IMO, I wish more people shopped at these stores more often, since I’ve noticed that a majority of their items are cheaper, when compared to Walmart and Target, especially for clothing, home goods, and personal care products.
After browsing around these stores and seeing what they have, I began to wonder why these stores aren’t as busy as popular retail chains and malls? The only exception is that people tend to shop more during the weekend.
The only downside (IMO) is that some of their perishable products may be expired or close to their expiration date, which is why I always look at the expiration dates to see how long it’ll last.
Locally (suburban New Orleans), after-market stores such as those named in the title are popular and considerably busier than mall-based retailers.
Even so, if you shop such stores during business hours on a weekday, especially before noon or so, you’ll virtually have the place to yourself. You surmise correctly – the crowd ramps up weekday evenings and all through the weekends.
My Goodwill story is them selling a used Walmart branded Faded Glory shirt for twice what I paid for the same shirt at Walmart itself marked down for clearance.
I’m a net contributor to the local Goodwill store. I’ve donated many bags of older clothes to them, but the only time I’ve ever bought anything there was for a Halloween costume: I did find a credible overcoat and vest for a Doctor Who (the Fourth Doctor) outfit. (Yes, I already owned the very long scarf.)
Almost all of my clothes shopping is at thrift stores and the like (see also my church’s annual rummage sale). Not much from Goodwill specifically, though, because they cost much more than most other thrift stores. My top source is probably Volunteers of America.
I’m curious how / why the OP puts Goodwill, a reseller of donated used goods, in the same breath as any of those other cheapo but first run merchandise stores.
They really have nothing in common as to product, selection, quality, or business model.
I have Goodwill in a different category from stores like Marshall’s, TJMaxx, and Ross. Goodwill’s fare is used items, thus falling into the category of “thrift store”. Your Marshall’s and TJMaxxes are (so far as I’m aware) overstock stores selling new items.
We still sometimes shop at TJ Maxx and Home Goods around Christmas. Now that we are older and the house is pretty damn full, we gave up shopping at Goodwill, etc,
I’ll shop them occasionally, but I seldom find anything that I like that fits me. Not that I have an unusual size, quite the opposite. Most of what I find is either too small or too large for me.
I think middle of the road sizes are grabbed up first run. In outlets you’re getting what’s left over.
Goodwill is just donated. Could be anything. And unusually one-off.
I’ve seen some duplicate items. Generally they are donated from cheaper places like Dollar General. You can see their tags. And yes they mark them up a higher price. Sometimes.
I’ve lost nearly 90 pounds since 2000, and when I starting fitting into “normal” clothing, Burlington was one of the stores I hit up. The locations here in Arkansas are horrible. They were disorganized making clothing difficult to find and it had all the appeal of going to a church rummage sale. I can only imagine Burlington stays in business because the economic climate means people are willing to put up with such a terrible retail environment.
