If I had a pound for every time I found a bargain in Poundland I'd certainly be able to afford a large basket of goods there. I only really discovered my local branch a year ago when it relocated near by, and I finally got sick of my dad responding to the question "This is good, where did you get it?" with the words "The pound shop".
My first visit was a revelation – so much so that I came into work raving about this place where you could get a bottle of tomato feed, two slug traps and some weed-suppressing matting for a grand total of £3.
The majority of my return visits have been to source stuff for my garden. Most recently, for another £3 I picked up a hanging basket, a bracket and enough compost to fill it three times over, which together with a fuschia bought for £1.50 from a local flower shop made up a basket similar to those on sale at my local DIY store for £8. I also grabbed one of the plastic stone-look Buddhas Jon Henley mentions in his piece in today's G2. It had a certain kind of appeal and, well, it was £1 so it was worth taking the chance I wouldn't like it a month later.
Each time I felt I'd got a bargain (the Buddha aside, perhaps). I'm not alone – customers who Jon Henley met also talked of bargains, while the manager of the Bromley branch said people often asked how much things cost and didn't believe it when the answer was £1. And last week on the guardian's talkboards, darkhorse posed the following question (about pound shops more generally, not just about Poundland):
"Poundshops, I've noticed, stock stuff that falls into one of three categories, when compared with other outlets:
1) worth a pound
2) worth more than a pound
3) not worth a pound
"Plz to recommend items falling into category b."
Although some of the resulting discussion was about the relative competitiveness of 99p shops and the merits of Toffifees, some posters came in with tales of bargains they had bagged.
One said: "Our pound shop sells packs of 6 kitchen rolls for £1. Surprisingly, they are really good. I also bought a clipboard with a solar powered calculator for £1. I didn't need it, but it was so neat I couldn't resist it."
Of course, Poundland is a high street store which makes an increasingly healthy profit – it doesn't give things away for less than they are worth.
And darkhorse's comments are true of the items in every shop – some look like they are worth the money while others don't. But the fact that everything is £1 seems to focus your mind on value.
If you were to find something you thought was a bargain in a charity shop it wouldn't feel quite so good – the shop might genuinely not know how much it was worth. But if you think you've got a bargain in Poundland it's a win-win, isn't it?
