Quick, what’s the difference between Salvation Army and Goodwill, two old-timey service organizations that are famous for their thrift stores? Salvation Army certainly has the higher profile with its uniforms and Christmas bell ringing. And it’s actually more than a service organization–it’s a church. But beyond that?

Jeff Ukrainec, VP of donated goods operations for Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit, has a succinct answer. Salvation Army: “They feed the hungry, house the homeless.” Goodwill: “We try to get to them before they need the Salvation Army.”

He explains that Goodwill’s main mission is to “put people with employment challenges to work. We create businesses to do that.”

The new Goodwill Ypsilanti/Pittsfield store on Carpenter will create twenty jobs “just within these four walls, not counting transportation and warehousing,” Ukrainec says. At-risk youth, ex-cons, vets, single mothers, people with disabilities are all welcome to apply. The best way to connect is through one of their career centers (Westland is the closest), but “someone will hook you up” if you just walk into the store.

Goodwill stores declined around southeastern Michigan between 2000 and 2009 because the Greater Detroit chapter closed many stores (Goodwill chapters operate independently). Instead, it had tapped a better vein: Detroit’s industrial and manufacturing revenue streams. “We have a recycling division in Hamtramck,” Ukrainec says, which rescues downed power lines and transformers, selling them on the commodities market. “We are also a Tier One supplier to Ford and Chrysler.” A Goodwill factory in Detroit puts together kits of small parts like license plate brackets that it sells directly to automakers (which is what “Tier One” means).

But about ten years ago, Goodwill began to notice that resale shops were no longer so humble. Hitching a ride on the wave of sustainability, recycling, and notions of “peak stuff,” they were in fashion. And where there’s fashion, there’s money. Enter Ukrainec in 2009, a former Ford expert in facility design and logistics. While thrift stores certainly serve people in need, others–the affluent, the trendsetters, and various collectors–“come here to look for treasures, for something that’s one of a kind.” Given carte blanche by the chapter to start up the thrift shops again, he decided they would work best in dedicated spaces built from the ground up.

In deciding where to put them, he thought about the supply side first. “We’re donation driven,” he explains. “In the past, we located in retail districts, and that’s great for shoppers, but we realized people will drive thirty or forty minutes to shop. They won’t drive that far to donate.” The store on Carpenter next to GFS is convenient to Ann Arborites aiming to simplify. And to make donating even easier, there’s a canopied drive-through, where a team of workers immediately relieve donors of “clothing, furniture, housewares. Anything you find in your home, we sell,” with a short list of exceptions: “hazardous waste, mattresses, tube TVs, appliances that don’t work.”

Only the cream of the crop gets onto the sales floor, he says, and even then it gets only a four-week tour of duty before it’s yanked. But nothing is wasted, Ukrainec says: “Everything here will go through some sort of process to generate revenue in some way, shape or form. Books are sold by the pound, clothing is shredded for rags or shipped overseas to less developed countries.”

Another one of his touches is to mix new with donated merchandise. Some of the “new” is donated factory close-outs, but Goodwill also buys eye-catching accessories–toys, socks, gloves, kitchen gadgets. “It dresses up the store and allows you to finish an outfit,” he explains. “If you’re in here looking for pants and a shirt, we’ve got new socks.”

Goodwill Ypsilanti/Pittsfield, 3782 Carpenter, 272-0667. Store hours: Mon.-Sat. 9 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun. noon-6 p.m. Donation hours: Mon.-Sat. 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. goodwilldetroit.org.