By Joshua Burd
Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey Inc. will open up to five new retail locations in the region to meet the continued demand for its services and the growing resale fashion market, the organization announced Monday.
The nonprofit said the spaces will include Goodwill stores and attended donation centers, with a target geography of Northern New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester County. It’s working alongside brokers with Katz & Associates and Cushman & Wakefield, amid continued investment in its retail footprint and a mission focused on sustainable fashion and job creation.
“Goodwill is bringing the fun of thrift, the beauty of upcycling, with the meaning of social impact to your community,” said Katy Gaul-Stigge, CEO and president of Goodwill NYNJ. “The shopping landscape is changing across the country with thrifting and secondhand shopping going 100 percent mainstream. Goodwill NYNJ has been a sustainable fashion powerhouse for over 107 years and is leading the way to changing the clothing manufacturing cycle to decrease creating new clothes that are then discarded and hurt the environment.”
According to an announcement, Goodwill in 2021 repurposed more than 40 million pounds of clothing and home goods, saving nearly 59,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere and successfully avoiding polluting the environment. Sales of donations at Goodwill stores in 2021 provided funding of job services for nearly 10,000 individuals who are unemployed or underemployed, almost half of them people with disabilities, via collaboration with large and small companies in industries such as health care, technology, accounting, warehousing, retail and public agencies.
Meantime, Goodwill NYNJ is investing to design stores that provide a safe, clean, convenient and fun donating and shopping experience tailored to the growing resale market with merchandise free of the environmental impact of fast fashion, according to a news release. Last October, the Guilderland Chamber of Commerce recognized the Goodwill store in Guilderland, New York, with the Best Interior Remodel award.
The nonprofit also cited a recent Forbes article that detailed the rise of resale in the fashion industry, amid a growing desire to shop responsibly and sustainably. The article said that, in the U.S. alone, more than 33 million consumers in 2020 bought secondhand apparel for the first time, while the resale market is projected to reach $77 billion in the next five years.
The brokerage team for Goodwill NYNJ includes Katz & Associates’ Adam Caplan in New Jersey and Cushman & Wakefield’s Melissa Naeder and Carl Wunderlich in Long Island and Westchester, respectively.
