Thrifty shoppers gathered to celebrate the opening of Shawville’s much-anticipated liquidation centre by combing its bins for deals on Saturday morning.
Customers were lined up a half-hour before the store’s opening to catch a glimpse of what treasures it had to offer.
A liquidation store, as explained by owner Roland Langlois, sells overstock products from online retailers such as Amazon that the store buys in pallets once a week.
“It’s a giant cardboard box, so we have no idea what 90 per cent of the stuff is,” he said, adding that he also does not know the value of the items inside until he sorts through the box.
“On Saturdays you’re going to have the most choice and the most high-value items, and then every day of the week the price will go down,” he said.
Langlois said the concept is that you will always get a good deal no matter when you come in.
“In this first load of merchandise we’ve got [ . . . ] there’s a lot of items that are worth over $200, even $300, so it can really be a shocker when you see what’s available,” he said. “The thrill of finding a treasure is definitely a big part of it.”
Annette Keller was one of the first customers lined up outside the door at Saturday’s opening and said she was looking forward to seeing if she could snag any good deals.
“I’m hunting, hoping to find a good treasure,” she said. “I know a lot of people drive to the one in Pembroke, so we’re keeping the local business in Shawville.”
Brittany Case said she has heard of similar stores where she lives in Ottawa and was curious to see one open up in her hometown. “It’s just to see what it’s about [ . . . ] I was curious for a small town what they’ve got.”
Langlois, who lives in Alleyn and Cawood, said he chose Shawville as the site for this business for its central location in the Pontiac.
“I feel like it’s a reasonable distance to go to either have an activity or go shop for something, and I really wanted to have something that was more like an activity than just a business.”
He said despite the store’s logo – a winking smiley face with an Amazon-looking arrow for a mouth – it has no official affiliation with the retail giant. “It’s not the Amazon arrow, but it is a wink to it,” he said, adding that his daughter came up with the logo.
