Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

BY IVAN SANDERS
STAR STAFF
ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
For those shoppers who live and thrive for Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, where consumers converge on retailers in a mad dash to get bargains on items that may otherwise be priced higher than what is desired to be paid there is good news.

Finders Keepers, a new concept for retail in Elizabethton, will open Friday night in the former Shoe Sensation location in the Elks Crossing Shopping Center.

“We are a bin liquidation superstore,” explained co-owner Courtney Dailey who operates the store with her husband, Paul. “We buy overstock from Walmart, Target, Myer, and Amazon by the truckloads and we have one store in Johnson City that we opened at the beginning of April and basically, we take all the merchandise and dump it into these giant bins and price by the day.

“So we could have items that are $600 and we could have items that are $10 and it’s all priced by the day, Friday night we open from 5 to 8 pm and everything in the store is $15 regardless of what it is.”

One can only imagine the madness that is created by a store such as this and for that reason, the Dailey’s have come up with a new game plan for their store which opens this Friday, June 25th.

Instead of customers having to line up three hours before the store opens like the one in Johnson City did, the Daileys shared that there will be a lottery pick for customers to get their place in line.

“This one is going to be a little different than the one in Johnson City. We had a line there – they lined up three hours before we opened and some even spent the night. Here we have a line lottery starting at 3 pm on Friday,” said Courtney.

“You can come up and draw your number in line just to keep people from racing and trying to keep crowd management down to hopefully help our neighbors because we don’t have a ton of sidewalk space.

“Fifteen minutes before the door opens you come and line up.”

Dailey said that each adult must have a ticket. For example, a family consisting of husband and wife along with their children will be required to have a ticket for the husband and the wife, and that each child 15 and under must be accompanied by one adult ticket holder. Anyone 16 and over will require a ticket.

By doing this, it will keep down someone from standing in line and then having the whole family come up and getting in line with that person just before the door opens which would be unfair to everyone else.

One might ask why this is so important and the answer is very simple according to Dailey.

“You can see in the bins we have rugs, furniture, vacuum cleaners, coolers, and luggage – all high dollar items but everything will be $15. There is a lot of madness that people get excited about.

“They come and line up and come in and get their deals and everything. Lower-income families have been shopping with us in Johnson City for weeks for Christmas. It’s a big rush to get in here and get big items.

“Like Black Friday every day is our slogan. Each day the price drops as the inventory drops. Saturday is $10, Sunday is $7, Monday is $5, and Tuesday’s is $3.”

The store is closed on Wednesday and Thursday to allow bins to be restocked with a fresh shipment of items as the inventory changes from week to week.

“We have a lot of fun watching everyone take advantage of the huge deals,” added Dailey.

Customers need to be aware that there are no refunds and no exchanges on items purchased. The Daileys have set up a testing area for items that require power so those items can be tested before purchase.