“It’s a large range of consumer goods that are brought to you at, I would say, severely discounted prices,” says Sara Graham, the first franchisee of Bin & Pallet Company, which has four locations in the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek area.
A former project manager for a Tier 1 automotive supplier, the gregarious Graham opened her first business on July 5 across Jackson Rd. from the site of the Kiwanis Thrift Sale. She grew up in Holly and lived in Kalamazoo before recently downsizing into a downtown Chelsea apartment with her teen daughter and leasing the former Countryside Lawn & Garden Equipment building.
Interviewed on a bustling Saturday afternoon, she simultaneously chatted up customers (while offering cookies), oriented two employees, hosted a food truck and a vendor of permanent jewelry, and ran the register. “I thrive off the energy of other people,” she says. “You couldn’t do this if you’re an introverted person in the least bit.” The checkout counter, which she fashioned herself, is topped by bowling-alley flooring from Bel-Mark Lanes, which was turned into a Tesla showroom last year.
Graham says that shipments of liquidated inventory from “at least fifteen different” mass retailers arrive on pallets to be sorted, checked, priced, and displayed in half of the 5,000-square-foot building, “where you don’t have to pummel through boxes and bins and the brown box islands.” Merchandise, about 90 percent of which is brand new, gets priced (non-negotiably) around half off original retail.
Bin & Pallet Company, 6541 Jackson Rd., (734) 369–6034. Tues.–Fri. 9 a.m.– 6 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Closed Sun. & Mon. binandpalletco.com/ann-arbor-franchise