Savers opening its 8th Long Island thrift store amid more high-income shoppers

Savers is opening its eighth Long Island store Thursday, as the thrift chain continues to get a sales boost from more affluent shoppers seeking bargains.

The shift in consumer demographics is helping secondhand shopping to go more mainstream, Jubran Tanious, president and chief operating officer of Savers Value Village Inc., told Newsday on Wednesday.

"The way that we show up with quality merchandise, strong value proposition, is allowing us to reach many shoppers that ... are just discovering secondhand," he said.

Savers' newest Long Island store opens Thursday in Carle Place, at 260 Voice Rd. in Voice Road Plaza.

The thrift store, which is the fourth Savers to open on Long Island in nearly two years, occupies a nearly 23,000-square-foot space that was vacated by discount store Big Lots in 2024.

Savers' Carle Place store is among 25 locations the retailer is opening this year in the United States and elsewhere.

The retailer’s growth is being boosted by an increase in the number of shoppers from high- and low-income households that is outpacing customer growth from middle-income households, Mark T. Walsh, Savers' CEO, told analysts during a second-quarter earnings call in August.

Founded in 1954 and headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Savers operated 375 thrift stores in the United States, Canada and Australia as of July 4, the end of its fiscal second quarter. Savers is the largest publicly traded chain of thrift stores in the United States, where it had 185 stores as of July 4.

The company has the capacity to open 20 to 25 U.S. stores annually "for many years," Tanious said. Of the 25 stores it is opening this year, more than 20 will be in 11 states, Walsh told analysts.

Savers tends to open stores in areas that have a good donor base but also draw a cross-section of shoppers from various income levels, Tanious said.

Long Island has a high median income, but it also has a high cost of living, which is helping to drive Savers’ growth in the area, he said.

Long Island also has been a strong market for Savers because of its dense retail corridors, he said, adding the retailer plans to open its ninth Long Island store next year in Nassau County.

Aside from the Carle Place store, Savers has opened three other Long Island locations since December 2024 — in Bethpage, West Islip and Centereach.

Savers’ U.S. net sales increased 11.6% to $255.3 million in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, while net sales at stores open at least one year increased 6.6%.

Nationwide, the overall secondhand apparel market from 2024 to 2025 grew 13% to $55.5 billion, nearly four times faster than the broader retail clothing market figure of 3.6%, according to an April report by ThredUp, an online consignment and thrift retailer, and Manhattan-based market research firm GlobalData.

Secondhand retailers’ sales growth can be attributed partly to consumers’ growing concerns about the rising costs of goods, retail experts said. The growth also is being fueled by young consumers who prefer to buy unique items and who are more concerned about environmental sustainability, experts said.

Gen Z and millennial consumers will drive 71% of market growth in the secondhand market by 2030, according to the ThredUp and GlobalData report.

Savers is a for-profit business that collects donations of clothing and household goods "on behalf of local nonprofits." Those donations typically are tax-deductible, but that varies by state, according to the company.

Savers pays nonprofit partners for the items donated by the public based on the weight of the goods, and then sells the items in its stores, the company said.

For 29 years, Savers’ nonprofit partner on Long Island has been Big Brothers Big Sisters Long Island, a mentorship program for children and young adults that has offices in Islandia and Westbury.

Correction: Savers' Carle Place store opens Thursday. A previous version of this story included an incorrect opening date due to erroneous information provided by a representative for Savers Value Village Inc.