| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1954 San Francisco, California |
| Headquarters | Bellevue, Washington |
| Products | Second hand clothing, footwear, bedding, furniture, jewelry, electronics, toys, and housewares. |
| Website | http://www.savers.com |
Savers, Inc. headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, is a privately held for-profit thrift store chain offering secondhand shopping. An international company, Savers has more than 200 locations throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, and receives its merchandise by paying cash to non-profit organizations for donated clothing and household items. Savers is known as Value Village in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and most of Canada, and Village des Valeurs in Quebec. In Australia and other regions of the United States, the stores share the corporation's name. Main owners are Tom Ellison, son of the founder Bill Ellison, and Freeman Spogli & Co. a private equity company (May 2009)[1]
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Under Savers’s business model, the company partners with local non-profits by purchasing and reselling donated items. The non-profits collect and deliver donated goods to Savers, which pays them for the items at a bulk rate regardless of whether they ever make it to the sales floor. Donations are also collected at stores directly, and the company makes payments to its non-profit partners when it receives goods this way. Savers has more than 160 non-profit partners throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, which it pays more than $117 million annually.
Items deemed resellable are displayed for purchase in stores. Savers also has a recycling program and attempts to recycle any reusable items that cannot be sold at the stores, as well as any items that do not sell over a period of time to make room for fresh merchandise. Savers has buyers for its recyclables throughout the world and attempts to keep as much donated product out of the waste stream as possible.
In the United States and Canada the business model for many non profits was that organizations would call homes for donations, and a truck would pick them up. By the early 2000's many organizations like the Association of Community Living, partnered with Value Village because they believed it was too expensive to do it themselves. Many of the deals these organizations signed provided a very small return compared to the large amounts of money Value Village/ Savers retained. According to a article that appeared in the Alberta Report in 1996 "According to the Times, for every $1.00 that went to undersigned charities from some Ellison-owned thrift stores, $2.55 went to the Ellison associates".
In an episode of the sitcom series Malcolm in the Middle Lois and the family are headed to shop for clothes for the boys at Value Village.
The cover of the Die Mannequin album Slaughter Daughter contains two porcelain cats, one of which has a price tag from Value Village on it.
A Value Village store in Coquitlam was also used in a movie titled "Kickin' It Old Skool".