by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
Profit margins may be tight for retailers in the current market, but a nonprofit retailer in North Florida will continue to grow in the next year.
Goodwill Industries of North Florida added three new thrift stores and six donation centers in 2008, and plans to add one more thrift store in 2009 at Lenox and Cassat avenues by late April. Its retail sales in stores throughout North America were up 6.7 percent and up 15.6 percent in North Florida, which rung up $11.8 million in 2008.
“We are going to focus on growing into what we just opened,” said Karen Phillips, vice president of marketing for Goodwill Industries of North Florida. “We are tentatively scheduled to open a new thrift store at Cassat and Lenox on April 15, but that is the only expansion we are planning in 2009.”
Goodwill is working with Sleiman Enterprises to open the 10,000 square-foot thrift store at Lenox and Cassat. The organization usually targets stores that offer 8,000-10,000 square feet for its thrift store facilities. The organization’s newest store is a little less than 8,000 square feet, but offers a highly visible location on U.S. Hwy 17, about four blocks south of the Orange Park Kennel Club.
The organization covers 14 counties in North Florida with 18 thrift stores, 22 donation centers, and six job junctions. The stores are located throughout Jacksonville and in surrounding communities, including Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, Orange Park, Gainesville, Lake City, Palatka, Palm Coast and Starke.
These stores process gently used clothing, shoes, toys, books, household items, furniture and linens for resale. The money generated from these sales is used to provide education, training and career services for people with “disadvantages such as welfare dependency, homelessness and lack of education or work experience, as well as those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities.”
Goodwill provided employment and training services to over 1 million people throughout North America in 2008. Goodwill Industries of North Florida trained 28,242 and placed 10,536 in 2008.
Products must be sold in order to allow the organization to offer these services and it uses a system to make sure customers keep coming back. Items have a shelf life of three weeks. Once they are taken in they are tagged with a certain color to let workers know how long they have been on the shelves.
“My wife and I come here regularly to see what they get in because they have good prices,” said John Havel, of Jacksonville. “Today, I stopped by to pick up some pants for my grandson, he’s a 48 waist, so it’s a little difficult to find pants for him.”
Chances are there will be a new selection for Havel to look through on a regular basis at the Lenox Avenue store. Once products hit that three-week time limit, they are taken off the shelves and packaged to be sold to salvage companies, which sell the items overseas.
“We work with salvage brokers who work with overseas foreign markets for items that fail to sell in our stores,” said Phillips. “Everything we sell in our store has a salvage market: textiles, books, shoes, pots, pans.”
Goodwill Industries International has also created a Web site to sell its products, www.shopgoodwill.com. It was created in 1999, but is too labor intensive for the North Florida region at this point.
“You have to have a separate department to handle Internet sales; someone to take pictures, package the item for sale and also handle returns,” said Phillips. “We often found that people were sending items back because it didn’t look exactly like the picture, so it got away from being cost effective.”
The North Florida Chapter may not utilize the Internet, but Phillips looked at the move as a benefit for customers.
“You can come in and find that high end item in our store that others would pull and put on eBay in order to get top dollar,” said Phillips. “Whatever we get in goes on our shelves.”
Women’s clothing may be the item that produces the biggest sales figures, but they are not the biggest sale item.
“We do sell vehicles and boats, too,” said Phillips. “But it’s not a market we actively pursue.”
Goodwill does actively pursue opportunities to provide people with a way to become a part of the workforce. They not only train people, but they also have employment opportunities within the organization.
Goodwill Industries of North Florida employs about 300 people to support its thrift stores, donation centers, “Job Junctions” and call centers. It also operates a commercial laundry facility that works with hospitals in the area since October 2007. The facility in the back of the Lenox Avenue headquarters has the capability to handle about 20 million tons of laundry a year, which equates to about 10,000 classic Volkswagen Beetles. The facility is currently processing about 1.2 million pounds.
“It gives people the chance to develop a work ethic,” said Phillips. “This also allows them to add to their work history and help them build a resume and references.”
The corporate headquarters will experience another change once the Lenox and Cassat avenues store is opened. The thrift store at the corporate headquarters will become a “pound store,” where customers bring up the items they want to buy. Those items are weighed and customers pay per pound. It will be the first “pound store” in the region.
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