Is Quicklotz a solution to empty mall spaces or a sign of the times?

Shoppers at the North East Mall in Hurst may be wondering who put neon in their Nordstrom.

Quicklotz, a liquidator for outdated goods and items from last season, celebrates its grand opening in the empty anchorage on Saturday. The feel of the store is a mix of a game show and a flea market, with 70 large, custom-made wooden bins on wheels filled with random general goods from hair clips to electronics. The trash cans are surrounded by bigger things like pressure washers and low-priced refrigerators.

Describing its new concept as retail recreational shopping, Quicklotz says its regular customer base includes Poshmark and eBay resellers, people who are making extra money or even making a living selling what they find mostly online.

The largest shopping center owner in the USA, Simon Property Group, handed over its former Nordstrom anchorage to Quicklotz.

The Hurst Nordstrom was one of 16 US locations that the Seattle-based department store chain permanently closed after the pandemic temporarily closed shopping malls in early 2020.

The room has been empty since then.

From the flashing lights at the entrance, Quicklotz signals that it’s not like other stores in the mall. It has bright yellow pillars, colorful posters of everything Texas related, neon lights around the perimeter wall that change color and music.

The owners of Quicklotz are not like other owners either. Quicklotz is secret about how businesses go. Only photos of executives by first name are listed in the About section of the website. Only one officer, Spokesman Butch Maltby, was available for interviews.

The Hurst store is the largest of Shelby, the NC-based goods liquidator, and Maltby said the plan is to expand with satellite stores in Garland, Frisco and Mesquite.

Maltby said that according to its Linkedin page, Quicklotz was founded by Samuel Pires, who worked for tech companies before moving on to the liquidation business. The company’s president, Jack Stadtman, is from Dallas and has a history in the liquidation business, Maltby said.

This dress, which was photographed when the Quicklotz room was being filled, has a Nordstrom label on it. The bankruptcy trustee buys in the Last Chance branded stores that goods go to when they are not sold in Nordstrom and Nordstrom rack stores. Quicklotz says it constantly buys from a changing list of 12 to 15 retailers. (Juan Figueroa / employee photographer)

The company was founded in 2011 to sell goods on eBay and opened its first physical store two years later, Maltby said. It grew into a wholesale and online store when the company was able to purchase whole pallets and truckloads of goods. Hurst is the company’s sixth and largest store. Two other small stores are in Arlington and Laredo, and the other three are in North Carolina and South Carolina.

“It’s a festival-or-hunger business,” said Maltby. In a few weeks, a store can have $ 70,000 in revenue, and the company expects the Hurst store to generate many times that.

Quicklotz has a treasure hunt feel to it and the prices that drop daily.

The items in the bins sell for $ 7 on Fridays, dropping $ 1 a day until everything is $ 2 on Thursdays and the store closes early to replenish supplies. A competitor to trash cans, Crazy Cazboy’s, opened in Arlington in March at similar prices. There are other competitors like Krazy Bins in Ohio and Dream Deals in South Carolina.

One wall at Quicklotz has six large doors at which an announcer regularly leads buyers to a surprise delivery of several small kitchen appliances or a load of Apple watches or patio furniture.

Quicklotz also tries to differentiate itself with a corraled area that offers high-end items such as fashion accessories, handbags, shoes, belts, evening dresses and perfumes.

The bins are stacked high to create a treasure hunt feeling. (Juan Figueroa / employee photographer)The Hurst Quicklotz has 70 containers that roll in and out when new goods arrive. (Juan Figueroa / employee photographer)

Quicklotz is transforming the second level of the department store into a fulfillment center for its online business Ubiduwin.com, which hosts live auctions lasting 2 minutes. Items can be shipped anywhere, but buyers can also pick up their items at the Hurst Store.

Simon declined to discuss the decision to rent to Quicklotz, but the mall has a lot of space to fill and already has a rental relationship with Quicklotz. Last year, Quicklotz opened in a former Ann Taylor store under the Everything Must Go brand in Simon’s Gaffney Outlet Marketplace in South Carolina.

Quicklotz buys truckloads of goods that retailers no longer want. Ironically, the former Nordstrom room still has some goods from the department store. Quicklotz buys from the chain’s Last Chance clearance stores in Phoenix and Chicago.

The store starts with an inventory equivalent to 25 truckloads of goods, but it is packaged in containers and not charged individually, which allows the store to work with 25 employees.

Maltby promises 70,000 items on the sales floor at any given time.

Satellite deals for other cities in northern Texas that will be 7,000 to 9,000 square feet are in the works, he said. “We expect one or two small shops by the end of this year.”

There’s a reason liquidators are now moving back into physical business, said Liza Amlani, director and founder of the Retail Strategy Group.

The pandemic left retailers with a lot of inventory of closed stores and goods that missed entire seasons during the worst of the crisis. “This is a liquidator’s dream right now,” she said. In the past few years, many of these goods would have landed in a landfill or burned, but the industry is now more focused on sustainability.

“Retailers do their job for you. They can free up money tied up in the accumulating inventory by selling it to liquidators, ”Amlani said. “And what drives Simon? A liquidator could increase sales and traffic in the mall compared to a dark store. “

For shoppers, “it’s just entertainment,” said Amlani. “It’s a rush for bargain hunters.” She says that customers enjoy gambling, much like people buying lockers without knowing the contents.

“Personally, I would prefer retailers to become better retailers and plan their product ranges with better data,” she says.

Twitter: @MariaHalkias

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