Fallon Deatherage-Bradley
News Editor
Westwood Discount and Westwood Discount Too are Pocatello’s saving destinations. These stores are filled to the max with anything you’d find at a normal store, plus a few gag gifts you’d never know why you needed.
Located at 1800 Garrett Way, both stores are located side-by-side and are a treasure trove of bargains. Westwood Discount Too contains mostly party and holiday decorations, while Westwood Discount has household items at prices that can make any college student gleeful.
“If only they knew,” said owner Theron Pollard. “I guarantee to be the lowest price in town, and I guarantee satisfaction. If something isn’t right or isn’t what you thought it would be just bring it back.”
Theron started the store in 1989. Previously, he had sold toys to area schools and churches. He was given the opportunity to buy holiday overstock after Easter that year, and Westwood Discount was born.
Now Pollard takes a trip every six months to a large trade show in Las Vegas where distributors set up booths to showcase products to vendors.
After the show, distributors who would rather sell the products at a loss than transport them back sell their products to Pollard. Pollard buys three semi-truck loads back to Pocatello. He has developed a reputation as trade shows with the nick name Mr. Booth Buyer.
“Nobody buys like I buy,” Pollard said. “And nobody sells like I sell.”
All items are brand new with both brand names and generic products at heavily discounted prices.
Westwood offers coupons in the local paper weekly.
Currently, they are celebrating their 29th anniversary by offering buy one item get another half off. Year-round, everything is always buy three of an item get a fourth free, which is often helpful when shopping for party decorations, dishes and food storage containers.
“It’s never dull working here,” Sherri, one of Westwood’s ten employee’s, said as she stocked Halloween inventory. “You never know what you’ll seen and it’s always fun.”
Upon first walking in, a newcomer can’t help but feel a sense of being overwhelmed. Merchandise is piled high, and there is little sense of organization. A few like items are clustered together next to items with no similarity. It takes a lot of browsing, but the deals are easy to find.
Perhaps most useful to college students is aisle four, where school supplies are located. Every type of pen or pencil, notebooks, binders, sticky notes, and calculators.
Most are off-brands, but there are a few name brands like Pentel and Uniball. Some of the cheapest pencils and pens have the addresses of businesses on them because they are overstock from Pollard’s son’s advertising business. They are the cheapest writing implements if you don’t mind advertising for a law firm in Indiana.
At Westwood, $15-worth of school supplies looks like this: 2 notebooks, 2 packages of erasures, 1 scientific calculator, 2 packages of 12 count pens, 1 package of Expo dry erase markers, enough Post It sticky notes to last all four years at ISU, and a 32 oz. Thermos brand water bottle.
There are also a lot of items to set up an apartment or dorm. The aisle on the far east side of the building has cheap bedding with some sets having remarkably high thread counts that would normally cost in the neighborhood of $90. At Westwood they range in the $20-$30 neighborhood meaning you could save up to $70.
They only accept cash so be sure to hit the ATM before your trip to savings land.
