Credit to Michaela Manfull

Rachel Maryan, a Reno’s employee, hands Karen Golab a bag with her purchase over the counter. Maryan is one of Reno’s first employees at their new St. Charles location.

Nestled into the spot where Spirit Halloween appeared once a year is a new store, Reno’s Liquidation Outlet. In a time where prices are through the roof, Reno’s tries their best to keep prices down and make their items affordable for everyone, no matter their economic standing. With this in mind, the owners say it’s here to stay.

“Me and my wife [Linda] started Reno’s three and a half years ago, in Troy, Missouri,” Steve Brent, co-owner of Reno’s said. “We started at a little location. We bid our time until one of the bigger places became available in town. We jumped on it when we had the chance.”

It takes a lot of preparation throughout the year to get the stock up for the holiday season. While some of the shipments Reno’s purchases are holiday-specific, oftentimes they are just offered pallets with a variety of items and take whatever they’re sent. While Reno’s focuses on providing all necessary supplies to families, they’re also aware of the main wants and needs during the holiday season.

“When it comes to Christmas, there aren’t really any [products] to single out, except for toys,” Steve said. “Toys are just what all the moms are looking for the kids, you know, and that’s really what we get hit the hardest on. That’s just what we struggle with the most. We try to prepare before then, but this year it’s just been tough to find in the industry.”

Just knowing that toys are usually wanted doesn’t mean that it’s easy to tell in every individual year what the most important or trendy toy or brand is going to be.

“The cool thing about it is we never try to be the shopper, because I don’t know what you’re into,” Steve said. “I don’t know what you like, so I never try to put my aim on what somebody else was looking for. We’ve had the craziest items come through that I think, ‘oh my gosh, I’m going to be sitting on this forever’, and then I put it out on the floor and it’s gone.”

Their main goal is to keep prices around half of what someone would normally pay for these products at a big retail store.

“We’re not out there to become rich ourselves, but to give back to the economy where they can buy literally almost anything in our store that is brand new, pulled off the shelf, overstock, whatever, at 50% off the retail,” Linda Brent, co-owner of Reno’s said. “That’s a tremendous saving. You could always think of Reno’s as a Black Friday every day.”

Reno’s is a store for families to enjoy, connect with others and save money at, which is why Steve chose to name it Reno’s, the nickname given to him by friends and now used by his entire family.

“My wife, she’s probably sweeter than I am,” Steve said. “I’m a nice guy, but she’s amazing, and I think that’s part of our success, it’s being genuinely sincere to people.”

While Reno’s was planning to have two locations, one in Troy and one in St. Charles, they’re now working towards getting a new second location back out in the direction of Wentzville or Troy, to further their reach in the community. Moving locations was hard, but they were overwhelmed by the positive response they received from new and returning patrons alike after their first move.

“We made lots of good friends at our original location in Troy, and we’re making new ones here,” Linda said. “We’ve had a great response from everybody.”

Liquidation outlets receive supplies from a variety of ‘big box retailers’. Well-known brands and stores like Marvel, Hallmark, Macy’s, Target and Disney will sell their overstock items and products with box damage to liquidation outlets and resellers, like Reno’s.

“We really use a couple, two or three big box retailers that we stick to that are popular ones,” Steve said. “I can’t really say who, but shop here and you’ll probably know the brands.”

One thing that sets Reno’s apart from other liquidation outlets is that they stay away from online retailers – both from the buying and selling side of things. Where online sellers are able to avoid paying as many workers and paying rent for a storefront, they’re able to make much more in their online sales.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand the difference between us and online is, I could sell online too,” Steve said. “Everybody knows it’s just individual sellers on that big retailer. It’s basically people like us selling overstock and things like that, and that’s where I think the pricing comes in. You know, they’re charging $15 more than us to get the same product, but it’s just the same person like us that’s just selling online instead of selling to your store.”

Reno’s, which moved to St. Charles in early July this year, receives shipments at least once a week and sometimes up to three times in a week. According to Steve, it’s a lot of work to hunt down shipments, but it’s important to the Brents to get quality products for the customers.

“I want to make sure I’m getting a return [on my investment],” Steve said. “To make sure, instead of just dealing with somebody over the phone, I want to look in your eyes so I know what I’m dealing with. It’s just good business practice. Being frivolous and going online, which a lot of people do in our industry, means people get scammed and screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars.”