In this episode of Retaili$tic, Deborah Weinswig interviews Michael Feinman, VP of E-Commerce and Retail Operations at Goodwill, about his journey in retail, the technological advancements at Goodwill, and the evolving landscape of e-commerce. Listen now to explore the integration of AI (artificial intelligence) in retail operations, shifts in consumer behavior, and the challenges and opportunities that retail companies are facing. Feinman shares insights on managing returns, enhancing efficiency and innovating to drive growth.
This is a video episode which you can watch here.
Takeaways
Chapters
00:00 This Week in Research: New Reports and Data
01:37 Feinman's Journey in Retail
04:05 Technology Roadmap at Goodwill
08:36 E-Commerce Strategy and Operations
12:19 The Future of E-Commerce and AI Innovations
18:25 Challenges and Opportunities in Retail Technology
25:00 Consumer Behavior and Returns Management
30:48 Innovation and Leadership in Retail
37:15 Conclusion and Future Outlook
This is a video podcast episode, which you can watch here.
Read Coresight Research reports on sustainability and AI in retail.
Visit the Retail Technology Hub to explore reports, data and competitive landscapes on technology.
Welcome to Retaili$tic, the official podcast of Coresight Research for July 8, 2025. This week, our CEO Deborah Weinswig sits down with Michael Feinman, a veteran retail executive formerly with Bloomingdale's and currently VP of Ecommerce at Goodwill. They explore consumer behavior and the AI innovations creating new opportunities for squeezing additional margin out of a sustainable supply chain.
But before we get to that conversation, let's preview some of the new research you can look forward to on Coresight.com. We'll provide a mid-year review of the six predictions and trends that we outlined for 2025 before the start of the year. We're seeing shifts from retailers and consumers in a lower-growth, high-cost context.
The latest entry in our monthly China Consumer Survey Insight series will provide retailers and brands with a detailed update on Chinese consumer behavior and sentiment.
We will discuss major market trends and themes disrupting the U.S. apparel and footwear market, spanning AI-powered agility, the rise of resale, and more.
We will offer insights on key trends that unfolded during China's 618 shopping festival.
We'll offer an early outlook for the end-of-year holiday season, which we will continue to revisit as the second half of the year unfolds to bring you the latest projections.
The three data points we're watching this week's series will spotlight U.S. retail headwinds. That infographic will be out Friday on CoreSight.com.
Now, let's join Deborah and Michael.
Hi Michael, thanks for joining us today. We're excited to have you. I'm great, I'm great. So maybe just for our audience, give us a little bit of your background and how you got to where you are today.
All right, so I'm with Goodwill of New York and New Jersey, Goodwill Industries of New York and New Jersey, and I've been here just about seven years, and I've held a couple of different titles from district manager to regional manager now to regional vice president of e-commerce. I was in the stores as a vision prior to that year. Before I joined Goodwill, I was the director of merchandising for the Northeast for Bloomingdale's for 15 years. And before that, I was ADP general manager for Lord & Taylor. So that's kind of my short path over the last 25 plus years.
I can see the move from Lord and Taylor to Bloomingdale's, explain how you came to Goodwill.
So we had a transition from CEOs at Bloomingdale's from Michael Gould to Tony Spring, both very, very, very, very dynamic personalities and great visionaries. But the culture at Bloomingdale's was changing in a manner that didn't necessarily align with the things that I really believed were important. One of my business partners at Bloomingdale, Samantha Rich, who was with Burberry and then All Saints, came to Goodwill as a VP of retail. So she gave me a call and said, hey, how would you like to work harder, earn less, but feel better at the end of the day?
So I said, yes, I go, sounds so enticing. So I actually went and met with her and understanding Goodwill and the path that they've taken through mission was really kind of exciting. And after so many years in corporate America and worrying about making profit for shareholders, I thought it'd be interesting to see what generating profit for a mission-based organization might be. So here I am working harder, not making less anymore. But at the end of the day, I do know the work that I do and the business and profitability we provide is actually going to serve a very, very good cause.
Sounds like something Michael Gould would say though, right? Work harder, make less, feel better at end of the day. I do see the Michael Gould influence, actually.
He was a hell of a leader.
Unbelievable. I interviewed him a few years ago at an event during NRF and it was amazing because we were really talking about a lot of new technologies. And I will tell you, one of the questions I asked him, because it was hot at the time, was metaverse. And it was like he could like dive right in and understand not only the technology, but the use for retail and how the consumer sees it. And I mean, he called it absolutely right. And that I think is a real tribute to him.
As we think about technology, don't think most people would associate Goodwill and technology in the same sentence. Can you tell us, since you joined to today, what the technology roadmap has been and what have been some of the opportunities and challenges along the way?
When I first started here in 2018, from a technological standpoint, we were really quite behind the times. We were using CounterPoint for our registrar systems. E-commerce was just running through the dual platform of a listing program through Upright Labs, but then through a reporting program through Shop Goodwill directly, which is operated out of Orange County, California.
We actually didn't have a really viable payroll system that made any sense to anybody. It was so archaic, you literally had to enter payroll manually daily. It was almost as bad as when you had to write it out by hand. So over the course of time, they went to it, an ADP-based platform for payroll and human resources. And not a great version of it, by the way, really kind of a muted version of it.
We went from CounterPoint to solutions ITW, which is an internal goodwill register and production system. ITW stands for ideas that work. And it was a struggle. It took six months of retraining and educating the store teams, both in production and on the selling side, to understand how to use it. And then the data that it spewed out wasn't always up to date. Much better now, you know, they got a lot of it cleaned up to a lot of the internal mechanisms. So that went in the good direction.
But then they asked me to take over e-commerce. And I will tell you, we were so rudimentary in e-commerce. There was no use of artificial intelligence. And this is three years ago, and I know we've come a long way in three years, but there were some things available internally for us to look at that would help expedite the process of this thing.
So there were a few different things I jumped on that we use. Number one, one of the platforms helped us identify, am I allowed to mention the platform or no?
Yeah, of course.
I engaged with Placer AI just to determine as we're looking at new store placement and how it would have an impact on donors because for those who do not know, everything we do is based on the generosity of the donations or donors in the communities that we serve. So as we were opening stores in a location, whether, you know, ADC stores or outlets, we needed to make sure we were finding the right cross-section. And the internal mechanisms we had actually did not feed into that correctly. It never quite showed you the ideal cross-section for a store, meaning your donor and your shopper rarely cross over. It really is not a high crossover rate.
So you want to be at the apex of where you have a high donation potential, especially quality donations, and then an area where the consumer is actually going to use Goodwill as a shopping experience. So Placer.io was actually with the data they pull, mean, they pull it from everywhere, including cell phone companies, how to find that.
And what was most interesting about it over the course of time, especially coming out of COVID during that time, is the dynamics and the customer demographic has dramatically changed from a woman in her mid 40s to 50s looking for that great treasure to now which, know, Gen Zs and millennials that are looking to upcycle. Influencers, you know, people that are very, very attached to the sustainability and circular retail piece of the business. So now when we look at locations, the different AI platforms that we now have available to us will actually help us identify those neighborhoods where we are meeting the needs of that specific demographic.
As a result, have you closed stores and then opened new ones? And then how does that impact e-com?
We have closed some stores and we have opened new ones. Our newest ones were in Ledgewood, New Jersey, Larchmont, New York, and Woodbridge, New Jersey. They're all cycling on their first year, so we're just finally getting our head wrapped around what the donors are look like. So heaviest donations are coming out of Woodbridge, but it hasn't crossed over to selling yet. There's some marketing that has to happen for that location based on where it is.
Ledgewood has been a nice balance because we have a store about 10 miles away in Rockaway. So we've seen no impact on our Rockaway business, but some transitional impact and great donations within Ledgewood. And Larchmont's the most interesting because Larchmont's one of the highest household income zip codes in the country. So the donations we're getting are significantly higher quality. Not getting enough yet, but it's been building nicely.
And now we're finally beginning to see the transitional customer who actually comes from closer towards Eastchester and New Rochelle actually cycle into that store so nice uptick and i think these programs that were beginning to use are going to help us dramatically now e-commerce it's a little bit different
Are you selling items that are available in the store as some retailers do? Are you segmenting those off? Maybe tell us a little bit more about how items that are kind of available, how did those come to the e-commerce side of things?
I'll take you through the path to purchase an e-com. So when someone donates something to one of our stores, our production team sorts through every donation. They donate to quality. What can we sell in a store versus what we can sell in a store? Meaning quality-wise, tears, rips, odors, pilling, broken zippers. If they cannot sell in the store, it goes into a separate cage that gets sent back to our warehouse, which then will go through our outlet eventually through salvage and salvage actually get sold by the pound through bales.
Once they determine that it can be sold in store, then at that point, you know, we've provided training to every store, including a brand list of items that we believe we can sell at a higher retail at e-comm than they can in the store. The average price of, give an example, the average price of a garment in a store, it's about $7. Tops are about $5.99, in Citi they're $7.99.
So we've determined that based on these brands, we can drive a higher average unit retail through e-comm. So they then will collect that, you know, it goes out a little bit under a table at the end of the day, it goes back to their e-comm area and daily they manifest the items and send them to me in totes in e-comm where we then just second quality check them, make sure they are the value because sometimes they can be considered low value, but if not, then we QC it, manifest it, list it and put it up for sale.
Does the store get credit or how does that kind of impact the store's numbers?
So each store does get credit to their sales line for the items that they send us. So literally every sale that generates from that store's manifest goes back into that store's e-comm line. So if you look at one of the financial reports, you'll see total sales, store sales, e-comm sales. So they have a better understanding. And then it also shows the average unit retail that the item might sell at. And we show it two different ways, both organic retail and then retail with shipping and handling.
And then, can you walk us through the supply chain so we understand how it leaves the store and gets to the e-comm platform? What happens from there?
Let me start with, we listed online in segments. So there's seven days selling, that's your first attempt. We go up to five attempts. So the first attempt, we list it. Most items are auction-based. Occasionally we'll do a buy it now, but auction-based and this is on the ShopGoodwill platform. If a consumer purchases it, once they make the purchase, they confirm the purchase. At that point, we pull it. We have a team that actually pulls the item and gets it ready for shipping. We don't ship out until the sale is complete.
Now have a 10-day window to pay for the item. So we pull it in, obviously we get it ready to go so nobody else can purchase it. And then once it's paid for, we ship it out via FedEx directly to the consumer within 72 hours, unless there's a request for an overnight.
Do you ship internationally or just domestically?
Right now, domestically, I'm working right now with FedEx on increasing our bandwidth to Canada. And I am trying to figure out with Shop Goodwill and Goodwill International, how can we effectively ship internationally? Because I do think there's a very, very unique opportunity there that we are not taking advantage of.
It certainly increases your catchment, if you will, and then also the price that you're getting, Obviously, more people, the better. So as you think about longer term, right, everyone's now looking at 2030, how do you see e-comm evolving either in terms of the dollars, the merchandise, the consumer? How do you see that moving forward?
In general, e-comm is the biggest growth engine. E-comm in thrift, it's far outpacing general overall e-comm sales. So for us specifically, we picked up 25 % over last year. And I think that is primarily due to our ability to use artificial intelligence to increase our linear efficiency.
And when I say linear efficiency, I've now with the addition of the different AI platforms, I set up my production team, and I hate to use the word kaizen, the old Japanese philosophy of efficiency, but what we do, it's really linear. So when the product gets here, it starts almost an assembly line from QC to listing to shelving to shipping. So where AI came into play and what's made such a huge difference, especially this past year, and as I said, we're definitely using platforms.
Hammock is one, and then they have a subsidiary called Infinity AI, which list at less expensive price, but you do have to do a little bit of your own checks and balances on their listing. But most recently, I built in my own listing platform through ChadGPT Pro. So Hammock is $1.85 per listing. Infinity is 70 cents per listing. ChadGTP Pro is $250 a month, unlimited. So what we did is internally we went in and we took all the necessary data we need to create a listing and built it in and what it had done for us, just like the other platforms.
It scours the internet for every possible place where this item has sold. So all we have to do is take a picture of the label, front and back of the garment, for example. We feed it in. It looks at Amazon and Poshmark and eBay and Depop. If it's appropriate, it goes directly right to their site. But anywhere this item might have sold, it pulls it and creates the ideal description in eight seconds.
And by the way, it generally would take us from the list or getting it to then getting it photographed and listed, five minutes. Now it takes us under a minute. So it's increased our efficiency so dramatically that we used to have six or 7,000 items available for sale at any given point. Now we're up to 14,000 items available to sell at any given point. Wow. And we're still pushing the boundaries on what more can we do.
That's incredible and maybe just for the audience, would you consider yourself to have a technical background or what was the moment where you're like, aha, I can go build this myself because I will tell you, we have very large retailers who are facing this exact issue. And so one, you start to think about, okay, I now built a technology that I can retail as a service, I can sell to others. Or two, you can also help educate others in terms of how to do this.
Well, interesting. So back in like, I'm go back to 2005 at Bloomingdale's. was part of the team that helped build out Bloomingdale's.com. I worked with the men's team. And, you know, originally it was, we can do this better. was all based on buy online, pick up and store. It really was. Because we, at that time there was, they actually had two separate buying teams, one for stores and retail and one for e-comm. Over the course of, you know, four or five years, they combined it because there was no need to do both.
Now it was just kind of, you know, a waste of payroll. So as those things emerged, even though I didn't have a role in e-comm any longer, I was very, very active in how a buy online pickup at store would impact our be connected consumer service component to it. So eventually when I left, I spoke to the team that was running e-comm and said, you guys are missing out on an opportunity.
And this was in, know, early on in, you know, artificial intelligence, but just based on efficiency, there were things that they were doing that were so archaic and so manual. And there was no listen because, What do I know? You're part of the stores team. So I did embrace selling e-comm as a platform, especially for stores that might have been struggling with transaction count or consumer base. I would pivot and say, okay, listen, we're not doing the business of store, but we can do it here. So we were making sure we were still going to make our budgets and my teams are earning their incentives by using e-comm differently.
And then when change of leadership and they asked me to take this on, first thing we did is reorganize, expand the footprint, create some methodology behind how we're going to expedite creating listings, the QC process, even the store manifesting process, which is what I'm working on right now actually, which will be our newest thing.
So let me tell you about that. It's kind of fun. So I've been challenged from my CEO, Katie, how can I reduce the friction in the retail stores in getting e-comm to us? So as I explained earlier, they go through the process, they identify the e-comm, it goes into a different area. Each day the store manager, whoever they have designated, has to go through the item, manually input information into an iPad or directly into the system, create a manifest, put it into a bin, seal it and send it.
What I'm currently working on right now, and this is with ChatGPT Pro at the moment, can I load it up to a device, an iPhone or the device doesn't matter, and in the store, once they get it, take the three pictures, run it through the AI, it'll create a suspended listing. Then they don't have to do any manual entries at this point, because it'll take, once again, under a minute to take the three pictures and take actually less than that if they're quicker. Run it through that, it'll create a suspended listing. Then they just pack it up and send it to me. When it gets here, we just pop up the manifest, the listings pop up, we just double quality control check it, and then hit another key and the listing's generated.
So what it'll do is the stores will save anywhere from about four minutes per item and that four minutes of labor use or time for a manager or whatever staff is currently doing it. So it'll use their friction. Then when it gets here, it'll actually expedite my process as well. I spoke to as many of the other Goodwills. Some of them actually, they do listing in store and that's a payroll drain. Some of them operate at 10, 12, 15 % margin. I operate at 35.
So as I look at this, I'm trying to figure out, how do we reduce friction in stores by giving them some of their labor time back, reduce my labor time here by doing that, you I can actually look at the staffing differently and drive higher profitability. So it's kind of that little delicate balance of easing the process across the board for everybody.
What platform are you selling on?
The selling platform is ShopGoodwill and that's administered by Orange County, California Goodwill. The listing platform is currently Upright Labs, part of Cordance. So they're two kind of separate things. Now ShopGoodwill is currently working on their own listing platform that they just rolled out, which is being piloted by a couple of Goodwills. If all goes well, it'll be available to us in October or November. Then we have to make a decision based on its functionality. Do we just do everything internal through ShopGoodwill and not through Upright Labs?
So if it's flawless, they're built in AI technology, which is kind of part and parcel to something I've been working on with them as well. Essentially what it'll do, it'll cost us 15 cents less per listing and 1% less per sales. So ShopGoodwill currently charges 45 cents per listing. It'll go down to 30, and you'll use AI, so it'll expedite the process. Upright Labs currently charges the 1.75% of sales. Completed sales, which includes shipping and handling. ShopGoodwill will only charge us 0.75 % on the same. So for me, it rolls up to about $125,000 more in profit on $4.8 billion in sales.
That's considerable. And then is ShopGoodwill a custom built platform or is it custom built?
Back in, it was like 1998. I'll throw this out there, we, you know, we had temporarily began to transition from Shop Goodwill to Goodwill Finds, which was an alternative platform developed by four or five Goodwills who, I guess from a theory standpoint, didn't agree with how Shop Goodwill did business. So they opened their own. They built it out from in 2022. We made a significant investment as members. Unfortunately, they did shut down at the end of March, 2025.
The finances weren't there, the sales weren't there, the profitability wasn't there, and they had some internal issues with NeatoScan. NeatoScan was the alternative to Upright Labs. They eventually got absorbed both by Corden's and there was some very bad business disruption, a corruption of the file that cost them about between three and four months worth of business for a bunch of Goodwills.
Now, so long story short, Goodwill finds did not survive. So although I was very careful, even though I was constantly pushed on, let's transition, let's transition. said, I don't think that's, let me just build it up accordingly. Let's take a slow path to it. Let's make sure it's viable before we go bolts and wall on it. And thank God I didn't, because when the time came, I only had a migrate 2000 listings. And to give you an example, Goodwill Los Angeles was 100% there. There were $10 million Goodwill. They had a migrate 20,000 listings. by the way, they just went, they went to all 100 % eBay. They're not even on Shop Goodwill. It was really an interesting process.
They moved from Shop Goodwill to eBay?
They went from Shop Goodwill to Goodwill Finds from Goodwill Finds to eBay. They may have a handful of items that they may migrate over to Shop Goodwill, but no, they're on eBay.
The interesting thing from what I know in the tech world, right, is that there are some of these platforms for not-for-profits that offer much better, let's just say, arrangements and also not just the tech platform, but also assistance. And so that was always kind of in the back of my mind that at least a lot of the tech companies talk about, you know, how easy these platforms are, how much they want to support the not-for-profits, but maybe what we hear and what's actual is two different things.
But you know what's interesting? I'm about to start listing on eBay myself. It'll be very specific items, very specific categories based on the information we have where we can drive higher AUPs. The reason why everyone goes to eBay is visits, site visits. It's purely that and conversion. If you looked at the site visits on Shop Goodwill versus Goodwill Finds, that was another piece of the problem. You just weren't getting the hits that you needed, the traffic through it to drive revenue.
So that's where eBay comes in. I don't have an interest in Amazon, although I'm about to launch book selling again here. You know, and that'll be through Neato Scans app, which is built into Upright, which will be updated into Upright at some point. It's a simple scan. And then the screen will flag, you know, red or green, green meaning value, sell it in e-com, red, sell it in stores or salvage.
So then the next piece that I'm going to do, so that little piece of technology is really easy. There's a few people out there, Cash Monkey's one, but they're very expensive in machinery because they have, you know, the books order. That kind of does it all for you, but it's a hundred thousand dollar machine.
If I go through, you know, Neato scan, it's essentially 1% of sales up to $10,000 and then 1.75 % sales, anything above it. And it's just very, very easy to do.
There was a technology that I know Amazon was working with and same thing, it was just kind of computer vision and they were using a lot in returns. So at a certain point they've already accepted the return, but now is it still in its original package? Has it been worn? Right. What's the next step for this item? Right. Can it just go back into inventory? Does this item need to go to, to Goodwill or does it need to go to salvage? And so it's really interesting that even these large platforms are trying to solve the exact same problems.
This is very interesting. So Amazon returns. I will be selling on Amazon books only because 85% of the book sales will go through Amazon. Get your highest AUP there. The other two platforms are eBay and Goodwill Books, but you actually get a lower average unit retail. So we'll be best suited using Amazon to that. Now with Amazon, currently I have a nice relationship with them and they are sending me pallets of returns as donations. So I'm currently sitting on 52 pallets and most of that stuff I'll be listing on eBay. And it's all you know we go through every item and most of its new just returned they don't resell it
That's such an interesting, I mean, if you start to think about going back to this donors per however you measure it, right? It is interesting to think about other donors. And the book thing is interesting because I buy a ton of books and I'm price sensitive, right? And it is interesting in terms of where I usually end up purchasing them, but it is usually a previously loved book. And like, as you were talking about, I'm like, and it is usually on Amazon. And you you just go back to the eyeballs question and it's a significant one.
Back to the return question. So when we get a return from something we sell, it's important to understand and I'm sure every platform does have this data and uses it. Reason for return. Now for us, it's very critical to understand it because generally speaking, it's item not as described, which means it might be a training opportunity for my team. Even though we're using AI, did we scan the listing? Do we make sure it's correct?
And what's interesting is with infinity, you do have to check it because it'll see a jacket, but it may not distinguish if it's male or female. And it may not get the color right. So you do have to do some kind of checks and balances on that.
So I'm building this thing with chat GPT that we'll be rolling out actually tomorrow, the first day of the new listing platform. know, we've tested it. It's phenomenal. Doesn't require me to do anything. It pulls the data so nicely, but it's understanding, you know, why is the return? So there's a training opportunity, number one, sometimes every now and again, my QC team misses a quality piece of it.
You know, might be a broken zipper or there's a missing button. And at that point, if the customer does contact us, we'll either discount the item for them to keep it or refund the handling fee if they want to keep the item. Occasionally, they just want to send it back because it's not what they wanted or not what they thought. But to give you an idea, our return rate is 0.26%.
Wow.
0.26%.
People would like, that's unheard of. I mean, that's truly amazing. I think you said something very important, which was this idea that, okay, if the zipper's broken, right, I in my mind are thinking about, you okay, can I repair it? How much would it cost if I really like love the item? And I think going back to Gen Z and their really, their passion for Goodwill is that we've seen this in other markets and we always joke, it's like, I want to be unique just like you. But this idea that everything that they buy there is truly unique, right? There is only one of them. And so this idea around, okay, I love it, but maybe I need to repair the zipper. And so can you walk me through the discount to keep the item? How does that work? And is that manual or is that automatic?
When they're communicating with us, if they're not clear on why they want to return it, if not item damage, through communication, I'll ask them, what's the damage? And I'll say, you know, it's a broken zipper. A broken zipper is seven to $10 at most dry cleaners at this point, you so based on where you're at. So we'll offer them either a percent off that equals the $10. Sometimes we'll offer a free handling, which is, you know, that's $5 is the handling fee, we'll $4.79. Or we'll just give them a flat rate off. We just do it systemically ourselves.
It just comes right out of my sales line. Very, very, very easy for us to do. And what's interesting is, and this is really kind of cool, Gen Z's don't do much with the return communication whatsoever. It's more my Gen X and Baby Boomers who are a little bit more concerned on those things than the younger ones. Because a lot of what they do is upcycling. They don't really care if the zipper's damaged. So it's kind of interesting when you get to know who the consumer is and the profile that they fit.
So interesting and how many images you typically have on a listing?
Minimum of three based on the item. know, if it's a very simplistic, a t-shirt, let's say if it's a graphic tee, it'll be the label, it'll be the front, it'll be the back. And if it has anything on the sleeves, we'll include the sleeves. On a more expensive garment like a Burberry jacket, we'll make sure it's labeled front, back, every detail, including the laces, the tips of the laces. On the inside of the jacket, if there's any detail different within the internal sleeve, you we can go up to eight photos if necessary. So an item that's going in a higher retail, we'll do additional photos so the consumer can feel comfortable that it's not ripped or stained within the sleeve or anything to that nature.
As you look ahead, what are you exploring as you think about additional opportunities and what are some of the challenges you think you might face?
Next thing we're looking at is more process-based at the moment. You know, I'm talking to many of the other Goodwills, and by the way, other digital retailers. Photography. Do we just have a team that photographs every item? You know, one person, they'll just photograph two, 300 items a day, and it goes directly to a partner lister, who then just just transfers it over, and all they have to do is drop in the listing, click list it, check it, back it, and move it on.
So from a process standpoint, which will be more efficient and help us generate more items to have online on any given day. So we have tested it. So far the tests have proved that our current process is the most efficient and the most accurate. It gives us the best quality check, the two components with the Lister doing the photography, then a photographer and a Lister. So right now we've gotten in the two tests we've done, better results on our existing platform.
It seems like you have a culture of testing and waiting, and ultimately it's led to better decisions. Can you maybe just talk about that culturally or do we owe some of that to Michael Gould?
Well, you know, it's interesting. So I will say Michael Gould was the ultimate in visionaries in my retail career. And what made Michael special was his loyalty to people. So he was a visionary and he took lots of risks and chances. And I'll give you the best story. 2008, when the market crashed, it was bad. Mike Gould, you know, whether you were, you know, did it online or he called you into the theater across the street from Bloomingdale 59th Street on Third Avenue. We all sat there and he got up on stage. said, listen, we didn't get stupid overnight. We've been very good at what we do. There's economic things going on that have clearly impacted us. So yeah, there'll be some cuts. There has to be, but we need to stay the course. Once again, we didn't get stupid overnight. Let's not try to boil the ocean.
I love that phrase. We can't do everything at once. stay tried and true to what we've done and what we've always done. This is cyclical. He's been around a long time. He's seen it before. It'll come back. We just need to be prepared and on target, when it comes back, we're ahead of the curve. So that's in 2008, 2009. He knew enough then. And as we were building, know, leveraging the e-comm piece of the business, Mike's influence on fine processes of efficiency that help you stay true to your people, true to what you do every day. If you do those things, I guarantee you will have success.
And frankly, I've taken that and, you know, listen, I'm not afraid to be innovative here. I push the limits on innovation and technology. Not always is it well received. If you've been part of what we do, we move remarkably slow. We create barriers and roadblocks, even though our mission is we eliminate roadblocks to independence to work. Internally, we don't take chances as quick as we probably should.
So I do lots of little 90-day tests internally with things that I could build out. And I say, OK, here's the data. Here's what we're going to do. Fortunately, I do get to do what I want, but we're moving too slow. But that's about to change. We're having some change of leadership internally and that's going to actually open the doors for me to actually put my innovation into effect quicker.
I think what people can learn from you is this idea around the 90-day test. Because oftentimes, as we're doing consulting with retailers big and small, domestic and international, they have an idea and they want to move forward with it, and it's going to cost beaucoup bucks. First of all, I'm a frugal person personally and professionally, and so I don't like to spend other people's money either. And I do think that we're very focused on POCs.
I would say a lot of these technology solutions, right? They know that's the holy grail, right? Get in and do a POC and look at the data and then move forward. So actually a question there, one, do you work with many startups for that? And if so, what's the experience?
Great question. So Deborah, here's what I would share with you and anybody that you consult with, retailers especially. There is not one, whether it's a startup or an existing, well, second with AI, that doesn't and won't work with you on an internal pilot program specific to your needs, whether it's 90 days or six months, whatever the case may be. They'll tailor it and the expense, they'll tailor it because they want your business. There's a lot of options out there right now.
So what I've learned, so many different platforms, we're trialing it. We don't know what it's going to be. And if it works, we're signing up, we're getting together, we're getting in bed on this one. But if it doesn't, they can come back with maybe a potential solution. So I would encourage anybody who's working in the technology piece and the innovation piece with their company and retailers, ask. Ask. Not one has said no to a 90-day test.
I'll give you, Hammock is a great example. I say, we're going to run it for six months. And I'm not paying $1.85 per listing. We're going to start at 75 cents per listing. And then if it's good, we'll go to $1.45 and then we'll go to $1.85. No problem. Let's give it a shot. So you can set the parameters. of the most of them will figure out how to work with you. They want your business, especially the startups.
I think that that's great advice. we had our conference last Monday and that was really mainly retailers talking about what they've tried, what's worked, some cases what hasn't and kind of the path that they're on now. was then at, mean, last week was like the week of conferences in New York. And so I think I attended, off the top of my head, I can think of five different ones. And one that was the most interesting, which you just never know.
This is why, Michael, I think we share this, kind of leave the world open. I spoke at, it was called INN, so it was like AI and real estate, not an industry that typically moves very quickly, right? Because you're dealing with physical assets, just like you are. It goes back to exactly what you said earlier, and I wrote this down, is being very process driven, and this whole idea of like systems and processes. And so looking at the technology that is available.
How does that fit in with what you're doing right now? Does it help you level up or is it a completely new way of thinking? And if it's a completely new way of thinking, right? And it can also take out potentially three, four or five vendors you're working with right now. Once again, systems and processes, but going back to that always, and I think Michael Gould was very good about that. And you obviously learned that from him in terms of how you're approaching things. To me, we're at a really interesting, and I will say, I said this actually on stage, what I thought was gonna happen in 26, were almost a full year earlier. That I think, mean, think about the fact that you went on to ChatGPT Pro and built a whole technology that not only are using internally, but you could theoretically either sell to other goodwill or to other retailers, right? You've now figured out a way to increase the size of your pies so you can reinvest back into the business.
Learning from Mike Gould and all that, David Fisher. David Fisher was the GM of men's, probably my greatest mentor, I'll be honest with you. You know, it's still one of my dearest friends to this day, know, even in his retirement, living up in Connecticut. He was another one who was very, very innovative in men's and understanding and getting ahead of trends a year or two, sometimes three years early.
And by the way, the pushback on that was tremendous because, know, Bloomingdale's launched Ralph Lauren and we stopped by Ralph Lauren and they had giant shops. The simple fact of the matter is the consumer wasn't going in that direction anymore. We apply the same thing here now. ChatGPT Pro, we built it in, we're going to launch it tomorrow.
I'm on to three years from now at this point. I got to figure out what's next. And so the next thing, and once again, as I said, it's how am going to reduce friction in stores and friction here to expedite the process? The other thing we're looking at right now, and I'm trying to figure this one out because I haven't found the AI technology yet, is the space that I live in, I'm outgrowing.
So I'm going to be able to expand a little bit of space down into the warehouse, but I can go vertical. And I'm actually trying to figure out is there an AI company out there that I can feed square footage and airspace into that can maybe guide me in the best possible way to how to set this up. And I could do it manually, don't get me wrong, but you know, there's got to be information out there and I haven't found, I haven't found it yet.
I'm looking for it, but there's got to be something out there that I can, you know, deploy internally. It's going to help us once again increase my usable space primarily for shelving and shipping because right now I have carts on my selling floor because I don't have enough room to shelve everything so we have to number the carts. That slows me down a little bit. I don't like that. I hate being behind on shipping even by one item.
So that's kind of my next thing. If I'm going to grow this business 25% this year, take it from 4.3 million to 5.4 million, you're looking at at any given point, 7,000 to 8,000 more items available for sale. So as I'm building out these other things and creating our efficiencies, the back end piece of it's going to be a little bit of a struggle if I don't get ahead of it. I really have about six to eight months before I'm going to really feel the impact. So that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.
It's a very interesting problem to solve. And all of you listening, please reach out to Michael because he's, as you can tell, a real innovator. And I still remember when we met and you never know how fast people's wheels are turning, but I'll tell you, Michael's always ahead. And I think that you take what also looks to many people to be the ordinary, the boring, and you make it so interesting, not only in terms of how you think about it, but also the opportunities.
Michael, you're really one in a million. I mean, you're really talking about supply chain end to end. And now you're talking about kind of the space aspect of it and also even just kind of how the product is moving through the building. I mean, those are really complex pieces that I'm sure someone out there has figured out and the ability to take down your costs, improve your throughput and your margins and to be able to hire more people, which is really kind of what Goodwill is all about.
I mean, it's really an amazing opportunity to not only work with you, know you, but also for all of you who are listening to really make a huge impact. And I guarantee you, Michael will try it and he will get back to all of you because that's who he is. So thank you. are out of time. This was unbelievable. Thank you so much for joining us.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I look forward to next conference.
Me too. Thank you. Bye. Bye.
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