5 ms·

> There's still a high number of items from various in-house brands from Florida department store Bealls (namely Coral Bay, Reel Legends, and Dept 222) Looking

> There's still a high number of items from various in-house brands from Florida department store Bealls (namely Coral Bay, Reel Legends, and Dept 222) Looking at the chart, it appears these 3 brands were all in the top 4 most commonly sold (or at least available for sale) brands at Goodwill in by 2019, and they've been in the top 10 or so for years. I can't imagine organic amounts of resale from a Florida-only department store chain could account for this. So is Bealls just straight selling their old stock to Goodwill for cheap? Or maybe even giving it away as a write-off (and to reduce cost to store items they don't think they'll ever be able to sell). I wonder how much of Goodwill's stock actually comes from things like this, as opposed to houseful donations.

bluntfang 6y ago
>I wonder how much of Goodwill's stock actually comes from things like this, as opposed to houseful donations. Anecdata. I worked at a goodwill in the early 2000s for community service. A lot of people donate soiled rubbish disguised as clothing that goes to landfill. I would have no doubt that Goodwill has partnerships with department stores...or else they wouldn't have anything to sell.
- megablast 6y ago
  Most people do not.
jjmccoolguy 6y ago
There's some (easy) analysis to be done to look at if these brands are coming only from only one or two Goodwill sellers, which could help us better form a theory. I might take a look after work. Even then, I didn't want to go too far down that particular rabbit hole since understanding might (shudder) require me to get off the internet and call someone or something.
- magicnubs 6y ago
  I liked the visualizations a lot by the way. Maybe you mentioned in the write-up and I missed it, but what did you use to make them? Checked the skills listed on your CV but didn't see any not-static visualization tools listed
  - jjmccoolguy 6y ago
    Thank you! I used d3.js, my first love.
skellera 6y ago
I just went to Goodwill last weekend. They seemed to have more “new” items than I remembered. I assume it’s cheap overstock that’s donated vs marked down.
Joe8Bit 6y ago
Had limited experience of this while doing strategy work for a large UK fasion retailer. A significant proportion of items from a new range had been returned as faulty. When they investigated they realised a new factory they were using for this range had slipped a huge amount of bad items through the reatilers QA process. They ended up writing down the whole line and donating it to Oxfam/Redcross to be sold in their charity shops, very similar to Goodwill. It was 100,000's of items. They were already writing the goods down as a loss against their balance sheet and they managed to recoup a small percentage of that loss as a tax deduction for the charity donation. It didn't happen often, but it wasn't the first time they'd done it
- Joe8Bit 6y ago
  FWIW this is also a relaitvley common practice for administrators when dealing with bankrupt companies. Donating goods they can't sell is often cheaper than storing them or paying for them to be disposed of!
  - lozaning 6y ago
    Being wrote off an entire 787 Dreamliner and donated it to the Pima Air And Space museum. It was going to cost to much to fix and have recertified after it went through testing, so they gave the whole thing away.
    - frandroid 6y ago
      Possibly the second largest donated item ever, after the aircraft carrier Russia "donated" to India (I think it was in need of $2B worth of repairs...)
      - oh_sigh 6y ago
        The family that started the Patagonia brand donated 1600 mi^2 of land to Chile to form a national park. That's way bigger than a boat(and probably cheaper to maintain too)!
    - 6y ago
Spooky23 6y ago
Goodwill does alot of deals with retailers for excess inventory and reshopped returns. Target used to use them, for example. This is what TJ Maxx/Marshalls used to do. The market is pretty diverse for this type of thing. There's a whole industry around it.
josephmosby 6y ago
Fun hypothesis: a giant Florida Goodwill moved into an old Bealls in 2019. Bealls may have run a cost-benefit analysis and said "you know what, it's actually cheaper for us to sell all this old merch to Goodwill at a discount than for us to move it to the new store." https://www.willmeng.com/goodwill-store-moving-to-shopping-center/ https://www.willmeng.com/goodwill-store-moving-to-shopping-c...
PsylentKnight 6y ago
Bealls is based in Florida, it is not Florida-only.
asdff 6y ago
Walk into a goodwill, and your answer will be obvious. Plenty of things are sold packaged and new in goodwill. Usually it's things like homegoods, in my experience.
ggggtez 6y ago
Yes, stores often sell excess stock to goodwill.

bluntfang 6y ago

>I wonder how much of Goodwill's stock actually comes from things like this, as opposed to houseful donations. Anecdata. I worked at a goodwill in the early 2000s for community service. A lot of people donate soiled rubbish disguised as clothing that goes to landfill. I would have no doubt that Goodwill has partnerships with department stores...or else they wouldn't have anything to sell.

megablast 6y ago
Most people do not.

jjmccoolguy 6y ago

There's some (easy) analysis to be done to look at if these brands are coming only from only one or two Goodwill sellers, which could help us better form a theory. I might take a look after work. Even then, I didn't want to go too far down that particular rabbit hole since understanding might (shudder) require me to get off the internet and call someone or something.

magicnubs 6y ago
I liked the visualizations a lot by the way. Maybe you mentioned in the write-up and I missed it, but what did you use to make them? Checked the skills listed on your CV but didn't see any not-static visualization tools listed
- jjmccoolguy 6y ago
  Thank you! I used d3.js, my first love.

skellera 6y ago

I just went to Goodwill last weekend. They seemed to have more “new” items than I remembered. I assume it’s cheap overstock that’s donated vs marked down.

Joe8Bit 6y ago

Had limited experience of this while doing strategy work for a large UK fasion retailer. A significant proportion of items from a new range had been returned as faulty. When they investigated they realised a new factory they were using for this range had slipped a huge amount of bad items through the reatilers QA process. They ended up writing down the whole line and donating it to Oxfam/Redcross to be sold in their charity shops, very similar to Goodwill. It was 100,000's of items. They were already writing the goods down as a loss against their balance sheet and they managed to recoup a small percentage of that loss as a tax deduction for the charity donation. It didn't happen often, but it wasn't the first time they'd done it

Joe8Bit 6y ago
FWIW this is also a relaitvley common practice for administrators when dealing with bankrupt companies. Donating goods they can't sell is often cheaper than storing them or paying for them to be disposed of!
- lozaning 6y ago
  Being wrote off an entire 787 Dreamliner and donated it to the Pima Air And Space museum. It was going to cost to much to fix and have recertified after it went through testing, so they gave the whole thing away.
  - frandroid 6y ago
    Possibly the second largest donated item ever, after the aircraft carrier Russia "donated" to India (I think it was in need of $2B worth of repairs...)
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      The family that started the Patagonia brand donated 1600 mi^2 of land to Chile to form a national park. That's way bigger than a boat(and probably cheaper to maintain too)!
  - 6y ago

Spooky23 6y ago

Goodwill does alot of deals with retailers for excess inventory and reshopped returns. Target used to use them, for example. This is what TJ Maxx/Marshalls used to do. The market is pretty diverse for this type of thing. There's a whole industry around it.

josephmosby 6y ago

Fun hypothesis: a giant Florida Goodwill moved into an old Bealls in 2019. Bealls may have run a cost-benefit analysis and said "you know what, it's actually cheaper for us to sell all this old merch to Goodwill at a discount than for us to move it to the new store." https://www.willmeng.com/goodwill-store-moving-to-shopping-center/ https://www.willmeng.com/goodwill-store-moving-to-shopping-c...

PsylentKnight 6y ago

Bealls is based in Florida, it is not Florida-only.

asdff 6y ago

Walk into a goodwill, and your answer will be obvious. Plenty of things are sold packaged and new in goodwill. Usually it's things like homegoods, in my experience.

ggggtez 6y ago

Yes, stores often sell excess stock to goodwill.