Good Sammy Online Store: a virtual goldmine

Last week I was wearing a distressed denim vest that I scored from Good Sammy for $8.

It received a few compliments, to which I gave my standard reply: “Thanks. Another Good Sammy special.”

On hearing this, one friend sighed disappointedly and said, “I knew you’d say that.” She went on to tell me that she loves the idea of second-hand shopping and all the benefits that come with it, but the thought of stepping foot in an op shop is actually quite daunting. She doesn’t know where to start and how to find that one-off unicorn piece*.

“I can never find what I’m looking for,” she said. “I’d rather just shop online from the big chain stores. I can easily find what I want and I can do it all on my couch in my PJs.”

She does have a point. There’s nothing more convenient than shopping from the comfort of your own home and right now, in the time of COVID, some people might not feel comfortable going on non-essential shopping trips.

But will shopping online at a chain store really help you score that one-off unicorn piece? Will it promote sustainable fashion practices? Will it support a local cause? Probably not. But shopping at Good Sammy Online Store definitely will.

Gone are the days of op shops being exclusively brick-and-mortar stores. Many social enterprise organisations, including Good Sammy, now have online stores to appeal to those people, like my friend, who want the op-shopping experience to be made quicker, easier and more convenient.

Good Sammy Online Store is a virtual goldmine, with hundreds of unicorn pieces waiting to be added to your cart and given a second life (or even their first life with many items donated new). The online store has a vast, curated selection of Gold Seal items that are carefully handpicked from the donations received by Good Sammy.

Items are chosen based on their brand and condition and photographed in a studio. Scrolling through the website, it’d be easy to think you were looking at the online store of a “normal” fashion retail store, not an online op shop. And you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the brands you’ll find, with Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Bec + Bridge and Diane von Furstenberg to name a few and several more added each day.

The advantage of shopping online is that you can search for specific key terms to find exactly what you’re looking for – and Good Sammy Online Store is no different. Simply click on your chosen category, use the search function or apply your filters for style, size, colour and brand, and away you go.

To give you a little taste of the gems you can currently find on Good Sammy Online Store, I trawled the site for stand-out pieces from each category. Below are the items I found, but this was back in 2022, so they won’t be available anymore. However there is SO much good stuff available, so I encourage you to pay the Good Sammy Online Store a visit!