B-Stock Expands its Offering to Tackle Any Resale Challenge

If you’re a professional in the retail or manufacturing space, you probably know what a problem returned and excess inventory can pose to your operations and bottom line. The reverse logistics process required to get these items out of your warehouses and distribution centers can include intake, recataloging, inspecting, repackaging, transporting, and more. Further, the traditional liquidators that many organizations use tend to be reliant on manual processes and inflexible in their pricing or the goods they will accept. This means that if you hope to keep excess inventory cycling out of your possession on a consistent basis, you’ll find yourself developing and managing relationships with several different brokers and wholesalers. Depending on the scale of your business, this task can be a full-time job in itself.

Together, all of these factors can make for an undertaking so time-consuming and resource intensive that many businesses conclude that liquidation is not even worth their trouble. Unfortunately, that’s when perfectly good items get trashed or destroyed. Thankfully there is a better way.

B-Stock has expanded it’s solution to provide its sellers with a full suite of B2B recommerce solutions. In addition to our classic auction format, we are now proud to offer:

• Contract Sales
• Direct Sales
  • Flash Auctions
  • Direct Placement

Each of these has its own specific purpose, making B-Stock the most powerful and versatile B2B recommerce platform on the market. Let’s dive in and learn more about each one.

The Spot Sales

This is one you might already be familiar with. As our flagship sales model, auction-based Spot Sales is a great option for Enterprises or smaller brands and retailers that—frequently or periodically—deal with large amounts of returned, obsolete, seasonal, slow-moving, scratch-and-dent, or even salvage inventory.

Once you’ve identified exactly which goods you’re looking to cycle out of your warehouse, you’ll submit a manifest of these wares to B-Stock’s team of auction experts. They’ll create a listing on your custom storefront for all eligible buyers to see and set the auction to launch at a predetermined time, at which point the bidding begins. After time expires the high bidder has won the lot, we collect the funds and send you a purchase orders. Simply arrange shipping with the buyer, and your payment is released when the carrier indicated to us the order has been delivered.

So why use this model? There are a few key benefits:

• Competition-driven Recovery

Competition drive up sale prices which means you extracts the highest willingness to pay. When potential buyers can see in real time that they’ve been outbid, they’ll often spend a little more than they intended to—and bidding wars are always good for your bottom line.  

• Flexibility

You can move out as much inventory as you need to, whenever you have it ready—you’re never committed to any schedules or quotas. While it’s obviously best to make a name for yourself as a reliable provider of high-quality goods, there are no hard expectations with the Spot sales solution.

• Buyer Demand

Our massive worldwide buyer network means there’s always a buyer who will pay top dollar for your goods—and always a few more waiting to fill their spot. And your storefront is as open as you want it to be: sell to everyone or hand-pick only those you want bidding on your goods. You can (and should) even bring your current liquidation partners with you.

• Brand & Channel Control

You likely put a lot of research and effort into developing your brand and making sure your customers perceive you in a certain way—fun, trustworthy, luxurious, sustainable, and so on. But when goods travel through several layers of jobbers, brokers, and other middlemen, your goods might start turning up for sale in places that don’t agree with your intended brand perception or customer experience. Further, depending on where the goods wind up, they may also be actively luring buyers away from buying new on your website or preferred retail partners. B-Stock allows you to require your buyers to sign agreements as to where and how your goods are sold to help prevent the secondary market from cannibalizing your primary sales channels.

• Strategic Support

We have an entire Listings Team on staff to review, polish and post your manifests ahead of an auction. These experts know what buyers like to see and will work with your dedicated account manager—your day-to-day contact—to help optimize your listing according to your business goals. Additionally, a full marketing team is continuously working to build demand and bring in additional relevant buyers

Contract Sales

Though the auction model does scale easily with all the efficiency-minded features and data-backed insights that B-Stock offers, the Contract Sales model is designed with a very specific use case in mind. With this solution, very high volume brands and retailers—such as apparel suppliers that tend to rely on large discounter chains—can smoothly, predictably, and quickly clear out inventory by the truckload. If your business reliably finds itself in possession of the same types of inventory every month, this solution is ideal.  

Our experts will match your organization with a willing, relevant buyer and then create a contract between the two parties that outlines the goods to be sold, the delivery schedule, pricing, and more. For the duration of this contract, all transactions are tracked through the platform and our staff will assist in the even that any disputes over this contract arise.

Specifically, the benefits of this model are:

• Increased Velocity

Unsold and returned inventory is already spoken for before it becomes a problem. As soon as you have the expected goods packaged up for shipping, you’ll submit a manifest to us and we’ll notify the buyer as soon as possible.  All terms are prenegotiated, so from this point, the inventory will be out of your warehouse within a short 24-48 hours timeframe.

• Fixed Pricing

Not only do prenegotiated terms speed up the reverse logistics process—they also lock in your resale prices, meaning your organization is guaranteed a known recovery rate for the length of the contract.

• Continuous Demand

Since the standard length of a Contract Sales agreement is 6 months or more, you can be confident that your most common surplus is spoken for at least a year in advance—surely a relief to any accounting department.

• Improved Forecasting & Resource Management

Fixed pricing isn’t just about reclaiming cash for peace of mind. A big part of this solution’s value is the certainty that it enables for planning purposes. Without the monthly threat of the the same old unsold inventory straining your carrying capacity, your company can order, market, merchandise, forecast, and budget with confidence.

• Streamlined Process

As flexible and lucrative as the Auction model can be, there are a few steps involved on the seller’s end. You won’t need to submit photos, optimize lotting, communicate with multiple bidders, plan logistics and shipping, or worry about payment. With these steps bypassed, employees within your department may find themselves under much less stress.

Direct Sales — Flash Auctions & Direct Placement

Sometimes circumstances find you holding onto valuable, salable goods that it doesn’t normally sell. Perhaps a workspace renovation, downsize, consolidation, or move has left your apparel business with truckloads of perfectly good, barely used office furniture. Or maybe a market anomaly, or purchasing error, or business experiment has left your outdoor store with several pallets of packaged food goods. Or it’s possible you have some bulky damaged units that you need gone as quickly as possible, no strings attached.

For handling the occasional challenge of such atypical and unexpected lots, you might turn to B-Stock’s Flash Auctions and Direct Sales.

When using the Flash Auction solution, you’ll contact your account manager and tell them about the special, atypical, or one-off lots that you’re looking to sell. Even if you have no idea where to begin looking for a buyer, they’ll quickly identify and approach a few relevant buyers for you, and offer them an invitation to a highly exclusive, one-time-only auction.

On the other hand, the Direct Sales solution involves our account management team approaching a single suitable buyer with a standing offer to buy some or all of the lot—no contract or listing needed.

Although less common than the Spot Sales or Contract Sales solutions, these alternate sales models do serve a specific set of needs:

• Quiet and Discreet Sales

Don’t want irregular or one-off lots to confuse or distract your regular secondary market buyers? Not a problem. Goods sold via Flash Auction and Direct Sale won’t appear on your public storefront unless you specifically request it, preserving your image and keeping your online presence uniform and tidy.

• Access Beyond Your Regular Buyers

Perhaps you don’t mind an open, publicly visible auction taking up space on your storefront. Even so, you probably won’t have the attention of the kind of buyers that would be interested. Fortunately, our experts will know exactly where to find demand for your lots.

• Sales Done in Hours, Not Days

When you’re bogged down in goods that you don’t normally deal with, it feels like you can’t be rid of them fast enough. In this case, your account manager may suggest putting on a Flash Auction. Since these events are open to just a few relevant buyers, there’s pressure to act quickly and decisively to win your goods within a narrow bidding window.

• Ultra-targeted Offers

When using the Direct Sales model, a B-Stock representative will extend a standing offer for the goods in question directly to a specific, qualified buyer. They may accept at their leisure or even make a counter offer. Either way, you never have to close the deal without knowing exactly where you goods are going or what pricing you’ll get for them.

The Bottom Line?

Whatever the category, condition, or quantity of goods—even if it’s not your typical inventory—B-Stock can advise you on the right combination of resale solutions to help your business succeed.

Questions? Want to learn more? Contact us today.