Wouldn’t it be fun if every Friday was Black Friday? Waking up early, queueing outside, waiting for doors to unlock, and propelling yourself in to grab the best products you can find for the lowest possible prices.
Now we can relive it every week — without the stampeding — at Hotbins, the latest in a fast-growing chain of South Florida liquidation stores.
Outside the chain’s five-month-old location in Tamarac, shoppers queue up early every Friday morning to get the first crack at returned and clearance merchandise newly arrived from Amazon.com and other big box retailers.
Some arrive as early as 5 a.m. to claim their spots near the front of the line. By 8:30 a.m., a half hour before doors open, the line of bargain seekers stretches across the front and down the side of the store, which opened in November in a retail building at 7707 W. Commercial Blvd. that housed a Salvation Army thrift store for 19 years and a Laz-Z-Boy furniture store before that.
The customers don’t yet know what awaits inside, and many have nothing specific in mind. But they know that on Fridays, goodies freshly unloaded off of semi-trucks the day before will be piled high on dozens of long, wide tables, ready to be taken home for $12 apiece.
Tamarac resident Yohanna Leon, with daughter Ezabel in tow, peers through the front window as soon as the store’s lights go on, squinting to see the new load. She’s been coming every day, she says, and has scored a robotic vacuum cleaner, an upright vacuum and a video projector, among other items that normally retail for well above $12. “I buy stuff for myself or to give as gifts,” she says. “They have good deals.”
On Fridays, she rarely walks out without spending $150 to $200 and figures she’s purchased well over 200 items since the store opened.
Like many in line, Santino David of Lauderhill and his friend Andrew Gourzong are hoping to score some deals. They show up every Friday, looking for toy cars, Lego sets, electronics, “or whatever catches my eye,” Gourzong says.
Gourzong has brought housewares like salt and pepper sets, a smoothie maker, utensils, and a diffuser home to his mom, but before he left the house on Friday morning, “she told me to maybe slow it down a bit.”
That’s hard to do when each new load promises fun and useful surprises from every consumer category — kids toys, housewares, kitchen tools, electronics, outdoor, hardware, towels, blankets and clothes. Few brand names are recognizable, but who cares when it’s $12?
“You look around and see some of this stuff. It’s amazing,” says Jeff Cash of Lauderhill. “People just get excited.”
Five minutes before opening time, store manager Samuel Elian steps outside with a bullhorn and reminds everyone of the rules.
“Do not open any boxes,” he commands. “We’re going to be watching everybody.” Customers who want to inspect what’s inside closed boxes must take them to one of two tables, where employees will open them and make sure all components are safely repackaged and not lost inside the piles. Failure to heed this command will get customers thrown out of the store.
The next rule is customers must buy everything that’s in their carts when they come up to the checkout table. No one has time to wait for second-guessing, he says. “If you try to put anything back while you’re at the register,” he says, “we’re going to make you go to the back of the line.”
Rules laid down, employees unlock the doors and the customers rush in, Hunger Games-style. Within minutes, 100 full-size shopping carts are claimed, and the treasure hunt is on.
“It gets pretty intense,” Elian says.
Shoppers roll through quickly, stacking goods into their carts with just a split-second of thought. Among this week’s bounty are vintage-style handheld radios, foam pillows, computer keyboards, a video monitor, an electric cheese grater, a large square shower head, a standing shoe rack, spice set, a knee brace, a vehicle seat cover for dogs, lighted makeup mirrors, toy drones, Barbie accessories, and much more.
A new twist on the liquidation formula
Liquidation stores aren’t new to South Florida. They started popping up a few years ago, before the pandemic, in brick-and-mortar spaces previously occupied by retailers driven into bankruptcy by the rise of online shopping.
Competitors are everywhere: Bin Planet in Plantation, Best Bins and Real Deal Bin & Discount Store in Lauderhill, Off the Truck Liquidators in Margate, Miami Bins in Hialeah.
Anyone with a couple thousand dollars can go into the liquidation retail business, selling Amazon’s or other chains’ goods by searching for wholesalers on Google. Sell it as you want — in a strip mall, at a flea market, or at home on eBay. The catch is you have to buy a full pallet and you’re not allowed to see what’s on the pallet until it’s yours. For every $50 karaoke machine you find on the pallet, you might be stuck with eight or 10 holiday sweaters for dogs.
Part-time eBay retailers hedge their bets by hitting Hotbins and buying items for $12 that they can mark up to a point lower than Amazon’s normal retail price. Elian says about half of the Tamarac store’s customers are resellers, even if they are reluctant to admit it. He doesn’t mind because they are among his most loyal repeat customers.
On the other hand, they scoop up the hottest bargains early, before casual customers can get a chance at them. So the store tries to keep inventory fresh by holding some of the good stuff back and sprinkling it in throughout the day.
Hotbins opened as a standalone store in West Palm Beach last June, but owner Yaser Ajak, Elian’s father-in-law, soon realized he could leverage buying power from suppliers and get higher-quality merchandise to sell for attractive prices by moving more volume, Elian said.
So in a rare move among liquidation retailers, Hotbins quickly became a chain by adding stores in Lake Worth, Fort Myers, Hialeah, Tampa, Tamarac, and on Friday in Sarasota. The six stores take delivery of eight semi-truckloads a week, Elian says, and each truckload carries 24 pallets. Pallets are 48 inches by 40 inches and can hold up to 4,600 pounds of goods.
Cleanliness, order and the excitement-inducing marketing style sets the brand apart from competitors, Elian says, and all of the chain’s stores follow the same cascading-price formula:
After the highest-value items are snagged on Fridays, the prices fall to $10 on Saturdays, then $8 on Sunday, $6 on Monday, $4 on Tuesday, and to make sure everything is cleared out to make room for the next load, $2 on Wednesday. On Thursdays, the store is closed for restocking. Elian says it took him and four other employees nine hours to set up this week’s inventory.
Research and even more goods
An hour after opening, most shoppers’ carts are full, and many have stopped looking for items and are instead looking at their smartphones.
“Then they do their research,” Elian says.
Scanning barcodes is so 2015. Michael Browner, a computer enthusiast from Lauderhill, found a PC graphics card and a watercooled CPU fan. He snaps photos of the boxed items with his smartphone and uploads them to an app called Google Lens. Within seconds, the app displays the name of the item and its suggested retail price.
Because his finds go inside computers, there’s no way to plug them in and make sure they work as the store recommends because all sales are final.
Browner seems unconcerned them turning out to be dead on arrival. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve gotten a lot of good stuff.”
With a toddler dangling in a sling on his chest, Barry Swartz of Tamarac pushes an overflowing cart to the rear of the store where clothing items are arrayed. He picks up a large black overcoat made of synthetic leather and says it might work as part of a costume for a Hollywood-based stage combat troupe, The Royal Chessmen, that he performs with at renaissance and medieval fairs.
Yohanna Leon scored a podcasting set with a microphone and boom arm that normally sells for $59 on Amazon. She also found a massager, an electric knife, and a karaoke machine.
Santino David and Andrew Gourzong found a radio-controlled car, a model of a Nissan Skyline, two karaoke machines and a pair of home security cameras.
Lest they think about heading to the checkout table too soon, Elian has another surprise up his sleeve.
At 10 a.m., store employees roll two more tables full of fresh inventory out to the sales floor from the back room, their contents shrouded by large sheets imprinted with Hotbins logos.
Gather around, he commands over his bullhorn. “On the count of three, I want everyone to shout ‘Hotbins!'”
As shoppers shout, the sheets are pulled off and the crowd sets upon the fresh offerings, their arms stretching across the tables for drones, radios, massagers, LED garage lights and thermal coffee cups; pulling into their overflowing carts goods that have arrived at the last stop on the supply chain.
If you go
What: Hotbins
Where: 7707 W. Commercial Blvd., Tamarac
Hours: Friday through Wednesday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Thursdays
Phone: 954-366-3684
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at .
