In the cavernous space of Ocean State Job Lot’s North Kingstown warehouse, Marc Perlman pulled over his golf cart. Amid a field of shrink-wrapped pallets, the co-founder and CEO turned towards a narrow metal staircase.
He grabbed the handrail. “Now, we are going to have some fun.”
Perlman’s million-square-foot distribution center, with its beeping forklifts, soaring stacks of rugs and whirring conveyor belts of bird seed, is, in a way, the beating heart of discount retailer Ocean State Job Lot. Each day, products from across the world enter the warehouse, are sorted and shipped out to Job Lot’s 177 stores.
Today, the discounter is well known among New Englanders. But the Ocean State staple is no longer a local secret. With locations in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, the company is expanding its footprint in the Mid-Atlantic.
It’s been a long road for Perlman. For nearly five decades, Ocean State Job Lot has eschewed glamor for deals, writing its own retail playbook. What began as a group of guys hawking goods at flea markets has become a budget empire, with more than $900 million in annual sales.
Perlman smiled.
“It’s pretty funny when you think we started with three guys with $500 (each).”
A cab driver-turned dealmaker
Perlman got into the bargain business out of sheer curiosity. He was a 20-something cab driver in 1970s New York City and often passed the city’s close-out stores in lower Manhattan. The mix of shoppers looking for deals fascinated him.
“You saw people that looked as though they needed to save money, and they're walking side by side with attorneys and Wall Street guys wearing a three-piece suit,” he said.
He realized that there was, in his words, “a subtle entertainment value,” to getting bargains.
He called his brother, Alan, who was unhappily working as an attorney at the time.
Perlman remembers the conversation well: “I said, ‘Would you like to go into business?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Would you like to know what type of business?’ (He) said, ‘No.’”
Perlman’s friend from college, Roy Dubs, also joined in. Each contributed $500. Six or seven times a week, the group rented a truck and bought merchandise at bankruptcy auctions. They stored their hauls in their parents’ basement and sold the goods at flea markets.
They bid on all types of things, Perlman remembered. Janitorial supplies, mops, brooms, tampons, toys, shoes with mislabeled sizes.
“It wasn’t complicated. Buy it, sell it for more than you paid for it, you’re moving in the right direction,” said Perlman.
A unique playbook
Today, Ocean State Job Lot carries a similarly eclectic assortment of goods. Perennial bestsellers include tarps, Bob’s Red Mill flours and grains, aluminum bakeware and pool chemicals.
Although the in-store inventory may seem random, the stock reflects multiple overlapping buying strategies, some dating back to Perlman’s flea market days.
“To start, you have to understand what is the business that we're in. We're in the business of creating value,” said Perlman. “We don't feel that we're challenged by the types of products that we're buying.”
Unlike most retailers, Job Lot’s business doesn’t prioritize selling any particular item or variety of items (Home Depot sells tools, Tiffany’s sells jewelry) or catering to a particular target audience (Chanel is luxurious, Walmart is for a budget-conscious shopper.)
Instead, Job Lot focuses on carrying goods that offer strong value for their price. The strategy has its advantages.
“If you're in the business of selling blankets and the prices of blankets go up, you have to pay the additional fee because you're in the business of selling blankets,” said Perlman.
“We're not obligated to buy anything…. when the price goes up, we could say, ‘No, thank you. We don't care.’ So we'll have less blankets and we'll have more pillows. It doesn't matter,” Perlman added.
Perlman says they focus on what they call “opportunistic buys,” like closeouts—products sold at heavily discounted prices by retailers, manufacturers, or wholesalers to clear inventory.
“Their buying team has done a really good job of keeping out there with the retailers and saying, if you have something extra… declaring bankruptcy or doing clearance sales… give us a call. And they're known for being fair negotiators,” said Doug Hales, a professor at the University of Rhode Island College of Business.
Marlene Bellini, Vice President of Buying at Job Lot, handles many of the company’s large deals. She recently purchased 982,000 pieces of women’s clothing.
She says she sees closeouts go in waves. For items like candles, she’ll wait out the price fluctuations.
“Everything goes in a cycle…. All of a sudden there will be a bunch of puzzles on closeout, for whatever reason. And then you’ll see none. And then you’ll see a whole bunch of puzzles,” she said, her hands tracing the fluctuations in the air.
However, this flexible approach comes with an important drawback: customers cannot always rely on the same inventory being there. Closeouts are here today, gone tomorrow.
“We trade continuity for value,” said Perlman.
For other products, Job Lot finds creative ways to keep prices low. Take aluminum bakeware: Instead of buying the packaged products typically sold in supermarkets, the company purchases unpackaged lasagna pans directly from commercial suppliers.
“You're gonna pay half price (for) the same pan from the same manufacturer because we're buying it in an alternative fashion,” said Perlman.
And rather than catering to a particular perceived audience, or trying to provide a selection, the buying team monitors how products do and expands on products that are selling well. Perlman often calls the shopping cart a customer’s “voting booth.”
For example: since tarps were profitable, Job Lot has expanded to selling them in multiple sizes, thicknesses, and colors. The popularity of Bob’s Red Mill flours led the retailer to carry the whole line in stores. Pool chemicals were a hit – now the store carries about 70 kinds, according to Bellini.
And the day they become unprofitable, they’ll change tack, Bellini added.
“If it's not right for us, you know, five years down the road, you just get out of it,” said Bellini.
A growing empire
The playbook hasn’t always been so clear. In the early days, there was much to learn.
“I don't wanna say we're stupid people, but we were ignorant as it related to retail. We had no idea what we were doing,” said Perlman.
In 1977, Marc Perlman, Alan Perlman and Roy Dubs made the leap from hawking goods at flea markets to opening their first brick-and-mortar store. The group couldn’t afford New York City rents, so they opened their first store in North Kingstown. Marc Perlman and Dubs were familiar with the area after attending the University of Rhode Island.
Looking back, Marc Perlman sees their early missteps clearly. The location of their first store, for example. They opened in a “busted up shopping center,” where a hardware store and supermarket had closed, Perlman said.
“We didn't know you're supposed to be in good shopping centers,” Perlman said.
Rules and regulations were new to the group too.
“We were operating for a year and a half without workers' comp. We had no idea what it was. A fellow came in offering, wanted a quote on our insurance policies, so we looked for our shoebox with the important papers, and he goes, "Where's your workers' comp policy?" And we said, "What's that?
In their first year in business, they made $87,000 in revenue and zero profit. Their second year, they paid themselves $100 per week.
“We were making less money than our cashiers, but we could see the excitement,” Perlman said.
Once the group began receiving bank financing, the business started taking off.
Over the next few decades, Ocean State Job Lot’s business grew larger—and more professional.
In the eighties, they bought their first warehouse at Quonset Point and saw sales exceed $25 million. In the nineties, they invested in technology to manage the growing empire, opened their 25th store, and surpassed $100 million in sales. In the 2000s, growth accelerated even more: 50 stores became 100, they launched online sales, and started a charitable foundation.
All of which helped propel Job Lot to the numbers we see today: 177 stores stretching from Maryland to Maine and more than $900 million in annual sales.
The in-store experience
Amid the growth, one thing has stayed the same: a commitment to savings. It’s apparent in Ocean State Job Lot’s stores, which are more utilitarian than glamorous.
The stores often open in former supermarkets and big box stores, making little effort to hide what was there before. That no-frills approach is part of the company’s commitment to keeping prices low, Lynn Hall, Director of Corporate Communications at Ocean State Job Lot, said.
“We are going to polish the concrete and make it clean, but we aren’t spending money to put a beautiful new floor down because then we’d have to raise our prices,” said Hall.
Once open, thriftiness remains a priority, Lynn Hall explained. Merchandise is often displayed in the box it ships in. Unlike supermarkets, employees are not directed to regularly roam aisles, pushing merchandise to the front of a shelf to create the illusion of fullness.
“He is responsible for feeding 6,000 people that work for him. He wants to pass on savings to customers,” said Lynn Hall.
Staying true to themselves has been a winning strategy, said Doug Hales, a professor at the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business.
“They know their market and they try to stay in their lane,” he said.
He compared Job Lot’s success to its competitor Big Lots, which dominates the southeastern U.S. Big Lots began stocking higher-priced, higher-margin items, putting it in competition with retailers like Walmart and Target, Hales said.
The strategy cost them, Hales explained. The retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and was saved from permanent closure by retail company Variety Wholesalers last year.
Big Lots’ loss has been Job Lot’s gain: Job Lot has opened 26 locations in closed Big Lots since 2025, according to a company press release.
‘It was a steal’
On the second level of Job Lot’s warehouse, Perlman showed off the distribution center’s material handling system. Miles of conveyor belts ferried goods across the warehouse to this point, where red lasers scanned them. Mechanized orange “shoes” sorted and pushed boxes down chutes.
The system serves an essential function in the warehouse. But perhaps its most impressive feature is its price. In classic Job Lot fashion, the company got its system on closeout, from a Target warehouse closing in Canada. Perlman estimates they saved the company $25 million.
“When we were all done, it was a steal,” he said proudly, spreading his arms wide.
It’s an attitude he and his customers share.
“They like a bargain, and so our job is to provide it,” he said. “And when we don't provide that value, the customer will tell us because we'll be going out of business. But so far, so good.”
