Goodwill Silicon Valley is opening a 25,000-square-foot outlet store in San Jose today, with plans to open more new retail spots in the future.
This is the first time the nonprofit has tried out the by-the-pound approach to sales in its nearly 100-year-history, according Chris Baker, CEO of Goodwill of Silicon Valley, but it has high hopes.
“Customers like this model and other Goodwill organizations across the country have implemented them to great success,” he said.
Bargain hunters visiting the new store at 1685 Tully Road, located in an East San Jose shopping center just off US 101, will be able to peruse large bins of donations, organized by category and refreshed hourly. Prices range from $0.49 per pound for glassware, dishware and other breakable items to $2.99 per pound for housewares, textiles, shoes and accessories. Media items like CDs and DVDs are $1 per item and video games are $3. Some bigger pieces, like furniture and bicycles, will still be priced individually but at steep discounts.
The everything-must-go mentality will help divert waste from local landfills, Baker said, and the new store is expected to bring in more donations that will allow the organization to expand further.
Goodwill SF Bay, which is run by a separate nonprofit, runs an outlet store in South San Francisco. It survived the spate of closures last month that hit many other Goodwill SF Bay stores after a merger with the country’s largest Goodwill, which is based out of Arizona.
While it has closed 11 existing locations and its San Francisco HQ, Goodwill SF Bay CEO Tim O’Neal said its parent organization has been “investing heavily” in Bay Area retail since the merger last fall, “bringing new technologies to better streamline donation processing and retail operations, introducing daily discounts and sales to enhance the shopping experience, and creating new, more efficient processes and logistics across the network of stores.”
It has about 30 Bay Area stores currently, located from Vacaville to Redwood City, but plans for up to 80 over the next 15 years. These will be in larger, more efficient locations that “create a better shopping and donating experience for our customers, as well as a better working environment for our team members,” he said.
SF Bay expects to open one new store later this year and two more next year, he said, with several more letters of intent in place throughout the Bay Area.
Goodwill Silicon Valley, which owns the rights to the Goodwill name in Santa Clara and San Benito counties, expects minimal impact on its donations and customers from the SF Bay closures, Baker said. He added that Silicon Valley would look to support SF Bay employees in search of potential job opportunities.
While it is leasing the new retail space, Goodwill Silicon Valley recently bought a new headquarters in San Jose thanks to an unsolicited $10 million donation from billionaire MacKenzie Scott. It does not have any other outlet stores planned but intends to further grow its retail operations more generally, Baker said.
According to Baker, being based locally allows the organization to make “informed, community-driven decisions that prioritize both the growth of our retail operations and the expansion of our mission services.”
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