Thrift Store Chronicles: Park Avenue Thrift on Alpharetta Street

The first thing you’ll notice about Park Avenue is that it’s extremely well-lit, clean store.  Most thrift stores feel cramped and slightly dirty, often with bad lighting and an accompanying stale smell.  Not Park Avenue!  It’s setup like a nice department store, with wide aisles and bright florescent lighting. 

Located on Alpharetta Street in the Historic Roswell Antique Market shopping center, Park Avenue’s main focus is clothing—lots and lots and lots of clothing.  All of the racks are organized by type and color which makes locating specific items fairly easy.  When I say organized, I mean truly organized. For example, women’s shirts are organized by sleeve length, color, and casual or dressy.  This means if you know exactly what you are looking for, you can memorize the location of that type of item and go right to it. You will still, however, have to sort through each piece to find your size.

Prices are easy to spot as well. Each item has a colored price tag stapled to it. A nice touch is that the price tag also includes size information, so you don’t have to worry about locating the size tag to determine if an item is the size you need.

Like most thrift stores, Park Avenue has a 50 percent off color of the day.  Signs are hung on the cash register station as you enter the store, but they are also hung on the end-cap of each aisle.  An added bonus, at least, on the day I went in, is that if you purchase an item, your receipt becomes a coupon to receive 30 percent of your total purchase the next day.  It’s a great idea to get repeat business and it can definitely save you money, since you can scope out several items today, purchase just one, and come back tomorrow to save 30 percent.  (Obviously, if it’s something you can’t do without, don’t risk losing it.)

Prices are extremely reasonable. Starting prices were consistently $3.95 in all the areas I checked and the highest price I saw was $9.99 for a brand new silk blouse from Ann Taylor (with the price tag still hanging on it). All of the merchandise is in good to excellent condition and you’ll find many brand names.  A few that I spotted were The Limited, Express, Ann Taylor, Guess, Banana Republic, Inc International, and Abercrombie & Fitch. 

All sales are final but there are three fitting rooms, so be sure to use them before purchasing something that you have any doubts about.  The fitting rooms, unfortunately, are the only negative about this store, in my opinion.  You can only try on four items at a time and there are no nails or seating inside on which to store the clothing you’re wearing. 

Still, overall this is an excellent place to replenish your wardrobe on a tight budget and it will definitely be part of my thrifting rotation.