PARAMUS, N.J. — The Goodwill store in this middle-class New York suburb is buzzing on a recent weekend afternoon. A steady flow of shoppers comb through racks filled with secondhand clothes, shoes, blankets and dishes.
A few years ago, opening a Goodwill store here wouldn’t have made sense.
Paramus is one of the biggest ZIP codes in the country for retail sales.
Shoppers have their pick of hundreds of respected names like Macy’s and Lord & Taylor along this busy highway strip.
But in the wake of the Great Recession, the stigma attached to certain consumer behavior has fallen away. What some people once thought of as lowbrow, they now accept — even consider a frugal badge of honor.
And it’s not just about Goodwill. Americans, even those with jobs, are shopping for brands, buying at stores and eating at restaurants that they shunned before because they are trying to get more for their money.
At the supermarket, shoppers are buying more store-labeled products, like no-name detergents and cereal, and not returning to national brands.
And in a telling trend, Americans are turning to layaway more often when they buy expensive items such as engagement rings and iPads. The wealthy are also using layaway more often, a drastic change from the past.
“The old stigmas are the new realities,” says Emanuel Weintraub, a New York-based retail consultant. “Now, people don’t have a problem saying, ‘I can’t afford it.’ It’s a sign of strength.” At the Goodwill in Paramus, even financially secure shoppers are showing up. One is Heather Dzielinski, from nearby Ramsey, N.J., who had donated things to Goodwill but never shopped at one of its stores until the Paramus location opened in July.
A pair of L.L. Bean fur-lined slippers for $8, far below the $50 retail price, got her hooked. She thought a Goodwill store would be dark and dingy, but it wasn’t.
Thrift and consignment stores are thriving, so much so that some high-end retail stores are carving out space for secondhand goods as a way to offset weak sales of their full-price merchandise.
This behavioral shift is pronounced at the nation’s supermarkets. Store-branded groceries now make up 22 percent of total sales, up from 20 percent before the recession, according to The Nielsen Co. The private-label business is worth $500 billion a year, so even a 2-percentage-point change means $10 billion.
The Paramus store is one of 100 new locations for the nonprofit Goodwill.
Many are in middle-class suburbs. The strategy: Attract not only people in need, but also the many Americans who are looking for more value when they shop. Revenue this year is up 11 percent.
“We’re increasingly seeing our shoppers and donors can be the same people,” says Jim Gibbons, who is chief executive of Goodwill Industries International, based in Rockville, Md.
