- 2 days ago
Goodwill handles over 4.4 billion pounds of donations every year. Most of it gets cleaned, priced, and sold at a retail store. Now Goodwill is using AI listing tools to sell the best items online before they ever reach the floor. That's squeezing the flippers who built businesses on those finds.
We got behind-the-scenes access to see how Goodwill sorts and sells millions of items a year, then followed the resellers fighting for what's left. Some are earning six figures sourcing vintage clothes by the pound. Others have moved to live selling on Whatnot, which hit $6 billion in sales in 2025, nearly as big as Goodwill itself.
We got behind-the-scenes access to see how Goodwill sorts and sells millions of items a year, then followed the resellers fighting for what's left. Some are earning six figures sourcing vintage clothes by the pound. Others have moved to live selling on Whatnot, which hit $6 billion in sales in 2025, nearly as big as Goodwill itself.
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00:01Goodwill Industries takes in over 120 million donations every single year.
00:07All right, here we go.
00:08And for decades, resellers have combed through stores just like this one to find treasures that they can flip online.
00:14The jacket I found is a 1972 NBA Finals game-worn warm-up jacket.
00:21It's valued at $150,000 to $250,000.
00:23It's like Black Friday every day, everybody just trying to get in there.
00:27A booming resale economy is helping more Americans turn secondhand finds into full-time businesses.
00:34Okay, so this is the morning rush. There's not that many people here, but you see how people are hustling.
00:38Let's go.
00:39But now, big scores are getting harder to find.
00:42That's because Goodwill has gotten smarter about how they pull valuable items out of their donation stream.
00:47To be honest, we try to cut out the reseller as much as possible.
00:52We got behind-the-scenes access to see how Goodwill sorts and sells millions of items every year.
00:59And to find out how resellers are still making a profit from other people's junk.
01:09This is where the real bargain hunters line up.
01:12About 80% of the people at this outlet are resellers looking for low-priced items they can flip.
01:19A lot of outlets wheel out giant blue bins, but Goodwill told us employees sometimes get hurt moving them.
01:26So this location recently upgraded to a conveyor belt system, which also helps speed up the rotation of inventory.
01:32Do you like the belts or the bins better?
01:35I like the atmosphere here better.
01:37But I feel like the belts don't have the same amount of stuff as the bins.
01:42And the belts break down quite a bit.
01:45Basically, the shoe line, they come out as singles and it's your job to find the match, right?
01:50Like some of them are tied together, but a lot of them it's just like, find the other shoe.
01:55So you grab as much as you can and then you try to grab another one and match them later.
01:59That's the strategy?
01:59Yes.
02:00One of the things that happens is once you fill up a cart and you put a sheet over it,
02:04that's like, don't touch it.
02:05I think if you touch that and someone caught you, you'd probably get in a fight here.
02:09He's taking a picture of this doll.
02:12Vintage Duck House heirloom doll.
02:14So just to recap that, Robert looked it up on Google Lens and it gave him a price of $15
02:20to $40.
02:21What did that take? 15 seconds? Not even. 10 seconds.
02:23At the Goodwill outlets, you can always expect surprises.
02:27This is actually a nice non-stick pan, but like, whoa, I'm going to barf.
02:32What's the weirdest thing you ever found at the bins?
02:35I mean, I have a picture of it. I found it last week if you want to see it.
02:38Yeah, I want to see that.
02:39We're going to have to blur this out. You're going to have to use your imagination, but yeah.
02:44Okay. All right.
02:46Imagine seeing your mother pick that up.
02:50But more people than ever are willing to roll up their sleeves for bargains.
02:55Over half of American consumers shopped secondhand in 2025.
03:00And the market for used clothing is growing 15 times faster than retail.
03:05All right. So I'm glad there's carts because sometimes whenever you come, there's no carts.
03:09And also, if my job had a uniform, it would be an Ikea bag and gloves.
03:14St. Louis-based Hannah Valentine told us that sourcing vintage clothes earns her more than $80,000 a year.
03:22This is so cute.
03:23Something that I'm really proud of is that I was able to get through school and get a bachelor's degree
03:29just on reselling.
03:30And I took out no student loans.
03:32And what I love about the Goodwill Outlet is that I don't pay per piece. I pay per pound.
03:37So when I go and check out, we literally just roll the cart onto a scale and they charge me
03:43per pound, which is so fun.
03:45Every cart she rolls onto the scale could become hundreds of dollars in profits.
03:50So I grabbed about 20 vintage pieces for only $17.
03:54And I'm going to price them at about $15 to $20 each.
03:57So that's going to give me about $300 to $400 in profits just on this little bag that I grabbed
04:03at the VIN.
04:04So I love my job.
04:06Hannah prefers to resell clothes offline at vintage markets or she crafts them into something new.
04:13But other resellers told us the way that Goodwill filters donations is starting to hurt their business.
04:18It has become a lot harder to kind of find more of those popular name brands than it used to
04:25be.
04:26How long have you been in the business for?
04:2720 years.
04:28So how has the business changed over that time?
04:31Don't make any money anymore.
04:33We don't get the choice that we used to have.
04:36Used to find all kinds of good stuff, jewelry, ball card collections.
04:39Now they sort it all, sell it online.
04:43So what's actually happening at Goodwill?
04:45To find out, we went to where every donation starts, the back of a retail store.
04:51This drive through can handle more than 100 drop offs a day.
04:55We take just about everything, but we prefer not to get like an old mattress.
05:00Then the sorting begins.
05:02Anything dangerous?
05:04Oh yeah, we have a fellow has to come in once a month that takes guns and knives.
05:08I mean, we've had several different things like that.
05:10Mainly everything's $4.99, Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, everything like that gets up priced.
05:16For most of Goodwill's history, the stuff you dropped off would get cleaned, priced and put out on the retail
05:21floor.
05:22But now, workers look items up online and cherry pick the ones they know will fetch top dollar at online
05:29auctions.
05:30They have this little station here in the back of the retail store.
05:33It's organized into bins and you've got a guy on a computer over here listing it directly to shopgoodwill.com.
05:39And last year we had a 26% increase in e-commerce sales, which we're really grateful for and proud
05:46of.
05:46On its website, you can now find rare collectibles.
05:49This one is signed by Metgrowing.
05:55Jewelry.
05:56This is our thermoscientific tester.
05:59So we just go ahead and take the item and then we just place it right on there.
06:05And watches.
06:06Just in the past year, we sold a $20,000 Rolex.
06:11And workers now have AI tools that make them more than twice as fast at listing items.
06:17The AI generates a title and description based on the photos that we take.
06:22And the AI is also going to generate the shipping dimensions for us based on the dimensions of the item.
06:29Merchandise only stays in a retail location like this one for about four or five weeks.
06:33After that, it's headed over to the outlet.
06:40Where I'm standing right now are piles of what they call gaylords.
06:44Each one of them has items and material that came from retail stores and didn't sell.
06:50And this place alone handles 10,000 of them every year.
06:56This is just a sliver of the amount of stuff that people donate every year.
07:01This is a box of like books and DVDs.
07:03Where is this stuff going to go?
07:05We sell them too.
07:06Yeah.
07:07Like the way we sell the plastic and the textiles, we also sell them by the Gaylord.
07:12But they also go on the belts.
07:16Forklift operators tip the contents of Gaylords onto this conveyor belt all day.
07:20And workers have just a few seconds to scan each load for dangerous items or things that might sell online.
07:27I'm in the back area of where they're pulling stuff for e-commerce.
07:31And I'm just going to read to you some of the categories that are here.
07:34Reborn baby dolls.
07:35Okay.
07:36I'm sorry.
07:37A little creepy.
07:38Pokemon has its own bin, which makes sense.
07:41Paw Patrol.
07:41Mini brands.
07:43Polly Pocket.
07:44Calico Critters.
07:46Hot Wheels has its own bins.
07:48One thing that people have been pointing out online is that Carhartt is very popular.
07:52And we've got some Carhartt hats here and some Carhartt jackets.
07:58Goodwill's thrifting operation shows no signs of slowing down.
08:02They're the biggest player in North American thrift.
08:05In fact, they're probably the biggest player in the world.
08:07The nonprofit had a record year in 2025, closing with nearly $7 billion in revenue.
08:13People are coming in droves and we greatly appreciate that.
08:17And last year, Goodwill's online store did $450 million in revenue.
08:22So, as big scores dwindled, many resellers like Baltimore-based Maggie Weber have shifted
08:29to live selling.
08:30I love it.
08:32Because for me, it's a hangout.
08:35There are people who will come to my shows, which can last four to six hours sometimes.
08:40And people just hang out with me.
08:44WhatNot started as a community for Funko Pop collectors, but quickly attracted millions
08:49of users, half of whom now sell used goods.
08:53Hello, everyone.
08:54How's it going?
08:55What do we do?
08:56Why are we not selling things?
08:57What should we even start with?
08:58Let's do a panda lamp and you get two things.
09:01You get this cute little panda.
09:02It's a silicone light up lamp.
09:04You get both of these $2.15 seconds.
09:07Josh Varnell from South Carolina is one of the platform's top sellers.
09:11We'll probably sell between 300 and 400 things today.
09:1450 things an hour if we talk a lot.
09:16You know, eBay was kind of a grind, like taking photos of hundreds of items a week and storing
09:21them and dealing with customer service and returns just got pulled pretty quickly.
09:26When WhatNot came around and we were able to sell the same amount of items, but super
09:31quickly, like in 10, 15 seconds instead of 15 months for sometimes the same amount of
09:37money or even more.
09:38Just like the resellers I met in Indianapolis, Josh sources most of his items from Goodwill.
09:44Full buggy from one store.
09:46We bought everything.
09:47Good luck.
09:49Got a KitchenAid ice cream scoop and I got this minion.
09:52Not too bad again for a day where we're just kind of picking through everybody's leftovers.
09:57For the flippers, they have tons of stuff that's sitting that didn't sell on eBay.
10:01A lot of that stuff will sell in one show on WhatNot.
10:05Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur, investor and media personality.
10:09But before all that, he was a reseller.
10:11The way that people dream of Saturday, waking up and going golfing is the way I feel about
10:17going to a town-wide garage sale.
10:19How much are cars?
10:21Back when Gary got started as a teenager, it was way harder to make money off reselling.
10:26I had to wait two weeks to go to a flea market and resell it.
10:30Antiquated.
10:31No speed.
10:32No volume.
10:33Then the internet helped people take resale global.
10:351.0 was the antiquated garage sale, yard sale.
10:39Flipping 2.0 is also what I grew up with given my age.
10:42The Web 1.0 world.
10:44eBay, Craigslist.
10:45Now, Gary says we're about to enter a new era of flipping.
10:49I would say I'm very bullish on live shopping.
10:51And Gary may have called this one.
10:53Here he is in 2015.
10:55I'm going to make a prediction here in the next.
10:57And I don't like doing predictions.
10:58I always say I don't make predictions.
10:59I just follow.
11:00But I'm going to make one.
11:01I do think that in the next 10 years, somebody's going to build eBay again.
11:07In 2025, resellers like Josh helped Whatnot surpass $6 billion in sales, making it almost
11:15as big as Goodwill.
11:17Now, marketplaces like eBay are rolling out new live selling features.
11:21Betting the format will become a much bigger part of shopping.
11:24And there's already a blueprint for what that could look like.
11:29China, where live shopping has grown into an industry worth more than $1 trillion a year.
11:36Welcome to YouWant X27 Park.
11:39Follow me.
11:40Let's have some fun.
11:42In 2023, Business Insider shot inside China's first shopping mall built entirely for live streamers.
11:50Inside, influencers host rapid-fire shopping shows, selling everything from makeup to liquor.
11:56Top live streamers sometimes broadcast for hours at a time.
12:00This is the state of the開幕.
12:02In the開幕, you will often drink a red wine and drink a coffee.
12:09This person will be more excited.
12:12The缺點 is that if you record it, you won't sleep.
12:16And hard work pays off.
12:18What was this streamer's biggest day ever?
12:20What was this streamer's biggest day ever?
12:21What was this streamer's biggest day ever?
12:24And presenters use AI avatars to host multiple live streams at once.
12:32This is one of our top live streamers.
12:53You know, she's gone from being able to do four or five hours a day to up to 350 hours
12:58a day.
12:59For now, live shopping in America is just a fraction of what it is in China.
13:04And goodwill remains the biggest force in thrifting.
13:08So what happens to donated items after they've gotten one last shot at the bins?
13:13There's a couple things that happen after the outlets.
13:31That was a lounge chair.
13:33This trailer is filled up with textiles that have already gone through the baler.
13:37So the fate of these is uncertain.
13:40These will go to a broker who is either going to decide whether it gets shipped to Pakistan or Ghana
13:45or somewhere downstream,
13:47where it's either going to be resold in a market there, or it's going to be shredded and turned into
13:51something else.
13:52Other brokers make deals to buy the gaylords of hard goods.
13:56A gaylord of those CDs, there could be $7,500, $8,000 worth of revenue.
14:02So this is one of our containers.
14:04It's just books.
14:05Back there we have clothing.
14:07We'll take an entire truckload, like 24 pallets of those, if for this price or whatever, and then we can
14:14move it.
14:14And that's kind of the deals that we're making.
14:17These are bundles of hard plastic.
14:19They will go to a different vendor once they've already been cycled through this facility.
14:23And then you can see over here, even more of the textiles bundled up, going to different places, piles and
14:29piles of them.
14:30Some Goodwills have partnered with companies that recycle textiles.
14:34And for some resellers, keeping clothes out of landfills is just as important as making money.
14:39We need everybody in St. Louis, everybody in the United States, everybody in the whole world needs to buy secondhand
14:45clothing because the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry right next to oil.
14:50For others, the thrill of a big flip keeps them in the game.
14:55It was about $7,000 to $8,000 worth of Pokemon cards, and I only paid $100 for it.
15:00A $50 original iPod that was factory sealed, and that ended up selling for $6,000.
15:06I sell packs of three vintage Hanes whitey tighties sometimes for $70 or $80 a package.
15:12I know some people say the bins are worse than they used to, and I think that's just because, yes,
15:17there are more people, and so you're going to find less really cool items on average.
15:22But I still think that there's a lot of high-quality stuff at the bins you can find.
15:27In fact, Quinn Brown landed the biggest score of his life after another shopper passed on it.
15:32I saw some other kid holding up a Lakers jacket that I knew looked good, so I kind of stood
15:39next to him, and he ended up throwing it right in front of me.
15:42It turns out this jacket was actually worn by Wilt Chamberlain during warm-ups for the 1972 NBA Finals.
15:50It's sold at Sotheby's for $90,000.
15:53I know I can use this money to invest in my future.
15:56So even as Goodwill gets better at spotting valuable donations, and more people compete for what's left,
16:02there's still plenty of money to be made.
16:04The people that say it's getting saturated that are resellers are just ones that deeply don't want competition.
16:13They liked when they went to the Goodwill store and there was a good bunch of stuff,
16:16and now they see 10 more people like them, they're like, this stinks.
16:20Well, tough, tough shit.
16:21That's how it works.
16:23Central Perk Shirt.
16:25That's a coffee shop that was in Friends.
16:27The strategies keep moving, right?
16:28Keep moving, but be thorough.
16:30It's like a work vest thing.
16:32No, that's destroyed.
16:34This is not good.
16:35It's filthy.
16:36What is this?
16:37This literally belonged to someone's grandpa.
16:39There's no way that a grandpa didn't wear that.
16:41I hope this is from a fish tank.
16:44Oh, I'm having too much fun doing this.
16:46Thank you very much.
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