While other retailers fight to stay alive, thrift stores are seeing steady growth.
Mike Rowan with Goodwill Industries of San Diego County said business is up nearly 15 percent. Goodwill has opened two new storefronts in the San Diego area, a two-story thrift store in Escondido and a bookstore in Eastlake.
Rowan said as long as donations keep coming in, the thrift store will be able to survive and expand. The latest expansion is a bookstore with nearly 20,000 titles. Books sell for about one-third of the new price. Not only will the Goodwill bookstore sell everything from adult fiction and non-fiction to childrens books, but it also includes free WIFI connection for customers.
Rowan said the "lifeblood" of Goodwill is the donations that keep coming in. The bookstore allows Goodwill to specialize but actually get more money for the donated books. Rowan says books often get poorly displayed at a large thrift store, this way the books are catagorized in a way that will be more user friendly.
The bookstore is in the Eastlake Villiage Center near the Rite Aid store.
