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Hello,
I have been listening to Scavenger life for about a year and a half. I listened to every podcast and finally caught up to your present recordings. For the last 6 years I worked at three different thrift stores before going full time on eBay 6 months ago. I worked for a local thrift shop for 3.5 years as an assistant manager and worked in almost all the departments at some time, then I worked for Shopgoodwill.com for a month and half. (I thought working for a big company would be a plus.. it wasn’t, too much office politics.) Then I worked for a year at another small local thrift shop, doing Ebay for them until they closed in June. Each step gave me a greater education leading me to were I am today but I credit your blog for really giving me the courage to jump to the other side.
A couple notes: Since I continually talk to friends and family about what I learn from you all, I decided that you are like my substitute co-workers. Also, I am youngish (30yrs) and am pretty hard of hearing (which has gotten worse over the last few years) so Ebay is a great outlet for someone like me who struggles to engage in the busy or loud environments of office/ retail but does still like people. Thank you for the gift you’ve given to people like me to be bold enough to make a business on Ebay. I cannot express my gratitude enough.- Grace -
Hi Grace – thanks for sharing. As someone that has hearing issues as well (sensorineural deafness), I really enjoy selling on eBay since it doesn’t affect me in anyway. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone, don’t have to have conversations where I may interpret things wrong, and don’t have to deal with odd looks from people when I can’t understand them. It’s just nice to have days where I don’t have to have awkward conversations with people, or be worried that I’ll say the wrong thing.
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Glad you found us. I’d love to hear any thrift store gossip that you learned when you worked at those places.
–Do these stores care that scavengers resell the items for more money?
–Do employees skim off the best stuff before the items hit the floor?
–How much time is sent going through donated items to determine their value?
–What percentage of donated items is actually trash? -
In answer to Jay’s questions, each store handled things differently:
-The first store (a local one by a church that had never had a store before) went like this: When I worked there I had never done Ebay before, though I’d done a little of a local Craigslist thing, and I personally didn’t care about scavengers. I understood they needed to make a living too and that if we got what we are asking it didn’t matter that they would get more.I had somme co-workers who didn’t care and some who did. I think those who cared didn’t really understand and probably were upset because we had a couple Scavengers who would leave messes of stuff they skimmed through and piled somewhere for staff to clean up.
My Boss, who was wonderful, was very meticulous about pricing. She had us check Ebay A LOT to determine the value on items. Unfortunately, they often looked at prices of what something was listed for, not what it sold for.
Items deemed extra expensive were put in display case and would sometimes hold them for months even a year before lowering the price. There were a lot of very efficient things at that store but also a number of things that weren’t, like that system. That store paid very low wages and so they did offer a deep discount on items for staff. But we did have limits on holding items etc, so a lot of good stuff still went out. I was told that other thrift stores in the area required items to go to the floor for 24 hours before staff could purchase them.
Also they are strict about pricing items what it would go to the floor for and then you could get a discount. So, if an item would go to the floor for $50 they could get their discount but they couldn’t have it for $5. We also tried to be very efficient about not handling an item too much or for too long if it wasn’t going to be worth a lot. An item was touched by the person unloading from the truck, then from someone possibly wiping it down, then someone pricing it and then going to the floor. If it is a $3 item and you took a long time on it then we probably didn’t make money after paying our bills, so cheap items were moved to the floor fast.
There were different departments for different items and they learned to find what was valuable or not (although depending on people and interest stuff could still get through). If we were unsure about an item we were supposed to look it up on Ebay but a lot of things you could guess a value point for.
We also used to have a place to put items for someone to look up later if they thought it was valuable. As for percentage of items being trash, probably about 30-40% of hard goods would be utter trash and probably 40-60% of linens/clothing. People would donate pants that were soiled from bodily functions or blankets of the same nature, or ripped broken, gross things. But then again, lots of good things. You could’ve made a show like the Office out of our Thrift Store… we had some interesting stories.
But for all the trash, there was so much good stuff and it would come in spurts. Just as you always say, January-March was the worst for inventory. In the summer inventory was booming and Christmas was usually pretty good too.
Couples extra points: clothing was never caught up, there was always clothing stockpiled and it was the death pile that never ended. And we used to fill a semi with all the bad clothing. I think it took a 3-4 weeks to fill the semi but that was hundreds of trash bags full and we were a smaller store.
– the second store Shopgoodwill: I think goodwill stores are managed differently or by different districts so they may have different rules. But ours worked like this: My boss lived in another state and oversaw the Utah locations and a few in Idaho, and below her were other managers. The manager of my department quit 1-2 weeks after I arrived and they didn’t hire one till I was gone after about 4-5 more weeks so don’t know how that would’ve been.
Our department for shopgoodwill was inside one regular goodwill thrift. We stayed in our own room sorting things, we didn’t go to the retail floor. Our office received totes of items from all the Utah and a couple of the Idaho locations and we would have to list them for their specific stores. (So if we were in salt lake and the item was from Idaho, we had to list it from Idaho to make sure the correct stores got the correct credit for items selling).
In each goodwill store, each department had a quota of totes they needed to send to us. So, for example maybe linens from each store was supposed to send a tote a day with items they thought would be worth putting online. I think most of the departments were not really trained what to look for and because of the quota and the fluctuation of goods they would sometimes send junk just to “fill a tote” and other times they would send great stuff. So most, if not all, goodwill stores do sort the good stuff out now, but it is often by untrained eyes so a lot gets through too.
Also, in my location, they would list an item for 7 days and then after that that they usually sent it back to the store to go to the floor. So if no one happened to want that expensive item within those 7 days, it went back to the original store and went to the floor and then eventually went on sale etc. I don’t think regular workers looked items up on Ebay, I think they just put it in totes if they thought it could be worth money. Our department sometimes looked it up on eBay but most items started at a flat rate price (7.99) and were in auction for 7 days. Now they start at 9.99.
– Third and final thrift store: This one was different because it was connected with 1-800-Got-Junk. Got Junk’s are franchises. The owner of our Got Junk opened the thrift store. This is where all you Scavengers would’ve cringed at the stuff people throw away!
People hire Got Junk to pick up their items, and they do an excellent job, but a small truck costs out $500 here to load up. So people would pay $500 for the company to come and throw out their amazing stuff! Sometimes it was junk, but often enough it was a business or home with good items.
The guys on the truck didn’t work for the thrift store but they would get little bonuses for bringing stuff to the store. The problem with this system is that they didn’t care about the items they picked up and would just throw them in the truck (please cry with me over the many many broken midcentury and earlier shattered lamps and antiques that were pristine before going into the truck). Or they didn’t have time to drop them off and so they took them to the dump before going to get another load from another customer.
The people running the store also hadn’t had experience and didn’t really seek training so it was often pretty disorganized and you could haggle a lot. The first thrift store I was at was very admit about no changing prices, no haggling, and weren’t very helpful or friendly in that way. This store sometimes didn’t even price things and pretty much everything could be negotiated.
Without experience, they often threw away really good stuff at the store. They also didn’t accept donations, only stuff from the trucks, so in slow times there really wasn’t much new in the store. Staff could buy from there too. And I was allowed to put whatever I wanted on Ebay.
They didn’t care about Scavengers here. In fact we had a guy who would come and take whatever books he wanted and give a percentage of his sales back to the store while he sold them on Ebay or Amazon.
Sorry this post is so long, but the information might be helpful. I shop all these stores still ( except for the closed one obviously) because I know that stuff gets through or goes on sale. It’s not as good as when I was a kid, but it’s still there.
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Thanks for the info . (I edited the post to add spacing between thoughts so it was more readable. A wall of text is usually skipped over by many people).
Your experience sounds like what I hear from other thrift store workers. So much stuff is coming in + an inefficient sorting process = barely controlled chaos.
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That’s interesting that the stuff goes back to the goodwill if it doesn’t sell. I don’t often shop the retail stores anymore but the last time I was in, they were playing an announcement about checking online for different items.
I never see any kind of jewelry at the stores around me but I did hear that they opened a Goodwill Boutique nearby. Another reseller was telling me about it while we waited for the bins to open but she said it was mostly full of new with tags Target stuff. One of these days I’ll get over there an check it out.
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