>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 can't make a good air-fryer for $50, but people will see it and think "For $50 I can give it a go". They then conclude that it's rubbish and take it to the junk yard.
No, most of this stuff should never have been made in the first place. We need to stop making products that has to hit a price point, regardless of quality. We need to stop making one-time-use novelty items.
Then you have the secondary effect: Some clever business people sees this trend and starts ordering junk in bulk on Wish, AliExpress or Temu, dumps it in big boxes with a few good items (maybe) and starts their own "fake" Bin Store.
> 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.
> We need to stop making products that has to hit a price point, regardless of quality.
I’m not sure that’s what’s going on. The Temu-industrial complex seems to be driven by producing garbage as cheaply as possible, meme-ing the heck out of it, and pricing it so low people can’t believe what a deal they’re getting. That is, they’re always going to produce the cheapest possible item that resembles something of value. Pricing follows from that, and then you make it up on volume.
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?
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 a part of "capitalism" for one definition of capitalism.
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.
> 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.
I feel like if there were a sustainable business in this, Amazon would just do it themselves and set up outlet stores. But instead Amazon takes the easy money of just auctioning stuff off. that should be a red flag for people starting these businesses.
This is just a variation on "outlet" stores (the unofficial ones, that have always sold crushed inventory, etc, the stuff the stores don't want to even clearance, or can't sell on clearance).
The one near me amuses me because they always list everything at half list price - $50 doodad from Target is set at $25. But sometimes you can still see the $5 clearance sticker from Target on it!
Target likes it because they turn a pallet of returned crap and other crush into some cash, and the stores like it because they buy a pallet for $1000 and sell it for $2000 over a few weeks.
Bin stores have just sped that up - but Goodwill outlets have been doing "by the pound" for ages. Go there and buy books, clothes, microwaves, all at a set price per pound.
The key is you don't have to pay anyone to think about pricing. (And of course, you skim any of the really great stuff off before it hits the floor.)
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.