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BELLEVUE, Wash. — If you’ve ever wondered how a thrift store decides that one pair of jeans is $6 while another is $12, a new tool from Savers Value Village is trying to make that process a lot less random.
The company — which runs the largest chain of for-profit thrift stores in the U.S. and Canada — announced a new system called ThriftIQ™, built to help store staff price the millions of secondhand items that pass through its stores each week, from t-shirts to winter coats to handbags.
Why pricing thrift stores is actually really hard
Regular retailers have it easy by comparison: a new pair of Nike shoes from the factory always looks the same and costs the same to make. Thrift stores don’t have that luxury. Every donated item is different — different brand, different condition, different age — and someone has to eyeball it and decide what it’s worth, often in just a few seconds.
Savers Value Village processes over a billion pounds of used goods every year. That’s an enormous amount of guesswork multiplied across thousands of employees and stores. ThriftIQ is meant to take some of that guesswork out of the equation, using data the company has collected over decades of reselling secondhand goods.
The tool was built with Kaizen Analytix, a data science and consulting firm.
What shoppers can expect
According to the company, the goal isn’t to raise prices — it’s to make them more consistent, while keeping the treasure-hunt feeling that draws people to thrift stores in the first place. Here’s what the company says the technology has delivered so far in early testing:
- More predictable pricing — shoppers can browse a wide selection without wondering if a similar item is priced very differently elsewhere in the store.
- Prices staying low — items priced using the new system cost about the same or less than at other stores in the chain, and remain 40–70% cheaper than traditional retail.
- Better sales for the stores — stores testing the system reportedly sold more items, saw shoppers buy more per visit, and generated more revenue overall.
- Room to grow — the system is designed to be rolled out to many more stores over time.
The rollout so far
ThriftIQ has already been tested in 58 stores, where it helped price more than 25 million clothing items spanning some 45,000 brands. The company says it plans to expand the technology across its U.S. and Canadian locations through early 2028.
“At Savers Value Village, our goal is simple: to help customers discover great finds at compelling value,” said Mark Walsh, the company’s CEO, adding that the new system builds on “what shoppers love most about thrifting — finding everyday essentials, unexpected treasures, and exceptional deals with every visit.”
Bobby Falconer of Kaizen Analytix, the company’s tech partner, put it this way: no other type of retail deals with as much variety as thrift, since the inventory is always changing and every item is one-of-a-kind. He said the new system helps translate that complexity into pricing decisions that are more precise, giving store employees better information to work with.
The bigger picture
ThriftIQ is the latest piece of a broader push by the company to modernize its operations, joining other recent changes like automated book-sorting, self-checkout kiosks, and AI tools for managing store facilities.
Savers Value Village trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SVV.