So that’s basically what my reward is: that I’m still in business.”

Horlings agreed maintaining the thrift store and making it successful is primarily dependent on the work he puts into it, even when there are no customers. He didn’t expect to break even for 2014.

“It takes about two years to establish a business before you determine if you’re going to make or break it,” he said.

The manager at Seaside’s STUFF, Dan Osborn, also has pragmatic expectations for the store, which opened in July 2014. The store is doing well, he said, but they’re “not getting rich.”

“We’re just doing our own thing and doing the best we can,” he said, adding they’re “not out to crash” any of the other shops.

His sister, Valerie Watson, owns the store and his nephew, Tim Meyer, of Beaverton, is their buyer. The group has a warehouse in Beaverton where Meyer sells the high-end products he accumulates before transporting the rest of the stuff to be sold in the aptly named Seaside store.

Some shops are in flux in other ways. Courtney Cram purchased Thrifty Furniture on North Roosevelt Drive in November after the shop’s owners announced it was going out of business, as they were moving. Unwilling to see the business go, Cram bought the remaining inventory and kept the store open as the new owner. She gave the shop a new name, Timeless Treasures and Furnishings, and she has worked to rebrand the store.

A few months later a “For Lease” sign is sitting in the window of the building she used to occupy. Things aren’t always what they seem, though. Cram has left that location but her business is thriving at a new one nearby, she said. She is now situated on South Roosevelt Drive next door to STUFF.

The shop owners seemed unconcerned about the thick presence of thrift, vintage and antique stores in the area.

The shops don’t compete with one another from a sales standpoint so much as through obtaining inventory, Iles-Martin said. With other businesses hitting up the same estate sales, garage sales and other venues to find cheap merchandise to resale, the chance of making a find that can turn a profit declines.

“Where I ‘make’ the money is when I buy stuff,” Iles-Martin said.

Apart from that, each store has a slightly different feel than the others, and several are niche locations, specializing in music records, books, furniture or clothing.

Iles-Martin and her husband, Mike Martin, the store’s co-owner, opened Linda’s Rag and Bone No. 2 about five years ago to sell furniture, which couldn’t be housed at the original shop. Her sons now run the business and focus on furniture, video games and sporting goods.

The Spay & Neuter Thrift Shop is well established, in a good location and has a philanthropic cause, which combined help the store thrive, Barker said. Since the Helping Hands Thrift Store closed, it is the only nonprofit store.

“That may make a difference to some people,” she said.

Horlings doesn’t feel like the surplus of thrift shops and similar stores in Seaside and Gearhart is bad for business. If he doesn’t have an item at his shop, he’ll refer customers to other stores.

“Communities have to work together,” he said. “As a merchant, you have to get to know your area and refer them to other sites.”

This story has been updated. It was previously reported Courtney Cram’s shop, Timeless Treasures and Furnishings, no longer was in business, but she has just switched locations.