DEMO HOUR: The Haggle-O-Tron

Secondhand retail in the U.K. charity sector plays a number of important social and economic roles: Charity shops are community focal points; money is generated for good causes; and goods are recirculated that might otherwise be discarded. However, like much of the U.K.‘s retail shops, the prosperity of charity shops is under significant threat from the rise of Internet shopping. Access to online markets via smartphones equips customers to check prices for secondhand items; some customers then use that information to haggle with shop staff. The Haggle-O-Tron is an interactive kettle placed in an Oxfam secondhand shop that playfully subverts both normative and emerging secondhand retail valuation practices by revealing secondhand goods’ financial, moral, social, and aesthetic properties.