The early months of 2022 saw a big uptick in this secondary market industry, as many big retailers’ shipments had been stuck on cargo ships and then arrived all at once. Many of those retailers offloaded a lot of that excess product to salvage stores and liquidation outlets—and you can still find many of those bargains today if you’re close enough to a salvage store.
What are salvage stores?
Salvage stores take all the excess stock from major retailers like Target, Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair, offload it from them, and sell it for heavily discounted prices. Their goal isn’t to make much profit per individual item, but rather to sell fast and dispose of inventory of major retailers quickly. You can usually find things like furniture, bedding, kitchen items, seasonal and home decor, appliances, toys, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.
Are liquidation outlets very different?
Liquidation outlets, similar to salvage stores, buy the excess stock from retailers but hold the products in warehouses and sell products online individually or in pallets through bidding. Some have stores where smaller items are emptied in big boxes for people to buy for a pretty discounted price. Keep in mind, most of the products at liquidation outlets are either returns, refurbished, or fall under some other similar category. If that’s cool with you, you can find some great deals.
Some popular salvage and liquidation stores
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are some of the most well known salvage and liquidation stores. Most of these stores are local or only in certain areas of the country. Check their “find us” section or google the name of the stores to see if you’re close to one. If you recognize a store’s name because you’ve driven past it before, you should finally stop by and browse around sometime.
Salvage and liquidations stores by state and city
Aubrey Swan, a blogger, made a great list of salvage stores that specifically sell Target products and items from some other retailers. The list is organized by state and cities, and is updated as readers find more stores. Most people have one of the stores within driving distance.