A 61-year-old retiree says she bought $100 coats for $2.75 apiece as bargain stores are flooded with overstock from big retailers, report says

The clearance rack at T.J. Maxx clothing store in Annapolis. Discount chains have been benefitting from a glut of overstock from big retailers.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

• Big retailers ordered too much inventory in the onset of the pandemic — and now demand has shifted.
• Cut-price retailers are taking on the excess merchandise and reselling it at huge discounts.
• One retiree told The WSJ she picked up $100 coats for just $2.75 in a Bargain Hunt store.

A retiree in Alabama said she bought several women's coats for $2.75, down from a sticker price of $100, as retailers unload overstock they bought during the pandemic to discount chains.

Donna Griffin, 61, told The Wall Street Journal she found the cut-price, out-of-season winter coats at the Bargain Hunt store near her Cropwell, Alabama home. She told The Journal she saw a lot of cheap furniture and mattresses in stock as well.

Retailers like Walmart, Target and Macy's have been getting rid of excess appliances, TVs, furniture, and more, with chains like TJ Maxx and Ross benefiting from the glut in merchandise and offering consumers huge discounts.

Home Buys CEO Brady Churches told The Journal he's seeing more excess inventory now "than at any time in the past two decades." What's more, The Journal reported, the quality of that inventory tends to be high because many of items didn't even reach the big retailers' store shelves before they were sold on directly from their warehouses.

Companies selling physical goods have had to grapple with a variety of issues in managing their inventory in recent months. Soaring inflation has meant that consumers have less money left to spend on non-essential items.

As COVID-19 lockdowns shut ports and factories in China, shipping delays have meant that goods ordered by retailers months ago are not in demand anymore now that COVID restrictions have mostly eased. This shift in consumer demand has also seen pandemic darlings such as Peloton take a hit, with its share price and revenue declining substantially since their COVID-19 peaks. 

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