Why Bargain Hunters Are Flocking to ‘Bin Stores’

Diana Canon, co-owner of Crazy Mad Dealz in Hempstead, N.Y. Right, a crazy mad stuffed-animal deal. (Photograph by Emma Rose Milligan)

These liquidators sell deeply discounted goods that other retailers have discarded. The market is growing, but so are the risks.

Francisco Ramirez stops at his local bin store, Crazy Mad Dealz, every day after leaving work in the hope of stumbling across a bargain. A few months ago at the Hempstead, N.Y., store, which sells other retailers’ discarded inventory, he fished out of a pile of merchandise the exact car part he had been looking for—and paid $3, instead of the retail price of $150.

“It doesn’t matter what you find, it’s worth the buy,” says Ramirez, a mechanic.

Bin stores have grown at a rapid clip nationwide since the Covid-19 pandemic, garnering a loyal following among bargain hunters. These warehouselike liquidation stores offer shoppers deeply discounted merchandise from major retailers such as Amazon.com and Walmart. Bin stores buy pallets of returned merchandise and overstock, and sort them into large bins by category. Prices typically decrease daily after a weekly restock, starting at between $7 and $15 an item on a restock day and falling to $1 or less by the end of the week.

While liquidation stores aren’t new, the rising popularity of bin stores is largely a postpandemic phenomenon. The increase in online shopping flooded retailers such as Amazon and Walmart with unsalable returns they had to unload, leading to a surplus of merchandise available for purchase on the secondary market. At the same time, a spike in inflation crimped household budgets, prompting many U.S. consumers to prioritize bargain-hunting.

“It’s just such a good deal that it’s hard to pass up,” said Hue Chen, president of Saglo Companies, a Florida-based commercial real estate company that has leased property to bin stores. “Among lower-income brackets—or even middle-income brackets—discretionary cash is strained with inflation and the cost of everything going up.”

Need a Foot-Spa Massager?

Crazy Mad Dealz was buzzing on a recent restock day in July. Dozens of customers strolled down aisles lined with wooden bins that overflowed with cardboard boxes, with shoppers stopping to rifle through a container if something—a toy electronic keyboard, perhaps, or a foot-spa massager, or an unmarked Amazon box—caught their eye. The intercom periodically blared a message telling customers not to open packages but to take them to tables where store workers could unwrap the merchandise and check the products.

Business has been booming ever since Diana Canon and her husband, Khalid Naderi, opened the store the summer of 2024. “There’s a line of people outside waiting for us to open the door because they want to be the first ones getting that item,” Canon said.

The thrill of the treasure hunt is a motivator for some customers, including resellers who relist products online. But inflation is an even bigger driver, she said.

“Everything’s getting expensive,” Canon said. “Customers just want to save money across the board.”

Although inflation has cooled since peaking at a 9.1% annual growth rate in June 2022, prices are still about 24% higher than they were in 2020, according to a July Bankrate analysis. The price increases have taken a toll on all consumers, but lower- and middle-class families have been especially hard-hit.

In an October Census Bureau Consumer Pulse survey, more than half of people making less than $35,000 a year said the recent price increases had been “very stressful.” On the other end of the income spectrum, only 20% of people making more than $200,000 considered inflation to be equally as stressful.

Shoppers browse through some of the bins that contain larger boxes at Crazy Mad Dealz, in Hempstead NY on July 14, 2025. (Photograph by Emma Rose Milligan)

Inflation has clipped spending: Bank of America credit-card data showed that the three-month moving average of debit and credit-card spending declined 0.2% for lower-income households in June compared with a year ago, the first annual decline in over a year.

Unlike wealthier consumers, lower-income households have less of a financial cushion, especially when prices surge. They often spend a larger percentage of income on essential goods and services, including food, rent, and gasoline, leaving less money for discretionary spending. Plus, lower-income families have less flexibility to substitute cheaper options for pricier products, as most are already buying the most affordable brands.

Bin stores offer discretionary goods that would otherwise be too pricey. On a recent visit to Crazy Mad Dealz, a customer who gave her name as Zinnia picked up a white quilt for the group home where she works. “You cannot buy from regular stores—they’re too expensive,” she said.

A Pallet-Able Business, With Risks

Bin stores tend to have lower overhead costs than most other retailers, although they still need to pay for rent and labor, and importantly, invest in a constant flow of inventory. Many bin-store owners buy inventory by the truckload. A standard 18-wheel truck typically fits about 26 pallets. Each pallet can cost a couple of thousand dollars, depending on their content. Given that items are sold at low prices, bin stores rely on volume rather than high markups to generate profit.

Operators that figure out the equation have created lucrative businesses, and some are itching to scale up. A few operators have already managed to expand nationwide. Black Friday Dealz, for example, has about 40 stores around the country—most of which are profitable—that altogether drive roughly $140 million in sales a year, said owner Baha Hijaz. The company, which was founded in 2019, plans to open about 10 more stores between now and 2026.

“They’re opening up like crazy, so it’s working,” says Matthew Rothstein, a commercial real estate broker and owner of Pretium Commercial Brokerage, which has worked with the company to scope out new store locations.

The business model also faces risks that could imperil its growth and profitability. For one, other retailers may decide to retain merchandise and seek to recapture the lost sales from returns by relisting items on their platforms, said David Malka, chief sales officer at ReturnPro, a returns company that sells pallets to bin stores and other companies in the secondary market. Higher tariffs could further incentivize retailers to refurbish returned goods, rather than selling them to the resale market, which could also limit pallet supply, he said.

Plus, as more bin stores open, competition for customers and return pallets is increasing, driving up prices.

“You don’t have one bin store in a 50-mile radius, you’ve got 50 stores now in a one-mile radius, so they’re just opening up everywhere,” Malka said. But, he added, “that has / that is why as fast as they’re opening, they’re also closing.”

Competition isn’t a big concern for Black Friday Dealz’s Hijaz, who notes that many of the new stores are smaller and can’t compete with his company’s scale. He does note, however, that business has gotten tougher, particularly because of new tariffs on Chinese imports. Black Friday Dealz grew so much that the company came to import products from China to supplement retailers’ returns. Until recently, imports comprised just under a quarter of the company’s inventory, but the higher levies means Black Friday Dealz is now looking to source exclusively from the U.S. Those changes are prompting Hijaz to pause further expansion plans.

Whatever the risks to the bin-store model, the stores’ proliferation highlights an economic reality: For many Americans, “treasure hunting” isn’t just about fun—it’s a necessary strategy for survival in an economy where every dollar must be stretched to its limit.

Corrections & Amplifications: Hue Chen is president of Saglo Companies, a Florida-based commercial real estate company that has leased property to bin stores. A previous version of this article incorrectly said Chen was president of Saglo Development, a real estate company that helped bin stores find locales.

Write to Sabrina Escobar at sabrina.escobar@barrons.com