Goodwill Thrift Shops Are Getting More Glamorous

New stores are bigger and brighter, and real estate is crucial to new strategy

By Kate King, The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2025

Goodwill’s new strategy involves larger, brighter stores in affluent areas, some with signature scents, to attract donors and shoppers.

Goodwill, long known for its dingy thrift stores with dark, crammed aisles and overflowing bins, is getting more glamorous.

The chain’s new stores are bigger and brighter. Some feature signature scents to neutralize items’ musty odors. Goodwill is even targeting donors and shoppers through TikTok, where it posts videos of influencers browsing racks of jeans or boxing up donations.

Real estate is also crucial to the new strategy. By opening larger stores in affluent neighborhoods, Goodwill is well-positioned for when wealthy donors clean out their closets. Some drop off boxes with barely worn designer clothing and accessories.

“When people can find Dior out on a rack in your store for seven, eight bucks, that’s a great deal,” said Dan Owen, chief executive of Goodwill Industries of the Summit in West Virginia.

Last year, someone dropped off a set of Tiffany jewelry at Goodwill’s Parkersburg, W.Va., store, including a ring, bracelet and necklace. Donations in the past few months have included designer labels such as Gucci and Chanel, Owen said.

The company’s efforts appear to be resonating. Shoppers spent more than $5.5 billion in Goodwill retail stores across the U.S. and Canada last year. That is a record high and up 37% from 2019, according to Goodwill Industries International.

The strong sales are fueling a Goodwill expansion, with 42 net-new stores opening last year.

Goodwill operates as 150 autonomous organizations across North America, each responsible for designated geographic areas and run by their own CEOs and boards of directors. Founded by a Methodist minister in 1902, Goodwill uses its profit to fund services, such as job training and placement.

Discount retail has been one of the most resilient corners of retail real estate in recent years. National chains such as T.J. Maxx, Burlington and Ross have expanded despite the rise of e-commerce, drawing both budget-conscious customers and shoppers who enjoy searching for bargains.

“For a while thrift wasn’t trending,” said Tim O’Neal, CEO of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. “The trend has changed. Everybody’s looking for a great deal.”

Foot traffic to Goodwill and other thrift stores is growing at a faster pace than at other types of clothing stores. The average number of visits per Goodwill location increased 9.5% in the first 10 months of this year compared with the same period in 2024, according to data firm Placer.ai.

That growth was more than double the foot-traffic increase seen by clothing stores overall, including off-price retailers.

Unlike most retailers, which add stores near customers, Goodwill is centering its real estate around its supply chain. New stores are opening in affluent areas, ideally with drive-throughs so donors can pull up and pop their trunks to drop off items.

“The number one reason people donate is the convenience,” said O’Neal, of Arizona. 

A recent surge in younger shoppers has helped boost Goodwill’s sales. Gen Z members value keeping clothing out of landfills and are also shopping on a budget for their wardrobes as well as home decor, said Kent Kramer, CEO of Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana.

In an effort to attract the younger demographic, Kramer’s organization paid about $5,500 in cash and gift cards last year to content creators who posted 15-second and 30-second TikTok videos of themselves shopping at or donating to Goodwill.

But above all else, Goodwill needed to improve the shopping experience. In Arizona, the overhaul started about a decade ago with the closing of underperforming, 6,000-square-foot locations that fit many people’s preconceptions of thrift as “that dark, dirty store on the corner,” O’Neal said.

Instead, the Arizona organization opened stores up to four times as big, laid out to resemble retailers like Marshalls or HomeGoods. O’Neal hired a company that developed scents for Las Vegas casinos in an effort to eliminate the musty aroma that often plagues secondhand stores.

“They brought all the little scent bottles and they mixed them all up and said, ‘Which one do you like the best?’” O’Neal said. He opted for one that evokes “clean linen with a hint of tropical.”

Many Goodwill shoppers visit multiple locations in the same day. The advent of data analytics showed that Goodwill could cluster stores closer together than previously believed without cannibalizing sales.

In Indiana, Goodwill used to keep 9 to 10 miles of distance between stores, but now it is opening locations within 3 miles of each other in heavily populated areas.

“Each store is totally different in what you might find,” Kramer said. “Shoppers will go from store to store to store to store.”

Phoenix resident Saul Garcia shops at Goodwill nine to 10 times a week in search of items to resell on eBay. His best finds are electronics, like the early-2000s Bose Acoustic Wave Music System that he snagged last week for $30. He thinks he can sell it for $250 online.

“When you go and you find something, you feel the dopamine,” Garcia said.

Some stores are still pretty rundown, and Goodwill’s biggest real-estate challenge is the rising cost of construction and slow approval process for new stores. Finding space in shopping centers when retail vacancy is near historic-low levels is another challenge.

Goodwill also has to win over skeptical landlords who still might think of Goodwill as drab stores that attract primarily lower-income customers.

Now, the larger format provides enough backroom space to sort donations, so garbage bags of donated clothing don’t spill out onto the sidewalk. And the stores look more chic.

“It’s polished concrete floor, it’s exposed ceilings, it’s proper lighting. Nice checkout counters,” said Gabriel Navarro, managing director for MMG Equity Partners, which has three Goodwill stores in its South Florida shopping-center portfolio.

Source: Kate King, The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2025