If you love thrifting, there’s nothing better than digging through Goodwill bins to find the odd treasure, like vintage Levi’s 501s or combat boots in your size. But starting today, you’ll be able to locate these products online.
Goodwill has launched a website called GoodwillFinds where consumers can purchase secondhand goods culled from its locations across the country. A quick scan of the site gives you the same treasure-hunt feeling of going to the store, with products like Gucci wallets, an unused Google Nest, and a full bundle of Nike softball equipment. The site will add to the growing landscape of resale websites that includes ThredUp and Poshmark, along with sites like ReBag and TheRealReal that sell secondhand luxury goods. If it’s successful, it could be lucrative for Goodwill, allowing it to tap into the global resale market that is expected to hit $218 billion by 2026.
Goodwill is one of the most recognized brands in the world. Founded by a Methodist minister called Reverend Edgar J. Helms in Boston in 1902, the organization collected home goods and clothes from richer neighborhoods, then trained poor people to mend and repair these items to be resold. Over the ppast 12 decades, the organization’s mission has stayed consistent: Last year, Goodwill placed more than 123,000 people in jobs throughout the network of 3,300 stores around the country.
Matthew Kaness, CEO of GoodwillFinds, decided to take on the role in early 2022 after a career holding leadership positions in e-commerce businesses, like Modcloth and Urban Outfitters. He says he took the job because he felt drawn to Goodwill’s mission: His older brother was born with a disability and has found employment over the years through Goodwill. “He’s never more fulfilled than when he is working,” Kansas says. “I can’t underscore that there are hundreds of thousands of families across the country who rely on Goodwill to help them recapture their dignity,” he says.
Goodwill is decentralized: There are 155 local Goodwill organizations across the country that run the 3,300 stores. Kaness is responsible for establishing a group of engineers and e-commerce experts at the Goodwill headquarters to create the GoodwillFinds platform, which will allow each of these stores to upload products on the central website. The team is currently made up of 10 people, but Kaness expects this figure to grow as the site grows.
Goodwill has created a system that allows each store to photograph and upload products. These products will then show up on the GoodwillFinds website, where consumers can search through them. When they make the purchase, the individual store that sold that item will ship it and receive the revenue from it. “Our goal was to make the system as intuitive as possible, so it is an easy lift for the store,” he says.
At launch, Goodwill is piloting this technology at 338 stores in areas like Colorado, Southern California, and Minnesota. The organization is training people at each store to use the technology and learn how to ship merchandise. But the idea is to expand quickly to other locations to ultimately include every store within the network. There are currently more than a million items for sale on the site, but Kaness expects this figure to grow exponentially as more stores are brought on. The site specializes in clothes, accessories, books, and small household products. (For now, there is no furniture for sale.)
With this new site, Goodwill is now competing with many other resale platforms including Poshmark, which a Korean company just acquired for $1.2 billion,, and ThredUp, which generated $251.8 million in revenue in 2021, an increase of 35% over the previous year. ThredUp is famous for developing technology that can quickly process millions of individual products every day, thanks to systems that automatically photograph and price goods.
While Goodwill doesn’t have the same resources as these larger, public companies, Kaness says the organization does have other assets. “Goodwill is a beloved and almost universally recognized brand,” he says. “We don’t have to advertise our site the way these other brands dodo: We already have a built-in market.”
And it is also true that as a nonprofit, Goodwill isn’t primarily driven by generating revenue, although sales from the site will benefit the organization as a whole and create even more jobs. Kaness says that in addition to selling products, Goodwill sees this website as a way to share the organization’s mission with the public and connect people with employment. “Many people have heard about Goodwill through our stores, but don’t fully understand what we do,” he says. “This is our chance to tell them.”
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