Uncertain Economy Boosts Revenue for Minnesota Goodwill Stores
If one man’s trash is another’s treasure, then Brooklyn Park’s Goodwill Outlet store is where people like Julie Schmolke go to dig for gold.
“Sometimes you dig underneath, you find things,” said Schmolke, a customer from Buffalo as she rummaged through a big blue bin full of clothes. “It’s fun to see things with the tags on and it’s like ‘ooh, this is brand new. It fits me. I’ll take it.'”
Nationwide, Goodwill stores reported a record-breaking 2025, surpassing $7 billion in revenue, up 7 percent from 2024.
Spend just a few minutes in the Brooklyn Park outlet store, and it’s easy to see why secondhand stores are thriving.
“Their dollar can stretch much father that what it can if they’re going to the mall to go shopping,” said Ann Marie Courchene, senior director of retail operations for Goodwill Easter-Seals Minnesota. “When the economy is challenged, yes, thrift does start to see an increase in revenues and an increase in shoppers.”
Courchene said Minnesota’s Goodwill stores process about 72 million donations a year.
The outlet stores do especially well. It’s the final stop for items that didn’t sell in Goodwill’s traditional stores, which means that customers pay by the pound.
“I mean the stuff that we sell is in good quality,” Courchene said. “We check everything before it goes out to the floor and make sure that we’re putting good stuff out at good prices.”
People looked through piles of clothes at the Goodwill Outlet store in Brooklyn Park.
More than saving money
“I got a brand new Squishmallow unicorn, ‘cause it brings me joy,” said Schmolke, holding up a stuffed toy.
For Schmolke, thrift store shopping is also a business opportunity.
She’s a professional organizer who helps people declutter their homes and brings their unwanted items to Goodwill. Then, she occasionally finds other treasures and flips them for a profit.
“I found a pair of Baffin winter boots that are $250 online,” she said. “I Google it with my phone and I sold them on Facebook marketplace for $125 last week.”
For others, it’s not just about the “flip.”
Christi Sullivan of Minneapolis came to the store with her infant daughter to shop for children’s books.
“Yeah her library is filled with stuff that we found here, so it makes it a lot easier to fill up all her shelves and not feel bad if she only reads it once or twice,” Sullivan said. “We can put it in the little free library and then if she didn’t love it, it’s no worries. Only a couple of cents.”
Those cents add up. Proceeds from the sales at Goodwill stores help 6,000 Minnesotans enter the workforce every year.
“It’s fun to find a bargain. It’s fun to save the planet, and fun to get free stuff,” added Schmolke.
Meanwhile, officials from Goodwill say that in Minnesota alone, they’re able to keep 60 million pounds of stuff out of local landfills.
Julie Schmolke held up a unicorn Squishmallow, one of her many finds at the Goodwill Outlet store in Brooklyn Park.
Related: Brooklyn Park Celebrates New Habitat ReStore, ‘Where Menards Meets Goodwill’
