They usually take care of homeless dogs and cats. Now volunteers at the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA are running a thrift store.
The store on West Main Street in Martinsville is packed with merchandise including hats, records, furniture and paintings.
The SPCA is trying out the store for eight months. It needs the extra money to handle an increase in the number of homeless dogs and cats.
"Donations are good and doing well but when you have a spike of 500 more animals you've really got to have a big surge in income," says Executive Director Leslie Hervey.
The bulk of the merchandise was donated by four estates.
The SPCA also has help from it's neighbor. The owner of Classy Consignments is paying part of the rent and utilities.
"I have a bassett hound and I think that it's wonderful," says store owner Kim Wheeler, "I think there's a lot of need for pets being taken care of."
Volunteers run the thrift store. They say the hardest part is figuring out the price tag.
"That's the very, very hard part because we don't have a clue," says Alice Ann Blevins who began volunteering at the SPCA in the 1970's, "We call in the experts and they take care of that. We try to be fair but we want to make money too."
So far profits are good. The SPCA's thrift store has made $3,500 since it opened last week. The store is open Tuesday through Saturday.
