This story is part of Retail TouchPoints’ ongoing “Small Business, Big Ideas” series, focusing on smaller retail brands that have found big success and have even bigger ambitions.
Back in 1960, before terms like “off-price” and “closeout” were commonplace, decorated World War II veteran Norman Nardick was working for a catalog company offloading its out-of-season merchandise. As he drove around the streets of Chicago looking for local retailers interested in steeply discounted Christmas tree bulbs and the like, he had his own lightbulb moment — perhaps there was a larger market for excess and out-of-season inventory. As we all now know, Norman was at the cusp of a whole new category of retail, one now dominated by companies such as Dollar Tree and TJ Maxx.
Norman’s company, The Bazaar Inc., specializes in wholesale and, 65 years since its inception, now supplies many of those big-name retailers, as well as smaller regional chains, with name-brand off-price and closeout inventory. Today, the company is led by Norman’s grandson, Bradley Nardick, who took over the business from his father Rob Nardick five years ago. What began with a 1,500-square-foot warehouse now encompasses 400,000 square feet of ever-changing products that are shipped around the country, a bigger operation than Norman probably could ever have imagined.
Taking the Mantle in the Midst of an Industry Inflection Point
But Bradley Nardick has taken the reins at a moment when the off-price segment is experiencing unprecedented challenges. This has been highlighted by a host of high-profile bankruptcies among some of the biggest players in the space — Big Lots, Bargain Hunt, 99 Cents Only, Christmas Tree Shops — all of which cited persistent economic headwinds since the COVID pandemic as the reason for their demise. Even The Bazaar has felt the pressure; last year, the company closed its own small chain of consumer-facing closeout stores, Bargains in a Box, in one of Bradley’s biggest moves since becoming CEO.
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“Being the third generation is tough,” Bradley said. “It’s a lot of pressure to continue a thing that’s great, and it took me a while to trust myself enough to even go against the grain. I mean, most people just called me ‘Rob’s son’ for like my first 10 years at the company. But it’s very hard to be a great wholesaler and a great retailer at the same time; we don’t have a huge corporate management structure here. So I made the decision to close the stores, mainly because I wanted to focus the company in on what the business has been built on, which is helping independent retailers remain relevant with their customers, bringing them great deals so that their customers will want to keep coming to them versus Walmart or Amazon.”
That focus is becoming even clearer with Bradley’s next big endeavor, an ecommerce offering, something the company has never done before. “We have a long history of supplying the elite off-price companies with great deals that make their customers keep coming back,” he said. “We built the website because, as I looked through our customer data and at the local market here in Chicago, I realized there are tens of thousands of independent off-price retailers in this country, and there’s no company focused on making sure that they have great supply.”
Not only that, but Bradley is taking a new angle on off-price ecommerce with the site, leaning into what has historically been a challenge (unpredictable supply and quantities) and turning it into an advantage with a limited release, drop-style vibe inspired by streetwear brands like Kith.
The Small Business Challenge: Continually Coming up with ‘Wow!’ Deals
The realization of how important this was for smaller local retailers was something that Bradley discovered while working at Bargains in a Box. “When you’re a smaller independent you don’t have national brand recognition, you don’t have the technology and systems and processes and buying power, so what do you live on? You live on being known locally for ‘Wow!’ deals,” he said. “When I first got here and was running our local stores, I saw how hard it was to keep people excited about who we were and coming back to us when were a block away from a Walmart or three blocks away from a TJ Maxx.
“There are a couple of really big winners in the off-price game right now, and it seems like every wholesaler in a position similar to ours is just trying to sprint toward them as fast as possible,” Bradley added. “What I’m trying to do is make us also a merchandising partner to the smaller independents that aren’t always top of mind. The intention is to open the door for all these smaller independent stores and help them curate a great mix of merchandise that keeps their customers coming back week after week, the same way we’ve done with the big national brands.”
Deals and White-Glove Service for All (Not Just the Big Guys)
Off-price and closeout retailers have historically found ecommerce a difficult needle to thread given the often unpredictable and inconsistent nature of their supply, but Bradley believes The Bazaar’s position as a wholesaler gives the company an edge in this realm.
“We’ve always had a uniquely good source of supply,” he said. “The advantage in our position today is we have 60 years of history with some of the best manufacturers in the world. We carry any big name-brand consumable item that you would see in a Walmart or a Target or a Walgreens, and we work with those companies directly. I think the other place where ecommerce gets really complicated for the discounters is the order sizes can be really small, but as a wholesaler we’re in a unique position where the average order size warrants the expense of picking, packing and shipping.”
The Bazaar’s website, which is built on Shopify, went live in early February 2025 and also showcases a rebranding that was done in conjunction with the launch, led by Chicago-based marketing consultancy ColorJar. “We wanted to do something that was a bit of a throwback to the era that my grandpa started in, you know ‘Big deals, we’ve got the deals!,’ a kind of over-the-top vibe,” Bradley explained.
The site features intentionally low minimum order quantities and fast shipping direct from The Bazaar warehouse, but Bradley’s favorite feature is the countdown clock on the homepage that displays how much time is left until new inventory drops.
“Kith is my favorite company, I love that brand, and so when we were building out the site, the aspiration is similar to what they’ve created with that limited release, drop culture,” said Bradley. “I think we actually have a very similar dynamic, just in a totally different consumer class — it’s not a beautiful coat or leather shoes, it’s name-brand hand soap that’s 70% below Walmart, get it while you can! It’s exciting, and from that point of view the unpredictability in the supply chain is what makes it unique and fun.”
Aiding Bradley’s efforts is new technology that make selling online and connecting inventory with the right customer easier than ever before. For example, The Bazaar site features an integrated AI solution that “basically maps all of our customers’ preferences and makes sure that we’re constantly feeding them inventory that we know they’ll be interested in,” said Bradley. “We’re essentially re-creating the kind of white-glove service that a huge retailer gets, where salespeople call and say, ‘Hey, we just got this in and I know you guys love this kind of thing,’ but distributed out to thousands of little retailers around the country.
“It’s amazing the things you can build today to really provide a level of service [digitally] that you couldn’t have dreamt of before,” Bradley added. “I’m excited about our ability to lean into the current big technological trends and use that as a way to bring great supply to more people.”
The Third Generation Challenge…and Opportunity
When asked what his dad thought of this new direction for the business, Bradley said he recognizes the need for it and is excited, although perhaps not as unconditionally as Bradley might like. “We had 200 visitors to our site on the second day, and I was like, ‘Isn’t that crazy? Have you ever seen 200 people in our showroom?’ My dad’s response was — I mean you know that generation, baby boomers, their wisdom is in practicality — so it was kind of like, ‘Yeah that’s cool, great possibilities, but how much cash is in the register today?’”
Despite Rob’s tempered enthusiasm, there are already signs that the ecommerce venture is opening up new avenues of business. For example, the company received an order one day from a pet grooming business, and “that’s never been a market we even considered,” said Bradley.
Indeed, each generation of this family has evolved and grown the business for their time. Norman saw an opportunity in a market that didn’t yet really exist; Rob scaled up alongside the growth of national big-box chains; and now Bradley is bringing the concept forward into the era of online commerce, which, by the way, is awash with millions of small, digital-only merchants that resell overstock and excess goods, another potential new client base for The Bazaar. Bradley also said he sees opportunity for growth with nonprofit clients.
But at the moment the plan is “to remain disciplined about who we think we’re working with, which is the smaller independents,” Bradley said. “That could mean they have 50 stores or 10 stores or it could mean a buying group that [operates on behalf of a group of small stores]. There’s this underbelly world of retail, where it’s a hustler’s game,” he said.
When asked if he considers himself a hustler, Bradley said his grandfather and father more accurately fit that bill: “I don’t know if I got that gene exactly, but we have a great buying team of people who worked with my father and have come from some great companies, and they love to negotiate. My hustle, what I love, is the interconnectedness of the wheeling and dealing. Like, ‘We have this cup, who in the world might want this?’ and it’s everybody from Menards to that local guy in New York who supplies to apartment buildings.”
