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Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley Scales E-Commerce with pearldive

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At Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley, the opportunity for e-commerce success was already there.

Across 44 stores, valuable donated goods were moving through the operation every day. The challenge was making sure the right items were identified, routed to e-commerce, and listed quickly enough to capture their full value.

Before pearldive, that process depended heavily on store-level knowledge and manual research. Some stores knew exactly what to send online. Others were less confident. Once items reached e-commerce, team members still had to identify, research, title, describe, and list each item one at a time.

That created a ceiling on growth. 

Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley turned to pearldive to help teams make better decisions early in the process, so they could move items through e-commerce faster. With pearldive Ama Sorter, store teams could confidently identify which items should go online and which should remain in the retail store. With pearldive Auto-Lister, the e-commerce team could turn photos into complete listings with far less manual research and writing.

The result was a more consistent process from store to e-commerce, higher listing productivity, and stronger revenue growth for the mission. 

Manual Workflows Made E-Commerce Hard to Scale

Like many secondhand operations, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley had the donated goods, but the challenge was moving the right items through the right channel fast enough to capture their full value. 

Before pearldive, e-commerce growth depended on two manual processes happening well across the organization.

First, store teams had to know which items should be sent to e-commerce instead of sold on the retail floor. That decision often depended on employee experience, category knowledge, and comfort level with online sales.

Once those items reached the e-commerce team, staff had to research each item, write the title and description, choose the right category, add item details, and prepare the listing for sale. 

This process created several challenges:

Store-level participation varied.

Some stores had strong e-commerce participation. Others sent very little. According to Sam Jones, Director of Retail at Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley, online donated goods revenue varied widely by location, ranging from less than 1% to as much as 10%. The goal was to make e-commerce participation more consistent across all stores and move the organization closer to a 10% online DGR target.

Item selection depended on individual knowledge.
Store teams were often expected to recognize valuable items across categories like collectibles, instruments, apparel, jewelry, media, and more. When the right person was not available, good items could be missed, priced too low, or left on the sales floor instead of being routed online.
Listing was a production bottleneck.
Even after items made it to e-commerce, manual listing limited throughput. Each item had to be identified, researched, described, and listed. Before pearldive Auto-Lister, even experienced e-commerce team members were typically completing about 30 listings per day.
To support e-commerce growth, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley needed a consistent way to identify online-worthy items at the store level and a faster way to turn those items into quality listings once they reached e-commerce.
The team began by piloting pearldive Ama Sorter in 12–13 stores for several months. The results gave leadership the confidence to expand the tool across the full retail network. At the same time, pearldive Auto-Lister helped the e-commerce team increase listing productivity and support higher online sales volume.
Together, the pearldive tools helped Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley build a more scalable e-commerce operation across 44 stores.

“It’s just really put us in hyperdrive for growth. We know that it just generates more out of the same donated goods that we’ve been dealing with.”

— Sam Jones, Director of Retail, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley

pearldive: Built for the Realities of Thrift E-Commerce

Thrift e-commerce is unlike traditional retail because there are no predictable SKUs. No consistent product catalog. No steady stream of identical inventory. Every donated item has to be evaluated on its own:

  • What is it?
  • What is it worth?
  • Should it stay in the store
  • Does it have stronger potential online?

That level of decision-making is difficult to scale across dozens of stores and constantly changing teams. pearldive was built for this challenge. For Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley, two tools worked together to support different parts of the e-commerce workflow:

  • pearldive Ama Sorter helped store teams decide which donated items should be sent to e-commerce and which should stay on the retail floor.
  • pearldive Auto-Lister helped the e-commerce team create museum-quality listings faster once those items arrived for online sale.

pearldive Ama Sorter helped store teams decide which donated items should be sent to e-commerce and which should stay on the retail floor.

pearldive Auto-Lister helped the e-commerce team create museum-quality listings faster once those items arrived for online sale.

Using Ama Sorter, store employees can take a photo of an item on a mobile device. pearldive identifies the item, checks current market information, and recommends whether it should be routed to e-commerce or sold in-store. If the item is a good fit for online sale, the team can add it to a digital manifest right from the tool.

That changed the role of the store team. They no longer had to rely only on memory, training, or one person’s category expertise. They had guidance at the exact moment they needed to make a decision. 

“You’ve got an expert in every back room now that you don’t have to retrain every couple weeks.”

— Sam Jones, on adding pearldive to the intake process

Once items reached e-commerce, Auto-Lister supported the next stage of the workflow.
Before pearldive, team members photographed each item, researched it, wrote the title and description, selected the right category, added item details, and prepared the listing for sale. The process took time, and the quality of each listing often depended on the experience of the person writing it.
With pearldive Auto-Lister, team members focus on capturing strong photos. From there, pearldive helps identify the item and create a complete listing with a search-friendly title, detailed description, category information, condition notes, and other relevant item details. The team can then review the listing and move it forward quickly and efficiently.
This removed much of the manual research and writing that had slowed production.
Before pearldive, e-commerce team members were typically listing about 30 items per day. After adding Auto-Lister, the daily goal increased to around 80 items per person, with top performers clearing 100 or more.

The result was not just more listings. It was a faster, more consistent process that helped the team publish more items with stronger product information.

“By adopting pearldive, it eliminated the need to sit down and create listings. So, production essentially doubled immediately.”

— Matt Dillon, Senior E-Commerce Manager, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley

The Rollout: 31 Stores in 1 Day

After a successful pilot, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley expanded pearldive Ama Sorter across its full store network.
The rollout was fast. Sam Jones sent store teams a simple email with instructions and screenshots. That was enough to launch pearldive in 31 additional stores in one day.
The response was immediate and favorable.
One store manager who had not been sending much to e-commerce quickly became one of the strongest examples. Within two days of using pearldive, she was filling a gaylord with items pulled from salvage, the sales floor, and other areas the team may have previously overlooked.

"I've gotten two phone calls since then, and they were all saying, 'This is amazing. It's a game changer. This is so great.’”

— Sam Jones, Director of Retail, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley

For Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley, that moment showed how quickly pearldive could change store behavior. It helped more stores understand what they had and contribute with confidence.

Supporting Growth by Scaling E-Commerce

By adding pearldive to their workflow, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley made e-commerce easier to scale across its store network.

At the store level, pearldive Ama Sorter gave employees a faster way to decide whether an item should go online or stay on the retail floor. At the e-commerce level, pearldive Auto-Lister helped the team turn photos into complete listings with less manual research and writing.

Together, the tools helped improve two major parts of the process: getting better items into the e-commerce pipeline and getting those items listed faster once they arrived.

Sorting baseball cards

The operational impact for Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley:

Consistent store participation.
Before pearldive, e-commerce contribution varied widely by location. Ama Sorter gave store teams a more reliable way to evaluate donated goods and confidently send online-worthy items to e-commerce.
Faster standardized listings.
Auto-Lister helped the e-commerce team create detailed, search-friendly listings in less time. This allowed listing output to rise from roughly 1,100–1,200 items per week to 1,700–1,900.
Less dependency on repeat training.
Instead of relying on every employee to recognize the value of every category, pearldive gave teams guidance at the point of decision. That made it easier for more stores to participate, even without an in-store product expert.

The result was a smoother process from store to e-commerce. Staff could spend more time on photography, processing, shipping, and quality control, and less time stuck in research and guesswork.

Stronger Revenue from the Same Donated Goods

pearldive helped the organization generate more revenue from the same stream of donated goods. As more items moved through the right channel, the increased listing volume led to an average of 72% more monthly revenue, which exceeded expectations. And peak revenue was almost double the previous monthly average. 

In total, the team also achieved 32% higher revenue in Q1 2026 compared to Q1 2025.

INSTANT ROI

The $9.99 Saxophone That Sold for $7,000

A store manager found a saxophone on the sales floor tagged at $9.99. A quick photo and pearldive identified it as a valuable 1959 saxophone that eventually sold for $7,000 online!
For thrift organizations, this highlights the need for consistent item identification processes. Otherwise, the store would have let $6,990 in valuable mission revenue go unclaimed. pearldive helps teams avoid mispricing or miscategorizing high-value items, ultimately getting more funds to support their mission.

More Mission Revenue, More Jobs

pearldive helped people do more valuable work instead of replace them.
As e-commerce volume increased, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley began planning for added capacity in areas like photography, inventory, processing, fulfillment, and shipping. The tools helped employees move faster, but the growth still required people to keep the operation moving.
pearldive also made turnover less disruptive. Store and e-commerce knowledge no longer had to live with only a few experienced employees. Teams had a tool that could support decision-making, reduce guesswork, and shorten the learning curve for new staff.

“There’s always that conversation about, ‘If AI and automation come in, that means less need for human labor.’ That’s not the case at all. We’re going to be adding people because each person can have so much more of an impact.”

— Sam Jones, Director of Retail, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley

Scaling E-Commerce to Support the Mission

For Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley, pearldive has helped stores participate more consistently. It helped e-commerce teams publish strong listings faster. It helped employees make better decisions with more confidence. And it helped the organization capture more value from the donated goods already coming through its doors.
With a clearer path toward its 10% online donated goods revenue goal, Goodwill Easterseals Miami Valley is using e-commerce growth to support the larger mission: creating more revenue, more opportunity, and more impact for the communities it serves.
To learn how pearldive can help your thrift organization scale e-commerce, schedule a demo today.

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