Sellers who resource at Thrifts/Goodwill - High Prices So how do they make a Profit??

[katzrul15]

Went to Central Ohio today for day job work and on the way back north, stopped at a local thrift store that I have gone to for years.  It is now permanently closed.  Sad day!

Across the street is a Goodwill store.  I had a couple of hours to kill and I has called a customer and told him i would be in/around Columbus, would he want to grab dinner?  Had planned on spending that 2 hours at the local thrift.

I was very late for dinner.

I milled around and got a few things for us to use/keep, but nothing really for re-sale.  Store was *packed* and I think Goodwill prices are high........

Lady 3 ahead of me (line is long/long) has 4 carts.   4 carts!

661 items total per the manager who helped bag and then checked me out - $2300+    At Goodwill.

What am I missing?   Everything in her carts seem ordinary to me - and I watched as they rang her up - there was only potentially 1 item I might have considered for re-sale, but it was large/oversized and with the USPS costs, I would pass these days.

4 carts.........took 55 min to check her out.  I thought I was never going to make it to dinner.

I am all for spending money to make money, but wow.  The manager said the lady is in several times a month like that and it is always multiple carts and hundreds of items.  She was still loading her car when I made it to the parking lot - it was a mini-van and the inside (floor to ceiling) was packed with Goodwill bags.  She had shopped at other stores before she shopped at the one I was at.  

I must be missing something??

[doc-holmes]

Almost sounds like a shopping addiction. 

[coolections]

My guess is the person is just a hoarder and likes buying anything and everything that interest her. The other option is she is an Ebay reseller who likes listing thousands of items and wonder why she is getting very few watchers and sales. Maybe even comes here to blame Ebay ?

[5594shelleys]

Items purchased and shipped overseas or taken to border flea markets, or taken to Mexico and beyond for family and friends needs or for resell was my explanation when asking about the multiple carts. In Atlanta area there are several thrift stores called Park Ave Thrift that send all there unsold merchandise to an outlet in Lawrenceville. This outlet sells everything, I mean everything in the store for 2.50 per item and that decreases by .50 cents daily, and on Thursdays, everything is .50 (this may be higher since I haven't been in 2 years).  This outlet has thousands of items, thousands, and carts were loaded 4 feet high with everything but the kitchen sink and I do recall a sink at one time. With stores selling that cheap, profit is easy.

[the-hook-and-the-loop]

I see people that shop like this is possibly for export. Can't get a lot of the crap we take for granted in other countries.

[katzrul15]

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@coolections wrote:

My guess is the person is just a hoarder and likes buying anything and everything that interest her. The other option is she is an Ebay reseller who likes listing thousands of items and wonder why she is getting very few watchers and sales. Maybe even comes here to blame Ebay ?

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I wondered that..........the manager said they dread when she comes in - always 3-4 carts heaped full.

I watched for over 45 min and really could not figure out what was so special about the items she was buying.  It was all used stuffs and even the glassware, glass items, dishes - did not seem to me to be anything special.

And today was not a "special" day to shop - Wed's are 30% off senior days - Fridays were nothing special at all.  The inside of that mini-can was just jam packed and she had 3 more carts to stuff in there.

If I had not been late for dinner, I would have stayed and watched.  I was curious how she could get everything in there and still fit inside and drive that thing.  No way could you see out the back!  lol

[katzrul15]

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@the-hook-and-the-loop wrote:

I see people that shop like this is possibly for export. Can't get a lot of the crap we take for granted in other countries.

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You might be right - maybe this is to be sold overseas or shipped to another country.  Had not even thought of that.  I think Goodwill prices are really high - to me, it would be tough to buy it at their prices (used carpola) and then sell it online.  

[2013grotz]

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@coolections wrote:

My guess is the person is just a hoarder and likes buying anything and everything that interest her. The other option is she is an Ebay reseller who likes listing thousands of items and wonder why she is getting very few watchers and sales. Maybe even comes here to blame Ebay ?

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Either this or export to the family overseas.  But more likely the hoarder.  You'd be surprised the number of wannabe sellers they have on the TV show "Hoarders" and the like.   "Oh, this is worth so much money, we can't throw it away we gotta hold onto it and sell it!" accompanied by the usual frenetic mental freak-out and their "experts" getting in to try to calm them down - and the revelation when they call someone in that none of it is worth the space it takes up.  But a lot of the generation that has connection to "The Depression" will tend to buy up things thinking they have value and that it's their "nest egg".  My mother was like that - and really how I got into reselling was trying to knock down her substantial hoard she built up.

Speaking personally of Goodwill/Thrift a lot of the costs there have gone up so substantially that I'm a lot more selective than I used to be about what I do buy with the expressed purpose of reselling it.  (Again reminded of a rather old printer I'd like to have if it weren't for the rather priced as new price they got on it.) Probably 99% of it has personal interest behind it now more than it did before, and mainly what I do put up is just stuff I thought would be interesting but didn't want to keep after I got done with it.

But yeah, it's rare you see anything in a thrift/goodwill anymore at a price that would be profitable to resell.

[lepke1979]

I'm sure you'll find a deal now and then. Particularly for obscure stuff that their staff doesn't know to look for. But seeing as how Goodwill competes with resellers, it's pretty hard to find a deal there now.

Probably not all of them, but a lot of them will pick the good stuff out prior to going on the floor to sell online. Usually eBay or Amazon. Heck, there is a big one near me that has an auction house or something. One of these days I might check it out, but it's probably all online now on their auction website. From what I recall the prices weren't bad, but the shipping was insane.

[joshuacbraun]

That’s quite a story. Our Goodwill in Northern CA is a ripoff. I stopped sourcing there since I can find better items at garage sales for 20% of the cost.

With that being said, I know local thrift store owners who will buy shoes at Goodwill for $10 and sell them for $20-$30 and they don’t want to waste time going to garage sales, plus they are willing to shop on holidays with long lines for the 50% off discount. Different strokes  for different folks.

[chapeau-noir]

I once purchased 600+ items.  The bags filled up the entire back of my stationwagon (with the back seat down) and I could barely see over all the bags.  I had purchased someone else's inventory who was closing shop.

Oh my GAWD!  It was almost all unprepped, and the amount of prep that took - I was literally shin deep in clothing in the laundry room, swilling around in a swamp, and it seemed like I just lived in there doing load after load after load.  It went on for days and weeks.  Then ironing it all.

But, couldn't beat the price.  Inventory here is expensive, so I jumped on this.

It was better than The Wedding Gown Debacle of 2001 and the Dot Com Bust of 2003 at least.  I made money, but not sure I'd take something like that on again. 

The person with the van-full probably ships overseas or sends it down to South America - that's pretty common here, but two carts tops is what I've seen.  More at the Bins. 

[dnasilver]

Sounds like us. Then we give the items to people in need who cannot afford them. We hit Walmart prior to winter setting in and buy out the kids winter jackets and let different churches, abuse centers, and community centers give out the coats to families in need. There are hundreds of reason people buy in bulk and does not always mean they are planning on resale. We know numerous people who do this besides us.

[stanley2erols]

 Double post

[stanley2erols]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

My guess is the person is just a hoarder and likes buying anything and everything that interest her. The other option is she is an Ebay reseller who likes listing thousands of items and wonder why she is getting very few watchers and sales. Maybe even comes here to blame Ebay ?

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I wondered that..........the manager said they dread when she comes in - always 3-4 carts heaped full.

I watched for over 45 min and really could not figure out what was so special about the items she was buying.  It was all used stuffs and even the glassware, glass items, dishes - did not seem to me to be anything special.

And today was not a "special" day to shop - Wed's are 30% off senior days - Fridays were nothing special at all.  The inside of that mini-can was just jam packed and she had 3 more carts to stuff in there.

If I had not been late for dinner, I would have stayed and watched.  I was curious how she could get everything in there and still fit inside and drive that thing.  No way could you see out the back!  lol

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People give them stuff for free and the manager dreads when someone comes in and buys $2,300+ worth of it? Sounds like that place needs a better manager.

[johnrj1226]

Our  Goodwill in Georgia has a 99 cent sale on Mondays for a specific color tag - resellers are eh first ones at the door when they  open up.

Maybe that have something similar in Ohio -  not all Goodwills have the  same promotional discount  programs - they  vary by regions.- we are in the North, GA, the Coast region, which is the next  GW region east has diff  policies.