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In the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland, there are three warehouses full of socks, swimsuits, toothbrushes, electric bikes, patio furniture, t-shirts and more.
It's one of the spaces where Just Inventory Solutions — a multimillion-dollar business based in Albany— operates its national, behind-the-scenes wholesale business.
The company buys excess or old inventory, canceled orders and other products to distribute to off-price retailers, including Ocean State Job Lot, TJ Maxx, Ross and Burlington.
The company has been based in Albany for almost 20 years, starting in a small office on Western Avenue until a big partner from Rhode Island invested 17 years ago, allowing the company to scale up.
Today, Jerry Goldstein, principal at Just Inventory, said the company generates eight figures of gross revenue and has 200,000 square feet of warehouse space on the East Coast and 50,000 on the West Coast. Specific revenue figures and the company's partners were not disclosed.
Goldstein buys excess product off of companies looking to get rid of it, and then sells it to retailers.
"Buy low and sell a little bit less low," Goldstein said. "If we're buying something for a steal, we're going to give our customer an unbelievable value — like a steal plus a little bit of profit."
The business is constantly reacting to the market, Goldstein says, which makes long-term strategizing hard. The company has no long-term leases so it can contract overhead costs when needed, and has to adjust labor to fit the number of orders placed.
Just Inventory was booming over the last five years, especially during the pandemic. Retailers jumped to order more product when people were at home online shopping, but too much was ordered, Goldstein said.
"You've got patio furniture sitting in warehouses all around the U.S., so last year, Just Inventory sold more patio furniture, canopies, pergolas — I didn't even know what a pergola was, and last year, we sold thousands of pergolas," he said. "That kind of chaos to the marketplace is what I was talking about. And so as a result of that our business was up a lot."
Just Inventory's product mix changes with the market. Last year alone, 150 truckloads of outdoor furniture were sold. At other times, clothing is a major part of the mix. To date, Just Inventory has bought and sold 2 million pairs of shoes and several million socks.
But for the first time, Goldstein is passing on deals, he said.
Goldstein said he expects the market's instability to catch up with off-price retailers. It'll be hard to beat last year's performances, and that's why Just Inventory is pausing on making deals — for the most part.
"For us, we just have to resist the temptation ... this is the first time I can remember where we have to pass on stuff that's a great deal, because guess what? We don't have anyone to sell to. And we can't just keep filling warehouses full of stuff," he said. "The outlook, I'd say, is there'll beof supply. I think that the retail numbers are going to be kind of flat, and I think what that tells us is that we have to be very careful now and only buying extra special deals and famous brands on top of it."
But mistakes and oversupply are still happening. Goldstein said over the last two years, online inventory aggregators have bought up smaller companies and borrowed millions of dollars to order inventory, but have gone bankrupt, leaving them with product. Just Inventory just got two truckloads from Texas and Pennsylvania from mistakes like that this week.
"Just when I think we're going to be quieting down, or maybe we're going to exit one of the buildings that we're in, and I got a call and there's 150 truckloads of furniture available," he said. "We just have to be ready to flex, to scale up and quickly."