If you love discount shopping and finding deals, a bin store is the perfect place for you to shop. Some other common names for bin stores are Amazon bin stores, bargain bins, Target liquidation stores, and overstock bin stores. Even if you have heard of them, you may still be wondering what is a bin store and how does it work?
Bin stores are found throughout the United States and Canada. See our directory of bin stores to find one near you. Although there are some bin store chains with multiple locations, the majority are small family run businesses.
A bin store sells liquidation, customer return, and overstock items from retail stores which they purchase in bulk, usually by the truckload. These items are placed into large bins for customers to dig through, and everything is sold for the same price. You never know what you’ll find at a bin store. When new items are restocked in the bins, the store charges the highest daily price. Each day the price drops. After the lowest priced day, the store will restock and the cycle restarts. An example of a typical bin store pricing schedule is $10 Friday, $8 Saturday, $7 Sunday, $5 Monday, $3 Tuesday, $1 Wednesday, and closed to restock on Thursday.
Restock day may be expensive, but it is the best time to find hidden treasures. There will be competition from other customers though so be prepared. If a store consistently sells good inventory, people will be lined up hours before the store opens so they can have first dibs. There will be both resellers and people looking for personal items. Although there are great finds to be had, the majority of items you see on restock day at a bin store will not be worth the price. This is where the daily price drop comes into play. Return to the store later in the pricing cycle and if nobody else has purchased the items, you can buy them for a lower price. Since the items are often returns, make sure to check thoroughly to ensure everything is complete and not broken. Most stores have testing stations for this exact reason. Bin stores usually do not accept returns.
In addition to the price dropping bin items, many bin stores have started adding in liquidation store style fixed price sections. The stores will price these more expensive items individually instead of selling them for the daily bin pricing. For example an item that retails for $200 may be sold in the liquidation section for a $100 fixed price, which does not change. The reason for this is that the cost to purchase inventory has increased for bin stores. To make a profit and stay in business, many stores have started to pull more expensive items.
Another place you can visit to get cheap items is a Goodwill bin store. There are many locations throughout the United States. See our directory of Goodwill bin stores to find one near you. These stores have large bins you can dig through to find items. However their items come from customer donations. Many of these donations are sent to regular Goodwill thrift stores. Items not sold in the thrift stores and excess donations are sent to the Goodwill bins. Since the items are donations, be sure to check everything for damage.
New bins with fresh inventory are switched throughout the day at the Goodwill bins. People will crowd the bins to get the new inventory and can be aggressive in grabbing items. The same customers usually are at the bins every single day and can sometimes act territorial which is something to keep in mind.
Instead of daily pricing, items at Goodwill bin stores are sold by the pound. Some stores give a per pound discount if a large amount of items are purchased. Other stores separate soft goods from hard goods, giving different pricing for each.
Bin stores are a great place to get discounted items. If you are interested in Amazon, Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Dollar General, and other retail store items, you definitely should check out a bin store near you. Goodwill bin stores are another great place to purchase affordable used items that have been donated. Now that you know what a bin store is and how it works, I wish you the best of luck in finding some amazing deals!
FAQs
What is a bin store, exactly? It's a retail store that sells overstock, returned, and clearance merchandise from major retailers. The merchandise is typically sorted into bins (in case you were wondering where the name came from) by category, and shoppers can dig through the bins to find deals on name brand products.
Where do items from bin stores come from? ›
Retailers known as “bin stores” buy massive truckloads of returned items from merchants or through liquidation companies, per The Washington Post. The Bin Store in South Carolina, for example, sorts through ~25k items per week.
How do bin stores make money? ›
Bin Store reselling is when you buy liquidation pallets and set up the merchandise in fixed-priced bin for reselling, to give your customers significant savings. As your customers buy and pick over your newest merchandise, you slowly lower the price throughout the week to try and maximize your sales.
Why are bin stores popular? ›
Bin stores, such as Best Bargain Bin (Fox Lake, Illinois) and UnBox (Brooklyn, New York), buy this stuff directly from retailers or liquidation companies. In doing so, they reduce the losses associated with offloading unwanted merchandise, much of which might otherwise go to landfills.
What does shopping in the bins mean? ›
The Goodwill Clearance Center (aka “the Bins”), unlike regular Goodwill stores, skips the neat racks and rows. Instead, what you'll find inside are waist-high bins filled with a mix of everything imaginable — clothes, shoes, books, electronics, toys, home decor, kitchen gadgets, and more.
How does bin store pricing work? ›
How do bin stores work? Bin stores typically operate on a weekly schedule with descending pricing. On the day that the new merchandise arrives, everything is priced the same.
What are Amazon return stores called? ›
Amazon liquidation stores are outlets that sell overstocked, returned, or slightly damaged goods from Amazon at reduced prices. How can I find an Amazon liquidation store near me?
How do bins work in the UK? ›
Paper and card need to go in your blue bin. Glass bottles and jars, tins, cans and plastic bottles need to go in your brown bin. recycling should be placed loose inside your recycling bins – no plastic bags.
Are Amazon bin stores worth it? ›
Amazon Liquidation Stores offer a wide variety of products at discounted prices, making them a budget-friendly option for shoppers. It is important to thoroughly inspect items at Liquidation Stores for any damages or missing parts, as they are sold “as is” without warranties.
Where should bins be kept? ›
Bins (even those that are properly closed) can be smelly, so keep them at the side or rear of your house to avoid kicking up a stink along the road. Try to keep your wheelie bin out of direct sunlight, as the sun will warm up the bin and heighten the smell, attracting flies and wasps.
Items that aren't suitable for reuse or donating to charity can be recycled and repurposed into new items. Make sure old clothes and shoes are disposed of at recycling points rather than being put into the bin and destined for landfill. You can use our locator to find a clothing recycling bank near you.
What does selling for bin mean? ›
The BIN (Buy It Now) is a price the seller has set where you can just buy it out right rather than bidding on the item. Sometimes you have just a BIN which is just the seller selling for a set price.
What does bins mean in UK slang? ›
'Bins' is claimed to be an expression of co*ckney rhyming slang for glasses, as in reading glasses, so if someone is having trouble looking up a number in a telephone book you might say put on your 'bins'.
Where do items go from recycle bin? ›
Where do files go after being deleted from the Recycle Bin? They don't go anywhere! Windows simply marks the storage space they occupy as free, allowing other files to be stored on it. Until the original files are overwritten, you can recover them with any capable data recovery software tool.
What happens to bin waste UK? ›
Most councils offer weekly or fortnightly rubbish collection services for non-recyclable waste, along with separate collections for recyclable materials. Once collected, the rubbish is transported to waste treatment facilities, which can include landfill sites, incineration plants, and recycling centres.
What is a bin location warehouse? ›
Bin locations are used to designate where items of inventory are to be stored which is essential for good warehouse organisation. They can represent a shelf, a pallet location, a storage area, or any other place where products are stored.
Where do krazy bins get their items? ›
How Krazy Bins Works. Here's how each Krazy Bins discount store works: Each week we receive truckloads of exciting returns and overstock items to bring our customers Krazy good deals! You never know what you might find, but we can't guarantee that we will always have the same products or retail items each week!
