How To Turn A Thrift Store Route Into $100,000/Year Cash...Vol. 2

Earlier this year we wrote an article on how to develop your Thrift Store route and gave some of the basic ideas that we use when we go picking at Thrift Stores. We felt it would be a good time to start updating the series with some more ideas and different best practices we use to make our Thrift Store routes more efficient and effective.

Streamline Your Time In Store!

When we first started going on Thrift Store routes we we're so excited and wanted to turn every Thrift Store visit into a win. This led to prolonged stays at each Thrift Store, even if that store didn't have anything worth flipping. Because we we're spending 20-30 minutes at every store we visited, we weren't visiting many Thrift Stores in a day and because of that the quality and quantity of the Mid Century Modern items we purchased weren't as good as they could have been.

We were talking about it one day and the reality is there are only a few sections in ANY Thrift Store that is going to have some sort of Mid Century Modern furniture or decor. We decided if we stuck to this "Internal Route" within the thrift store we'd be able to get in and out of each shop much more quickly and thus would be able to greatly increase the number of stores we hit on each route.

1. Furniture Section: B-line it straight for the furniture section. It goes without saying that you'd visit the furniture section when looking for Mid Century Modern Furniture but what I mean is go here first. There is nothing worse then walking up to a beautiful piece of Mid Century Modern furniture just after someone else is picking it up. We try to cut down on this as much as possible by walking past every section first and going straight for furniture. The furniture section is the longest section we spend time in but we're still only here for maybe 2-4 minutes, if they don't have pieces we can easily flip then we're moving on.

2. Electronics: This stop is much quicker then the furniture stop and basically all we're looking for here is lamps and lighting. We might be here for 1 minute tops.

3. Glassware: Household, Home, Barware, whatever the Thrift Store calls it, we'll quickly walk down these aisles looking for Pyrex and other Mid Century Modern "littles". Don't get lost in this section, there's usually so much to look at but "littles" makes the least amount of money so quickly scan the rows as you walk by but don't get lost and waste a ton of time here. We're here for 2 minutes TOPS.

4. Art: Again don't get lost here. We use to spend 20-30 minutes in the Art section wasting time hoping to hit a home run at every Thrift Store but now we just quickly walk by and only stop if something catches our eye.

5. Linens: This is a QUICK walk through the blankets section looking for retro wool blankets. Anything by Hudson's Bay Blankets, Pennington, Etc. Maybe 1 minute here.

6. Behind The Counter: This section we don't even stop at, we just scan on our way out. We've found most Thrift Stores will put their Taxidermy behind the counter and sometimes wool blankets.

In total I'd say we're at each Thrift Store for no longer then 5 minutes max and then we're back on the road heading for the next store. Because of this speed we can easily hit 30 Thrift Stores in a day. Everyone that picks Mid Century (or whatever niche you have) will always have certain items we flip that aren't directly in our niche, for me its music gear. If this is the case for you, then build whatever section contains those items into your "internal route" of course but besides that we'd recommend sticking to the sections above. Not every Thrift Store is going to have Mid Century Modern Furniture and Decor on the day you go, so it is a best practice to include as many stores as possible to greatly increase the chance of you finding something worth while.