📦‘Like a treasure hunt:’ Bin store opens in Central Florida, items $12 and under

MELBOURNE, Fla. – Have you ever heard of a ”bin store?”

It’s a warehouse full of overstock and returned items from online retailers, sold at a set price.

The discount stores have become a popular trend, with shopper-made videos going viral because of the unique items they find. There’s a new location that recently opened in Central Florida, and if you’ve got patience and a bit of time, this may be the right store for you to find just about anything.

“That’s what’s intriguing about it. So much to go through and check out. It’s like a treasure hunt in every box,” said shopper Rody.

Rody spent over an hour digging through bins at Deep Dive Deals in Melbourne, a newly-opened bin store located at 787 S. Babcock Street.

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“Here’s how it works. We buy truckloads of overstock and return inventory from online retailers. So any time you’re online shopping and returning inventory or maybe the fulfillment center discontinues and item and liquidates it, we end up with that item,” said Kelsey Torres, the owner. “Every week we buy tens of thousands of items. We load them up in bins for sale in our store. We have no manifest. We don’t know what’s in the bins.”

It’s up to the shoppers to do the digging. At Deep Dive Deals, each item is a set price, starting at $12 on Fridays. The price goes down to $9 on Saturday and decreases every day, down to $1 on Wednesday. The store closes on Thursday for restock and reopens with fresh inventory on Fridays.

“I love to take pictures and hear all the cool, exciting stories of what people find and I like to go in the bins myself,” Torres said.

Some customers wind up finding items worth hundreds of dollars like a snow cone machine, Nespresso machine and even an iPad. Many items are sealed and have never been touched. If you’re not confident about the item, there’s a testing station at the back of the store, so you can make sure all the pieces are there, plug it in and make sure everything works before you buy it.

With items priced at just a few bucks, how does this retailer make any money?

“We don’t spend a lot of time or labor on merchandising, we don’t spend time on sorting things. We have set prices and a very simple buildout in the store. It also helps that we buy in bulk,” Torres said.

After just 45 minutes sifting through dozens of boxes, Rody said her treasure hunt was a success.

“I’ve been printing family photos and needed 4 x 6 frames. I found an entire box of eight frames for just $12. And they’re antique,” Rody said. “My advice for new ‘bin store’ shoppers, you really have to dig through this stuff because the frames I found were three layers down in the bin. If you see something you like, you better grab it then because someone’s going to come up behind you and get it.”

The owner of Deep Dive Deals said on Wednesday nights, all the left over inventory is set aside for their 25-cent day, held once a month.

When asked which “major online retailers” the inventory comes from, the owner said, per their supplier agreement, they aren’t allowed to disclose the specific companies.

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