Items that once lined the shelves of Target, Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, JCPenney or the virtual shelves of Amazon are now ending up at a handful of local retailers specializing in liquidation sales.

Three stores have opened in the last year, the latest being Daily Deals in Pasco in the former Go Bowl on West Lewis Street. Another Pasco liquidator, Best Prices Ever (BPE) at 3431 W. Court St., has been open for seven years.

BPE has doubled its original footprint in the plaza it shares with Goodwill and other shops, taking over half of a former Payless store.

BPE sells items likely to have been returned or to have languished on a shelf before the original retailer packaged them up to sell as a lot to liquidators, who buy the bulk goods at a discount and then resell them individually in hopes of making a profit.

Pallet liquidation businesses typically buy sight unseen, receiving a stack of boxes without knowing their exact contents.

“We do have somewhat of an idea of what we’re getting when we buy from them, whether it’s kitchen appliances or toys or whatever,” said Jordan DeHoyos, who has worked at BPE for about a year and a half. But they don’t know exactly what the kitchen appliances or toys might be. They could get dozens of the same item, like the same obscure Funko Pop character, or a single Lego box.

“We price everything at least 40% off the original retail price. If an item has been used or is damaged, we increase the discount from there,” said DeHoyos.

He said he typically prices about 50 to 100 individual items every shift, constantly restocking merchandise, encouraging some regulars to hit the store daily in search of unexpected treasures.

BPE is the second liquidation location for its owner; the original is Walla Walla Overstock Outlet.

The Pasco store opened seven years ago and sees a lot of customer interest in items arriving from Costco, including lighting fixtures and bedding, but not all stores carry Costco products due to their higher upfront cost for the liquidator.

This is the case for the new Family Deals, which opened in early June at 525 N. Edison St. in Kennewick. It’s the second liquidator venture for Tino Flores, who originally opened Hot Deals on West Ainsworth in Pasco last summer with two other business partners. Flores sold his interest in that business and decided to go out on his own with this family.

Flores joked that his daughter, Daniela, currently isn’t being paid, but she seems to serve as the store’s chief marketing officer, hosting a weekly bilingual broadcast on Facebook live every Thursday, offering customers a preview of items up for sale the following day.

Family Deals is open each day but Thursday, when it does most of its restocking.

On a recent Friday morning, Daniela Flores said customers had lined up outside the door before the store’s 9 a.m. opening, hoping to be the first to grab an item seen on the broadcast.

She said was surprised to learn three people had come to buy a single cereal dispenser while other customers had interest in an automatic vegetable chopper, proving you can’t always predict what will be most in demand.

Family Deals usually pays about $300 to $600 per pallet for the unknown goods, then divides the items from there. It prices those of a higher value individually, which circle the perimeter of the store that shares a plaza with Traffic Jams.

The remaining goods for sale are placed on large tables with prices dropping daily each week, starting at $10 Friday and falling to $1 by Wednesday before the closure and major restocking on Thursday.

Items that remain will continue to be discounted to whatever it takes to get them out the door, though the store restocks daily, ensuring tables never get too bare.

Customers willing to sort through the mishmash may be rewarded with a bargain. In mid-July, the store had desirable items like Starbucks tumblers, bedding and a slew of Target-brand jeans for $10 and under.

Best Prices Ever doesn’t sell a lot of clothes, as DeHoyos described it as “more of a hassle” often due to the limited sizes they’d receive, though they had a bin of Kirkland Signature men’s dress shirts available recently.

BPE has become the initial stop for customers Elvie and Juan Gonzalez when they’re looking for something in particular. “With gas prices, and the price of everything going up, the furniture store or the mall is the last place I’d go,” Elvie Gonzalez said. “We come here first before we go anywhere or even before checking Amazon.”

They’ve been shopping the West Court Street liquidation store for about two years and recall scoring a great bargain on a nursery glider with their daughter that matched her decor “perfectly.”

On a recent weekend they had just come to browse. “It’s convenient because they have a little bit of everything,” Juan said. “We’ll go to a big store if we have to, but this is generally our first stop.”

The National Retail Federation reported lost sales of $761 billion due to customer returns in 2021, and a report in The New York Times said that amounted to about 16.6% of purchases that same year, up from 10.6% the year before and double the rate from 2019.

Even if some of these go back on store shelves, it still amounts to a glut of items available for liquidation.

A midwestern TV station tested out a pallet purchase and spent $325, resulting in items typically sold for more than $1,500 in all, but also included items that were broken or unable to be resold.

The Flores family said they check all items beforehand and will not sell anything visibly broken. Right now, they buy about 24 pallets every week, which results in about 500 boxes of tightly packed goods, and estimate 80% of the items they receive are new and the rest come used or broken and are not placed for sale.

During a recent visit, Tino Flores opened a box to find a soft-sided dog carrier, tiara headbands and a glass beverage dispenser, among other things.

Daniela Flores said they’ll scan the barcode to try to find the retail price and list it for half that. If there’s no barcode, they’ll try to research its value and price accordingly. “We want to be a place for people to get affordable things. There are great deals for every budget,” she said.

Tino Flores has even had some customers want to get in on the fun and buy a box sight unseen.

“I tell them no complaints,” he laughed, since he has no idea of what’s inside either. The family moved to the Tri-Cities from the Yakima area last fall as part of the opening of the Pasco liquidation store, feeling there were already enough similar locations open in Yakima and hoping to tap into a new market.

A Yakima Daily Deals closed last year, but the one planned for 2799 W. Lewis St. has the same name and same owners as its location on East Gregory Avenue in Sunnyside, and those answering the phone in Sunnyside said its target opening is sometime this month. It will have a similar structure to Family Deals and Hot Deals with flat pricing for items on tables that drop as the week progresses.

The liquidation stores can all be found on Facebook, under Pasco Best Prices Ever, Daily Deals Yakima, Family Deals Liquidation and Hot Deals Liquidation.