A new Pasco liquidation store offers customers steep bargains on a whole assortment of goods, with most items priced at $5 or less daily. The inventory changes rapidly, as the employees don’t know day to day what they’ll find inside the shipments. And for those customers willing to roll the dice, buyers can become sellers – purchasing an entire pallet of unknown goods with the intention to resell, and possibly make five times their initial investment.

Bargain4LessUSA x Johnny’s Hot Dealz is run not by Johnny, but by franchisee Aaron Natasiri, who first got his start in the resale market hocking used video games.

“I was like a mini Gamestop,” he said.

After initial success, Natasiri turned his sights to televisions and grew a relationship with Sony and Microsoft sellers in Asia.

He says his small business, T-Vision, became a major player in the local electronics market. “My main competitor was Best Buy when I was selling TVs. I became the TV guy for the Tri-Cities, and I did that for six years. I wanted to go beyond TVs, so I had to look into general merchandise,” he said.

Now in liquidation for nearly a decade, he partnered with namesake Johnny Dimas to open the store at 528 W. Clark St. in Pasco, which shares a building with restaurant AMOR A Mexico.

Bargain4LessUSA opened in late October and Natasiri said, as a liquidator broker, he has a niche the other liquidators can’t easily compete with. “We are the only ones with contracts with distribution centers for retailers, including Amazon. We built here because of Amazon; our largest contracts are with them.”

Two Amazon fulfillment centers were recently built in east Pasco but they have not yet opened. Natasiri said location is crucial due to the added costs faced when sellers source goods outside of their local region. “It can cost $4,000 more for shipping,” he said.

He’s trying to move as many pallets as he can from retailers like Target, Home Depot, Costco and more, and Natasiri knows them all, along with the code names for what’s inside. “Amazon has smalls, case packs, LPNs, 3 PNL, mystery box loads, gaylords, double stack, high piece counts, repetitive items; some are so small that you don’t sell them for more than $1, so you pick and choose.”

At his store, Natasiri mainly resells items from Amazon’s ‘premium’ category, which often includes items that are returned, pulled from shelves, considered excess inventory, met the end of shelf life, or are even brand new.

“It’s all a mix. We don’t get to choose what comes in,” Natasiri said. He doesn’t just unbox and sell items for $5, though he says he could still make money doing that. Bargain4LessUSA offers some higher valued items at prices they target at 50% off retail, while also selling the pallets of goods themselves. “People are seeing it as a lucrative opportunity to start their own business and sell it at a yard sale or flea market. You have to be careful in this industry, though. People will say, ‘I can get you a cheap load,’ but it might be low quality. It’s definitely cutthroat, but we are very transparent,” he said.

Part of that transparency is allowing potential buyers to look through the plastic wrap covering the top of the 6.5-foot cardboard boxes, known as a gaylord, and sold by Bargain4LessUSA at a flat rate of $1,200.

“We’ve pulled $600 items out of these,” he said.

Natasiri said sellers should expect at least 10% of items inside to be broken but claims the overall retail value of all goods can average $6,000 to $10,000. He said the highest valued single item he’s found was a piece of medical equipment worth $3,500 that he resold online. “eBay is your best friend on extravagant items,” he said.

Natasiri’s goal is to make money and have others be successful in the “bin store” concept, citing the challenge of finding a well-paying job or a way to make supplemental income.

“We don’t just sell items, we sell a system to build a store. We coach people on how to do it, whether it’s in person, or they can come under our franchise or open an online store or do private labeling and open their own,” he said.

Bargain4LessUSA is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, with restocking done every night and new items placed on the $5 tables or moved to a $1 table to really get them out the door.

“We try to go through five gaylords a night. We can’t stop the trucks from coming in, so we have to clear the floor. Things are negotiable here, especially if you have a full cart,” he said.

For frequent shoppers, the east Pasco store provides loyalty cards for both its single item sales and pallets, offering a discount on the sixth item, with the 11th item free. Natasiri is scouting locations to open a second Bargain4LessUSA soon in Richland.

Bargain4LessUSA: 528 W. Clark St., Pasco; 509-531-4998; @Bargain4lessusa_509 and @Bargain4lessusa Northwest.