Hi my name is Elena. I decided to make this informational bin store website after realizing that I had been missing out on visiting the ones near me. It can be difficult to find stores sometimes so I am doing my best to find and add them to this site. Declining price bin stores are so much fun to visit and can be a great place for inventory. I also have been adding Goodwill bin stores as time allows. They’re definitely two different pricing models but both have been good to me. I have found great inventory for my reselling business and affordable, discounted personal items too.
I started reselling online part time in about 2010. The reason I started was because I read that some people were buying items from retail stores on credit cards, then selling them to get credit card reward points and travel for free. My go to items were kitchenwares, especially Kitchenaid mixers. I would combine store sales, store promos for example Kohl’s cash, percentage back from online purchases, and credit card rewards points to make the price per item low enough. Then I would then sell the items using Amazon FBA. In those days oversize items weren’t charged so much for selling fees as they are now so it was great. At some point I realized that not only was I getting my free travel points, I was also making a small profit. This led me to search out information on selling on Amazon and the rest is history.
I quit my “real” job in 2014 to resell full time. I was miserable in that job and online selling was the thing that allowed me to take the leap of faith. At first I was going around to retail stores to find inventory – think TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Home Goods, Target, Home Depot, etc. It was a lot of work but I enjoyed it. In trying to scale, I just could not figure out how until someone showed me a newspaper advertisement about a new liquidation store in the area. The store had great deals and I was able to finally start making some good money on Amazon. This store had another location in a nearby city so I would go there as well. Everything was great for a few years, and then it all started changing which caused my business to pretty much crumble. The prices were raised more and more. I started dating one of the employees which management did not like. I had rented an office so my expenses were much higher and I was back to the issue of not getting inventory.
I tried purchasing pallets and truckloads to get more inventory. That did work but it was so hard to get rid of some of the items online. It was also impossible to move inventory fast enough. This is why I find bin stores to be so awesome and wish that they were a thing back then/wish that I’d thought of something like that! Since those days, I have switched between being a part time and full time online seller. The problem I always have is inventory drying up so it has not been consistent for me in a long time.
If I had the money I would love to open a bin store! Unfortunately I still have debts from my past business mistakes, and so a store is a huge risk that I can’t justify taking. My main goal for probably 15 years has been to make my income from writing websites. I have started and stopped that so many times but am giving it another shot now and have a few other sites that I work on besides this one. Even though I cannot have my own bin store, at least I can be involved in this way.
Thank you so much for visiting the site. I hope that there is some helpful information for you here.