# Savers

Savers Value Village Inc. is a publicly held, for-profit thrift store retailer headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, United States, offering second hand merchandise, with supermajority ownership by private equity firm Ares Management. An international company, Savers has more than 315 locations throughout the United States of America, Canada, and Australia, and receives its merchandise by paying money to non-profit organizations for donated clothing and household items. Savers is known as Value Village in the Pacific Northwest, the Baltimore metropolitan area, and most of Canada, and Village des Valeurs in Quebec. Chicago stores and some locations in the Washington, DC metropolitan area are under the name Unique. In other regions of the U.S. and in Australia, the stores are named Savers.

## Business operations

Savers' business model involves partnership with local non-profits and purchasing and reselling donated items. The non-profits collect and deliver donated goods to Savers, which pays them for the items at a bulk rate regardless of whether they ever make it to the sales floor. As of 2011, the company had paid $1.1 billion to approximately 130 nonprofit partners, and as of 2012, had 315 stores worldwide and reached $1 billion in revenue.
Items deemed resellable are displayed for purchase in stores. Savers also has a recycling program and attempts to recycle any reusable items that cannot be sold at the stores, as well as any items that do not sell over a period of time to make room for fresh merchandise. Savers has buyers for its recyclables throughout the world and attempts to keep as much donated product out of the waste stream as possible. In Minnesota, Savers pays non-profit partners $0.053 per pound of clothing, $0.035 per pound of homewares, $0.02 per pound of books and $0.02 per pound of large items (e.g., furniture). By the end of 2018, the company had discontinued the use of plastic bags in its stores.
According to Diabetes Canada, it has had a reusable goods donation program with Value Village where donations of clothing and small household items generate $5,000,000 CAD annually to support diabetes research.

## Ownership history

The company was founded by Bill Ellison in 1954 at a former movie theater in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. By 1970, the chain had six thrift stores in the states of California, Oregon, and Washington under various names, including Value Village and Thrift Village. The company's headquarters were moved to Bellevue, Washington, in 1970 and expanded to Canada with a store in Vancouver that opened in 1980. Ellison was the board chairman of Value Village/Savers until 2000; he died in 2008.
Berkshire Partners bought a 50% stake in the company in 2000. Freeman Spogli & Co. became the majority owner in 2006. Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital bought out Freeman's shares in 2012.
In March 2019, Savers reached a restructuring agreement to hand ownership of the company over to private equity firms Ares Management and Crescent Capital Group. Ares acquired Crescent's stake in 2021 and took the company public in a June 29, 2023 initial public offering, retaining an 88% ownership stake.

## Controversy

In May 2015, the Minnesota Attorney General filed suit claiming that Savers was misleading the public, paying only a very small percentage to the non-profit charities which partner with the company. Savers settled in June 2015, increasing transparency and paying $300,000 to each of its partner charities in Minnesota to compensate for fundraising disruptions. In the same year, the Attorney General filed suit against the Epilepsy Foundation for failing to monitor Savers for compliance with their partnership contract. Money raised through their partnership with Savers accounted for 38-50% of the Epilepsy Foundation's revenue.
In November 2019 King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff ruled that the corporation had misled the public into believing the organization was a charity, but the ruling was overturned in August 2021 by a Washington state appeals court. The Washington state Supreme Court further ruled that the Washington state Attorney General's Office violated the corporation's First Amendment rights. Subsequently, King County Superior Court Judge David Whedbee ruled that the state of Washington had to pay the corporation's legal expenses due to the Attorney General's Office's aggressive litigation.

### Safety concerns

In December 2018, a family in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada reported their six-year-old son found a hypodermic needle and two partially-used tubes of glue in a used Mouse Trap board game they had bought from a Value Village in Coquitlam, British Columbia.
In October 2019, a man reported getting a needlestick injury when he tried on a boot at a Value Village (in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada) and was told he would need blood tests including for HIV and hepatitis.