Home Businesses: Ropa Americano (interesting phenomenon)

Interesting because nearly all of the home businesses AND store fronts advertising “Ropa Americano” or “American Clothing” are selling used clothing that they buy by the kilo from Goodwill Industries in the states. Goodwill simply has too much clothing for the demand in a rich country, so they sell surpluses to entrepreneurs in other countries. We had this same phenomenon in The Gambia also. It meets a real need for more affordable clothing and especially younger people world-wide like to dress like Americans or what they see on TV and in movies. 
And yes, the second photo is a home too. They just took the curtains off the windows in two rooms to give them essentially display windows on a street I regularly walk down to my favorite Supermercado. We have two kinds of clothing store fronts, ones that sell this used clothing and more who sell brand new clothing at much higher prices. The new clothing stores are not all American clothing with lots of Central American manufacturers and even new clothing from the Orient and Europe. 
But Goodwill has helped some women maintain successful home businesses that depend more on word of mouth than signs. 
See more photos of Atenas in several of my photo galleries. 

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