I've talked about this before, but I wanted to bring it up again this week.
If you're not aware (from another country, maybe), Goodwill Thrift stores sell donated clothing and household goods. They receive so much merchandise every week that they can't possibly keep up in sales to match the volume of what is donated.
The stores color-code the price tags to indicate when donations were put out to sell and routinely cull the oldest-coded, unsold merchandise, to be sold at a steep discount elsewhere. All of this stuff goes to Goodwill Outlet stores.
As you can imagine, a lot of junk winds up in the outlet. But also, a lot of good stuff slips through without being sold in the main stores and ends up in the Outlet.
Instead of repricing each of these many, many items (which the labor to do so would drive up the price to the consumer), the Outlet sells everything except furniture by weight, with shoes, electronics, and hard goods less per pound and textiles slightly more. Clothing/textiles at our Goodwill Outlet is currently $1.79 per pound. The individual Outlet stores set their own price per pound, but the price per pound for all items ranges between $1 and $2 per pound across the country.
In case you haven't figure this out yet, buying high-value, but very lightweight items can be a steal. In 2019, I found a Calvin Klein summer dress that was lightweight. It was in excellent condition -- no stains, holes, or obvious wear. The price back then (even less per pound in 2019) was around 75 cents.
Clothing is not on racks, and most small hard items are not on shelves. Most everything is in large rolling bins. The employees roll out new bins periodically, removing the old ones to the back room. Shoppers descend on the "new" bins and begin digging through the piles. I'm not a huge fan of digging through bins, but my two daughters absolutely love to go to the Outlet. I sometimes think that they love a great bargain more than I do.
Saturday morning they got up and out to the Outlet when they first opened. And they brought me home a "goodie."
They found this beautiful autumnal Jones New York silk scarf -- great colors and pattern to go with my fall and winter wardrobe. And yes, I wear scarves often! The price for this lovely scarf? About 25 cents! It needs a good pressing, but otherwise looks beautiful.
