How You Can Sell Your Liquidation Merchandise Quickly

Slow moving liquidation merchandise is one of the worst situations a retailer has to face during this tough economy. Not only does it stress the retailer and their budget, but it also ties up precious warehouse space that may have been used to store other products that can be sold easily.

Because most new liquidators don’t know how they can sell their slow-moving inventory quickly, they end up reducing prices and getting a very small profit. However, if you are in the liquidation business, you must know essential factors like the reason why your merchandise isn’t selling, what to do to sell these items quicker, and the vendor you should go for.

In this article, we are going to give you some valuable advice on how to sell liquidations items and help you make the most of your business.

Why Isn’t Your Merchandise Selling?

Before learning how you should sell your slow moving merchandise, you need to find out just why these items aren’t doing as well as you expected. Though there may be a hundred different reasons why customers aren’t buying these products, the most common problems that hinder quick sales are listed in the following lines.

Are You Buying Products in Low Demand?

One of the most common issues that hinder the sale of certain products is that they may lose their popularity overnight. This might actually be why product liquidation was done on these items to begin with. A lot of times, when liquidators buy merchandise, they take a close look at the market and only buy items that are really useful or enjoyed by their target audience.

Unfortunately, trends tend to change a lot quicker than you hoped and the value, as well as the demand of the product, may go down. Even if you did your research, a sudden product recall can affect your inventory and ultimately diminish demand. This is why smart liquidators focus on buying smaller quantities and selling them quickly in case a recall or similarly devastating issue takes place.

Selling Liquidation Items in Poor Packaging

Another major cause for a sudden drop in the popularity of your liquidation merchandise may be the poor packaging that you or the original seller is providing. Sure, most people who buy wholesale products, especially electronics, are least bothered with the external packaging because they are mostly concerned about what the package actually contains. Yet, much like the meals that you get served at restaurants, the final touches apparent on the outside will always attract the customer to be more interested in the product inside.

Failure in Marketing Your Liquidation Items

Most liquidators who are unable to sell their merchandise or have a slow-moving inventory don’t invest a lot in marketing their business and what they sell. However, no business, especially in this era, can survive without some form of advertising.

Unless your customer knows who you are, and what you do, they won’t develop the trust required for them to even think about buying the merchandise that you’re selling. Moreover, with little or no marketing, you won’t have the chance to reach out to a wider and vaster audience.

Therefore, you should embrace a well-planned marketing strategy that improves your brand’s visibility and advertises the benefits of your product. Re-Marketing a liquidation product properly is often the key to HIGH profit.

Liquidation products are often products that were poorly marketed in their primary market. The secret to generating profits lies in discovering new markets and alternative marketing methods to get the liquidation product in front of the right customers.

Buying Damaged Liquidation Items

Finally, your merchandise may not be staying too long in your warehouse because it’s too damaged and worn out. If you’re just starting with selling liquidated merchandise, you probably aren’t aware of the importance of testing and improving the quality of the product before selling it at a high price. This beats the need to sell merchandise as it is for a discounted or low price.

Therefore, if you’re buying damaged items for a dealer or vendor, you must first make sure that you examine it carefully and repair it in any way you can. This won’t only keep your customers coming back for more, but it will also create a good impression of your business in the industry.

If you’re facing one or more of these problems, then it is only natural that your merchandise isn’t selling at the speed that it should. Luckily, there is a solution. Read on to discover how you can get rid of slow-selling merchandise quickly.

How to Sell Liquidation Items Quickly

By identifying the potential reason or reasons why your products aren’t being sold, you’ll be ready to discover exactly how to tackle the issue so that some of your storage space can be cleared up for more important merchandise. Though there are many methods that you can utilize depending upon your business goals, operational capacity and the quality of your product, the following tips will help you sell your liquidation items quickly.

Using Special Offers to Sell More Stock

One of the best ways you can reduce your liquidation inventory is to reduce the price and upgrade your ordering options.

However, if you aren’t willing to take this step, you can always use other methods like buy-one-get-one-free or offer items for a reduced price when bought in bulk. Whichever strategy you decide to adopt to upgrade your selling or ordering options, make sure to inform your warehousing staff so that they can pack things a lot more efficiently and effectively.

Come Up with New Shipping Offers

Free shipping is something most customers expect and an important tool that you can use to bring an increase in the purchases. You can also use free next-day shipping offers on overstocked or slow-moving merchandise or advertise it as an exclusive and limited time deal. However, while choosing this method for shipping wholesale liquidation merchandise, don’t forget to let your provider know so that they can be prepared to ship the urgent orders.

Combine Slow Moving Stock with Other Items

If you selling liquidated merchandise that isn’t damaged and is in generally good shape, you can offer them as free gifts with expensive purchases. You can even pair them with other product liquidation stock, such as in the case of crockery, or other home items and kitchen accessories. Just remember to make the combination very sensible or else no customer will be interested in buying it from you. Make sure to notify the provider so that they can pack the liquidation product as a complementary pack of some kit.

Selling Liquidation Items Online

When your liquidation products aren’t moving from your physical store, it may be a good idea to sell them online or from another website. If your business isn’t already online, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, mainly exposure. So just make sure that you are available to customers on the web and provide them with these items through there as well to increase your chances of selling them.

Remember: using this technique won’t only help you in tapping into a new market of customers, but it will also allow you to sell liquidation products at a lower price while improving your company’s brand image.

Improve Your Customer Services

If your liquidation items aren’t selling as quickly as your competitors, you may need to improve your customer services. More often than not, customers ask for help either physically or on the phone and don’t get a reply or aren’t satisfied with the information that they are being given. In such a case, you need to ensure that you talk to your sales rep and tell them to act professionally with customers and provide them with as much information as they require.

Repairing Damaged Liquidation Products

If the reason for your slow-moving merchandise is its poor quality and damaged condition, you must get it tested and repaired before you pack it up again and prepare to sell them to your customers. This is particularly true for electronics, automotive items and tools. If you are providing your consumers with poor quality liquidation products every time, then they may not find your reliable and may even think about turning to your competitors for services.

Even though the tips and tricks mentioned here are some of the most beneficial and effective, you can still try out some other methods and adopt the one that is perfect according to your business and the liquidations items you are trying to sell.

How to Choose a Wholesale Liquidator

If you want to avoid not being able to sell the liquidation products sitting in your warehouse, you’ll need to make sure that the company that you’re buying your merchandise from is reliable. After all, this will affect the quality of your liquidation products and how they sell. If you want to find quality liquidation products to sell at a profitable price, here are a couple of things you must keep in mind.

Find a Direct Vendor or Retailer

Because the liquidation industry is full of individuals who are just acting to be liquidators, it would be best if you go for direct vendors or suppliers for your goods. If you fail to do this, you may fall into the hands of an amateur or fraudulent liquidators who don’t have any merchandise of their own and are simply looking to run away with your money.

This is why you must always research and make sure that you make a deal with a vendor who is liquidating merchandise that you are familiar with. If you have some knowledge about the merchandise that you’re buying and know the liquidation business, you’re off to the best start.

Understand the Costs of Your Liquidation Business

Freight costs, shipping costs and taxes are some of the things that you must be fully aware of when going to a particular vendor. Even though freight is not for everyone, you can save a lot if you decide to opt for this option.

Often you will face suppliers who offer pallets that can be combined to save money on shipping. So ask the vendor or company if you have the permission to combine pallets. The more research you do, the better you’ll be able to understand the costs and budget that you need to have for your business.

Alternatives for shipping can include sourcing an LTL (less than truckload) logistics company that will work with trucks to help consolidate costs by combining your shipment with others. This may take longer to receive your product, but savings can often justify these delays.

Choose a Financially Stable Company

Once again, before you shake hands with any vendor or wholesale product provider, you must do your homework and make sure that they are legitimate and reliable. You need to be cautious because there are many companies that are only interested in turning a quick profit and aren’t concerned with your business in any way.

Now you must be wondering what you can do to make sure that you end up dealing with a good company. To answer this question, you must visit the vendor and check out their facility or warehouse. Fake companies will always make an excuse and tell you that you can’t visit them simply because they don’t exist! So if you don’t’ want to end up making a huge mistake and putting your entire liquidation business at risk, research thoroughly before you give them your hard earned money.

Speak with Other Liquidation Resellers

One of the best ways you can find a reliable and professional wholesale liquidation product vendor is to ask the people who are involved in the same industry. If you have been in this business long enough, then you’ll know about some of the people who have a properly set up liquidation company and who trust their vendors to provide them with the best possible products. So talk to these people and get the references of vendors who won’t compromise on quality or service.

Conclusion

Your liquidation business can be a success if you know the right places to look in for the liquidation products in the best condition, at the right prices. Though you will always experience ups and downs in this business, there are a lot of things that you can do to clear out and sell the slow-moving merchandise that is gathering dust in your warehouse.

Try out the various techniques mentioned here and make sure that you choose the right vendor so that you won’t need to worry about unsold goods. Finally, remember that the success of your business depends on your product’s quality so you must ensure that you’re doing everything you possibly can to make things work as effectively as possible.

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Henley Johnson

Henley currently works as a sales representative for Direct Liquidation, assisting businesses with product sourcing of liquidated merchandise from the largest retailers in the world. Whether you are looking for a pallet or a truckload Henley is here to help you grow your business.

View Henley’s Bio on YouTube.