County thrift store opens warehouse, plans several more locations

Story Highlights

–   The Thrift Boutique recently opened a 3,600-square-foot warehouse in Essex.

–   Owner Lazaros Giannos plans to expand his thrift store business to at least five locations.

–   Giannos aims to open a second storefront this summer.

A year-old Dundalk thrift store is adding a central warehouse to prepare forfuture expansion.

The Thrift Boutique, located at at 1589 Merritt Blvd., recently opened a central sorting space and warehouse at the Golden Ring Business Center in Essex. Owner Lazaros Giannos sees the space as a key for his business, which he hopes to expand to at least five locations over the next several years.

The 3,600-square-foot warehouse, located within an industrial building at 7110-7130 Golden Ring Road owned by Timonium’s Hill Management Services Inc., stores Thrift Boutique’s inventory overflow and serves as a central sorting area for the business. Items are cleaned and go through a quality check at the warehouse before heading to the Dundalk store, where they undergo another check before hitting the shelves, according to Giannos.
Andrew Beyrodt of Hill Management Services Inc. represented his firm in the lease transaction for the warehouse.

The Dundalk thrift store leased a warehouse and plans to open additional locations.

The Thrift Boutique sells a wide range of wares, including clothing, shoes, household items, smaller pieces of furniture, jewelry, decorations and electronics. Giannos said his business tries to list items at a fair price point and also partners with local organizations to give back to the surrounding community.

“The donations we get from the community stay in Dundalk,” he said. “They don’t get lost in the big corporations or warehouses.”

Giannos, a former fine-dining restaurant server, immigrated to the U.S. from Greece nearly two decades ago. He began buying auctioned-off storage units and selling those items on the internet and out of his garage. The business outgrew its original operations, so Giannos decided to open a 3,200-square-foot storefront last March.

“At the grand opening, we had lines out the door,” he said. “That store became a destination for the locals here.”

Giannos wanted to “build a stronger foundation” for his business over the last year and plans to use the warehouse as a jumping-off point for future expansion. Giannos plans to continue growing into other communities, using the same business model of keeping items there for the immediate community. He hopes to open a second storefront this summer, though he’s not ready to share additional details.

The Baltimore area has recently added several secondhand stores as thrifting gains in popularity, a trend driven by consumer concerns about affordability and the environment as well as social media influencers’ “thrift hauls.” Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake opened a 22,000-square-foot thrift store — its largest ever — in Laurel last fall, and in February announced plans to open a 12,000-square-foot store and donation center this spring at Reisterstown Road Plaza in Northwest Baltimore.

Source: Baltimore Business Journal