The newest online marketplace in the secondhand goods industry comes from the organization that pioneered secondhand retail way back in 1902. Goodwill Industries International Inc., the national federation of nonprofit stores that sell donated items to raise money to help the disadvantaged, this week debuted an online marketplace of curated items from across its network. It’s the second such venture from local Goodwill affiliates.

The new marketplace — dubbed GoodwillFinds.com — comes more than two decades after the 1999 launch of Shopgoodwill.com, an online auction site that did $21.2 million in sales in September.

Goodwill did not provide more information about the relationship between the two ecommerce sites.

GoodwillFinds debuts as interest in secondhand goods retailers has skyrocketed. Online sales at the 17 resale-only retailers Digital Commerce 360 tracks rose 34.4% to $1.91 billion in 2021.

Online marketplaces such as StockX (No. 30 the Digital Commerce 360 Online Marketplaces database), Depop (owned by Etsy Inc., No. 18) and TheRealReal Inc. (No. 40) attract shoppers interested in reducing waste, helping the environment and saving money. And on the same day that Goodwill debuted GoodwillFinds, South Korea’s Naver Corp. announced it had purchased Poshmark Inc. (No. 33) for $1.6 billion.

Nonprofit model

Matthew A. Kaness, CEO of GoodwillFinds, said his organization has a distinct advantage over its for-profit competitors.

“Goodwill already has millions of active customers today,” he said. “They already love the brand and the mission and want to put their dollars into shopping with us versus other venues.”

“Shoppers are going to not just find a unique assortment that is in some cases much larger than those other players,” he said. “They’re going to learn our story and realize that putting their dollars with GoodwillFinds.com versus some of those other sites supports a mission and a nonprofit that is funding 2 million people who are benefiting from social services at the local community level.” Goodwill affiliates provide a wide variety of services, most notably in job training and job-placement services for the disabled. 

GoodwillFinds, like ShopGoodwill and the local affiliates, is structured as a nonprofit organization. After the cost of overhead, such as shipping and labor costs and the technology to power the ecommerce site, GoodwillFinds will return all revenue to participating affiliates. 

“That being said, this market (pre-owned/secondhand goods) is growing eight times faster than retail. I think there’s a lot of space for a lot of winners here,” he said.

Toys and collectibles are popular resale items. GoodwillFinds has thousands of such items from local Goodwill donation centers.

GoodwillFinds.com’s founding members

GoodwillFinds launches with six local Goodwill affiliates representing 338 stores participating:

• Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin
• Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington
• Goodwill of Colorado
• Goodwill of Southern California
• Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana
• Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota

The site went live with more than 100,000 unique items for sale.  Those items were donated to participating Goodwill donation centers, which then listed them for sale on GoodwillFinds.com. Those same local donation centers will handle shipping and fulfillment for now, but GoodwillFinds.com will roll out centralized shipping and returns management in the near future.

By contrast, 135 Goodwill stores from across the United States and Canada list goods on ShopGoodwill, according to Nicole Morrison director of marketing and communications for Goodwill of Orange County (California.)

GoodwillFinds is built on Salesforce

GoodwillFinds is built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the cloud-based ecommerce system sold by Salesforce Inc.

“We’re building proprietary integrations, data sets, personalization engines, and other integrations on top of that to will allow us to ultimately integrate it with the customer experience at the store level over time,” Kaness said. “Salesforce and our own development teams are building out integrations on the supply side, so that we can very rapidly and efficiently automate the onboarding process for launching new items and onboarding new members onto the platform.”

Kaness said GoodwillFinds will also operate as a technology services company for local federation members, building systems for inventory management, customer-relations, online payments and digital marketing.

The mission

Kaness, a long-time retail executive and former CEO of ModCloth, said he never expected to join a nonprofit organization. But Goodwill Industries’ history of helping people find jobs won him over.

“My older brother was born with cerebral palsy, and I’ve watched him go on and off disability his whole adult life. He lives his best life when he’s working,” he said. “So the mission of supporting the dignity of work is easy to get behind.”

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