Ollie Ollie Oxen Cheap

One of the last true "closeout" stores is a fun place to look closely

One store that I find interesting—as in, I’d like to know more about it and I feel like browsing it is kind of like research—is Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

Big Lots is gone, or will be soon, as far as I can tell (and wasn’t really a closeout store anymore), National Wholesale Liquidators is gone. Ollie’s is one of the last remaining stores that sells a large amount of real closeout/overstock/factory-second merchandise. That means that 1) it feels kind of like a thrift store where everything is brand new, and 2) all that stuff has some sort of story beyond “it was manufactured and ordered and sold,” and those stories are in some cases quirky or interesting.

In some ways, Ollie’s is a little bit like Trader Joe’s. At least when it comes to Trader Joe’s wine. A lot of their very good bottles, the private-label ones, are wines that the actual vintners—real wineries, some quite prestigious—didn’t want to label themselves, for some reason. I remember one of them was a California pinot noir that had some Oregon grapes in it, but the winery went over the legal percentage of non-California grapes for the wine to be labeled “California.” The wine was perfectly good, but would have been worth much less having to be labeled “American” or whatever the labeling convention demanded. So Trader Joe’s bought it and bottled it with their own label.

Anyway…There are just in general a lot fewer of these stores than there used to be. I had always assumed maybe this was because of the rise of the internet, making it easier to allocate merchandise than it used to be. And also, maybe, the business of buying pallets of returns and other stuff and then selling it online had taken over the old overstock-store business—in other words, maybe the stuff was still out there, but the way it was distributed was more decentralized, with fewer of these middleman stores that specialized in liquidation and overstock.

Those are all probably factors. At least, they make sense. But there’s a reason pointing to an actual reduction in the amount of this sort of merchandise out there, which I never would have thought of. In this Boston Globe article from 2013 about Ollie’s-adjacent chain Building #19 (the inspiration via an IP deal, for Ollie’s humorous, self-deprecating ads) there’s this very interesting bit:

Sadly, the 10-store chain declared bankruptcy earlier this month — a development that’s been chalked up to Internet competition. But, really, is anyone going online for better prices on pants-less business suits and can-less paint can lids? As a priceless interview with Elovitz last week in the Globe made clear, the real challenge that Building #19 couldn’t meet was something else: manufacturers’ and retailers’ relentless drive to squeeze out costs and avoid unpleasant surprises.

Building #19 was an empire built on other companies’ misfortune or miscalculation; the very first store sold furniture damaged in a fire. But a decline in warehouse fires nationwide means there’s not as much waterlogged or lightly singed merchandise to unload. Improvements in logistics and market forecasting have made it easier for retailers to avoid overstocking. And because of the migration of manufacturing from the United States to Asia, the flawed goods that do exist may not make it to these shores. As Elovitz told the Globe, “When something gets damaged in China, they don’t pick up the phone and call us.”

It’s possible, of course, that Building #19 could have adapted to these changes more skillfully — “I was like an Underwood typewriter in a world of computers,” Elovitz said. Other closeout stores are hanging on; a rival chain, Ocean State Job Lot, is even expanding.

I’m not sure about that last bit. Ocean State Job Lot still exists, but it’s one of the only such stores out there. But fewer warehouse fires as a factor in the decline of closeout stores. I would never have thought of that. Third-order consequences are always fascinating and unpredictable.

But Ollie’s has handled whatever changes have occurred in this area quite well. It’s still expanding, has never declared bankruptcy or had to close large numbers of stores, and, as I noted, they still actually sell real, random, merchandise rather than transitioning, as Big Lots did, to mostly private-label discount goods.

I spent a couple of hours closely browsing the Ollie’s near me, in Sterling, Virginia. It was previously a Babies ‘R’ Us; all or almost all Ollie’s locations are in existing buildings (the one in Winchester, Virginia used to be a Toys ‘R’ Us).

That means the insides of the stores are somewhat inconsistent, depending on how nice and recent a space it is. Ollie’s is one of a dwindling number of chains that can operate in one of these mid-sized stores, somewhere in the 20,000-40,000 square-foot range. Which is good, because that size segment has seen a lot of closures—lots of the category-killer chain stores that have been closing for years use stores in this size range.

Browsing Ollie’s, it’s hard to tell where much of the stuff is from. Some of it is from Walmart or Target or other chains, which obviously are selling probably a previous season’s merchandise, or just extra unsold stuff. Maybe some returns. A lot of the stuff is not “real” brand names, but second-tier names. That doesn’t mean it’s bad.

These Rubbermaid-clone kitchen containers made in Israel look pretty sturdy and were pretty cheap!

They’re obviously from somewhere, but I’m curious what stores they’re from, since I’ve never seen them, nor have I seen a lot of the products or names in here. But the quality seems a grade above the real discount stores. (These containers or at least this brand are apparently sold in Job Lot too—I wonder if it was a warehouse being emptied out or something, and was snapped up by all of the remaining closeout stores.)

I haven’t seen a strainer this big and this cheap ($3.99) in a very long time:

And this off-brand Pyrex is, believe it or not, borosilicate glass (or at least a better formula than modern Pyrex—it’s hard to tell). This piece of glassware can go well over 500 degrees, while modern Pyrex and most other glassware is just 400.

Here are a couple of other stores’ products. Bubble mailers from Walmart:

A private-label Lowe’s brand electric leaf blower:

There’s a whole hardware and paint section and even a flooring section, composed of various buyouts and whatnot. One product I like here is the finished carpet-remnant rugs. I believe these are made by companies and sold normally to discount stores. Roses, a discount chain I wrote about awhile ago, sells basically the same carpet pieces.

And the ads are fun too. The store and the decor feel old-fashioned in a good way. Which, funny enough, also reminds me of Trader Joe’s approach to advertising and general image.

(I wonder if any Marines would take issue with the use of their slogan alongside the word “Army”? They could have gone, I suppose, with “Buy all you can buy.”)

Ollie’s is also popular for its pretty random and cheap selection of new books. And there’s a whole food section full of a mix of some private-label foods along with supermarket overstock, or, I suspect, discontinued products. (The sriracha-flavor Frank’s Red Hot in a squeeze bottle probably didn’t sell too well.) But the stuff isn’t expired, the cans aren’t dented, etc. It’s fine.

The funniest thing I saw, in the kitchen and small appliance aisle, was Ollie’s being a little too cheap: some very badly bent cheap nonstick frying pans, only $5! I don’t even think they’re usable, because they couldn’t sit flat on a stove anymore. But I did find an electric deli-style slicer for under $100.

This is one of those stores you have to sift through to get the good stuff. But it’s fun, and it’s a throwback to a time when the closeout store was a whole retail category.

Perhaps there are still regional stores of this type around the country. What’s your favorite quirky/slightly irregular place to go shopping?

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