In Eagle, the building has around 9,000 square feet, with 4,000 square feet of sales area. The sales floors at both shops represent only part of their overall square footage. Summer clothing and sports equipment are coming down and winter coats and skis are coming out. “If you miss a price on Walmart jeans, people are going to get upset with us,” he said.įall signals one of the big inventory change times for the Thrifty Shops. It’s in everyone’s best interest to price items appropriately, he noted. Osteen said staff does occasionally hear complaints about prices, but the gripes are more about a particular item rather than the shop as a whole. At that point, it’s more likely to find its way to the cash register. If the price on a given item is higher than what customers want to pay, it will eventually drop to half-off. “They have worked here long enough they know what we can get for different items.” “Our staff is great and they have a lot of knowledge about pricing,” he said. Leingang said the tag system is also an accuracy check for initial pricing. If the item still doesn’t sell, it is packed up and sent off with the other New Horizons donations. After the fifth week, the price drops to 75 percent off. When an item hits its fifth week on the sales floor, it is sold for 50 percent off the marked price. That lets the staff track how long an item has been on display. There is a five-color tag system that gives each item a specific sell-by date.Įach week a new tag color is used for items priced at the Thrifty Shop. The merchandise at the Thrifty Shops is ever-changing by design. A lot of thought and experience is represented on each tag the Thrifty Shop places on an item. “If we put junk out on the racks, it won’t sell.”Īfter the initial sorting, donations move to the pricing room. “Our people here have good taste and they want good stuff,” Osteen explained. If an item has life left in it, but it doesn’t meet the Thrifty Shops’ standards, it is donated to an organization called New Horizons that operates large thrift stores in Colorado Springs, Canon City and Pueblo. But that doesn’t mean they don’t find their ultimate resale destiny. Many of the donations that go to the Thrifty Stop don’t make the cut to appear on the local sales floor. That’s when the broken, badly stained, ripped and unusable donations are transferred to the trash. Their initial sorting effort includes three categories - stuff that can be sold in the stores, stuff that can be sent to a different site and stuff that needs to be tossed. The staff at the shops numbers between 25 to 30 full- and part-time employees. “It’s discouraging for us and discouraging for the staff when we have to throw stuff out.”Īfter the donor drives off, the staff at the Thrifty Shop digs in. We have to pay, like anyone else, to take it to the landfill,” said Leingang. The shop hopes people leave only items that can be resold, not stuff that has to go to the landfill such as outdated electronics, broken furniture or clothing that is well past its prime. While surveillance cameras record activities at the shops’ drop-off docks, there is an honor system in place.
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