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Seven Days at the Bin Store

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Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#61

Post by munificent »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #48
alistairSH wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really amazing is that enough people buy absolute crap from Amazon, then return it, that this business model exists at all. It's downright dystopian.

well on the flip side god bless capitalism for finding a way to give this junk a second chance at avoiding going straight to the landfill. ... i perceive the proliferation of so much junk more of a result of zirp, low interest rates/inflation/central banking devaluing the past over future "growth" and china and the west playing the goodhart game with GDP and juicing production/consumption, than something necessarily…

I suspect that a very large fraction of purchases at the bin store are impulse buys that provide a temporary serotonin hit.

Then the purchaser gets home and realizes that no, in fact they do not need a frog-themed toaster whose mouth is too small to fit a normal slice of bread, and they throw it out.

You could look at this as an abitrage opportunity where a business throwing out bulk waste has to pay for it, but if you distribute it to individual citizens whose trash bin still has a bit of room in it, you can throw it out for free.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#63

Post by twright »

I interned at a small company that made an app for doing Amazon arbitrage right when the FBA program was new. The founder said something I think about regularly: "everything anyone needs is already made they just have to find it." Obviously not true for consumable goods but I see this statement manifest in places like this.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#64

Post by mastazi »

mrweasel wrote: post #19
citizenpaul wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these stores in business. The stuff in the bins is from amazon returns. Its not a business of its own supply choices. The people that run the stores go to amazon pallet auctions where they buy the stuff unseen and hope to turn a profit on the arbitrage of what they pay vs the worth of the pallet.

It's still mostly junk. The issue is do you really want to spend time returning a $5 junk purchase? For most people the answer is no. This is just the stuff that was returned or didn't sell, imagine how much of the stuff is thrown away by the buyers. Some things are just made to cheaply, to hit a price point people will pay. When people then buy the item and realise that it's garbage, it gets tossed. Just maybe you c…

I can see your argument in relation to minimizing waste and the fact that many low-price items should not exist because they are not sustainable.

But I'm confused by the first part of your comment because first you said

> It's still mostly junk.

But then you go on to say

> do you really want to spend time returning a $5 junk purchase? For most people the answer is no. This is just the stuff that was returned or didn't sell

so basically you're saying that the stuff in the bins is not garbage after all if I understand correctly?

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#65

Post by kubectl_h »

neilv wrote: post #28
kubectl_h wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a surplus and salvage chain in Maine called Mardens. It's been in business for 60 years and basically purchases pallets or shipping containers full of products that were written off by retailers for some reason or another and re-sells. They take the highest price they can find online and discount the product 20-40%. Sometimes you'll go in and run across really high end products that could easily be sold at f…

I like that model. If they have the shopper traffic to move stock, I'd guess the 20%-40% discount off highest online price is better than they could net by selectively diverting that item to online.

They definitely have the traffic. They also do not advertise much of what they have, I'm guessing due to agreements they have with the original retailers, so you never really go there looking for something specific, you just kind of go hoping they have what you want or just to browse around. They are a bit of an institution here, where people are pretty frugal in nature regardless of how wealthy (or not) they are.

They will also magic-marker over the original retailers labels, but you can usually see where the product came from. For about a year they had inventory from the Texas sporting goods chain Academy, including apparel from various regional schools in Texas. Mostly Houston and San Antonio. My guess was all that inventory came from stores that were partially flooded by a hurricane.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#66

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

The thing I'm most annoyed at are all these comments lamenting consumerism, waste, capitalism, but who will never actually do anything to stop any of this. You're on a news site for an angel investor that will most definitely be funding the exact thing you're complaining about.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#67

Post by AStonesThrow »

neilv wrote: post #21

> “You can buy stuff from here and then you can resell it,” Ahmed tells me. “Through eBay or Amazon. You can sell on Facebook market. You will get your money back in less than one day if you wanna resell it. Which is a good thing for everybody right now, for the public. A lot of people need to work.” I'd guess that probably the store itself is picking out some of the more valuable items from pallets they source, to d…

> charity thrift store chain

Many people see a thrift store on the corner, or a collection bin, and they automatically assume that the thrift business is a non-profit, a charity that is run by a church or a social services agency. But really, a lot of thrift stores are for-profit retail operations that aren't charities at all. So it's interesting that you make the distinction, without needing to name names.

My cousin is an artist, and it was about 20 years ago when she lamented the degradation of thrift stores and yard sales. She said that shows such as Antiques Roadshow and American Pickers had whipped Americans into a frenzy of hunting through inventories and sniping ordinary human mortals. And she lamented that eBay and marketplaces were enabling that sort of buying-up stuff to stick it in a personal garage, and sell it online at leisure.

It was nearly that long ago when I was able to find useful stuff at thrift stores in my neighborhood. I went down one day and came home with a working WiFi router and a matching AC adapter, and that WiFi router ran my home LAN for the next 10 years.

It is with some embarrassment that I may admit to never cleaning my PC keyboard; why bother when a like-new, cleaned-up USB keyboard was $1 at the thrift store on the corner? They were stacking them like cordwood! You could plunder the tangles of cables and find any old obsolete thing, and I'm a guy who enjoys obsolete commodity stuff.

I found some enjoyable cassettes and other fun things at the Catholic thrift store. But in general, the charity thrift store scene has dried up here in the metropolitan area. There's one in the heart of the city that is megachurch-run, and anchors a residential community. But 2-3 others have pulled up stakes and shuttered operations. And there are prominent NO DUMPING signs posted there.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#68

Post by AStonesThrow »

Freak_NL wrote: post #3

> “The goal for all the reverse logistics stuff,” says Roberson, “is to keep things out of the landfill.” Or rather, to make sure these things are bought and thrown out by consumers instead. Getting rid of unused products costs money unless you have a loophole that allows offloading it onto some poorer country (cf. Atacama desert clothing dump).

> Getting rid of unused products costs money

Storing unsold product also costs money. A brick-and-mortar storefront is extremely conscious of what's allowed on their shelves, because if the product isn't moving, it's not only an overhead cost that they are paying rent, keeping the lights on, doing maintenance, but also an opportunity cost of something else that could be put on the shelf and sold and taken away by a customer.

So if you toss 30 cubic meters of junk in a storage locker, and it doesn't appreciate in value, and you pay rent on the storage locker for 3 years, but you still can't use your junk, and it costs you $$$ to sort it and transport it away, you should stop holding your junk so tightly.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#69

Post by rizzom5000 »

mrweasel wrote: post #19
citizenpaul wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apparently, I'm wrong enough that there's hundreds of these stores in business. The stuff in the bins is from amazon returns. Its not a business of its own supply choices. The people that run the stores go to amazon pallet auctions where they buy the stuff unseen and hope to turn a profit on the arbitrage of what they pay vs the worth of the pallet.

It's still mostly junk. The issue is do you really want to spend time returning a $5 junk purchase? For most people the answer is no. This is just the stuff that was returned or didn't sell, imagine how much of the stuff is thrown away by the buyers. Some things are just made to cheaply, to hit a price point people will pay. When people then buy the item and realise that it's garbage, it gets tossed. Just maybe you c…

> Some clever business people sees this trend and starts ordering junk...

Similar to lower quality made-for-outlet products produced by major brands. With the bins it seems to approach gambling on some level. Like raffle tickets, except when you lose you also have to dispose of some trash.

Re: Seven Days at the Bin Store

#70

Post by radpanda »

munificent wrote: post #61
throwawaymaths wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well on the flip side god bless capitalism for finding a way to give this junk a second chance at avoiding going straight to the landfill. ... i perceive the proliferation of so much junk more of a result of zirp, low interest rates/inflation/central banking devaluing the past over future "growth" and china and the west playing the goodhart game with GDP and juicing production/consumption, than something necessarily…

I suspect that a very large fraction of purchases at the bin store are impulse buys that provide a temporary serotonin hit. Then the purchaser gets home and realizes that no, in fact they do not need a frog-themed toaster whose mouth is too small to fit a normal slice of bread, and they throw it out. You could look at this as an abitrage opportunity where a business throwing out bulk waste has to pay for it, but if y…

> You could look at this as an abitrage opportunity where a business throwing out bulk waste has to pay for it, but if you distribute it to individual citizens whose trash bin still has a bit of room in it, you can throw it out for free.

Yeah, that’s what I figured was going on here. Reminds me of pizza delivery (in the US anyhow), which relies on pizza delivery guys not paying attention to the cost of vehicle wear-and-tear and proper insurance so your pizza is cheaper than if every pizza place owned properly maintained and insured vehicles.

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