Building a Scalable Liquidation Solution

Relaxed return policies drive customer loyalty but can wreak havoc on reverse logistics. Given the amount of merchandise returned each year is steadily growing (in 2014 it was up 6%), reducing internal costs in the handling of this returned merchandise is critical in today’s competitive retailing environment, especially when it comes to merchandise slated for liquidation. By getting smart about the secondary market and looking beyond traditional liquidation methods – including negotiating with and selling manually to one or two liquidators – you can create a more sophisticated, scalable solution that optimizes your monetization of customer returns.

So the question becomes: how can an organization update its reverse logistics program and what does a successful, sophisticated and scalable solution for customer returns and other excess inventory look like?

We recently put together a client case study covering this particular topic: the client – one of the world’s largest home furnishings and home décor e-tailers – was experiencing higher volumes of customer returns due to explosive growth in sales and needed a liquidation solution that could effectively scale while maintaining good recovery numbers.

To solve this challenge, B-Stock launched a customized B2B marketplace for the client enabling large numbers of approved business buyers to bid directly on the inventory, thus driving prices up. Additionally data-driven auction strategies were applied to extract the buyers’ highest willingness to pay while category-specific marketing programs were implemented, driving thousands of new buyers to the marketplace. The result was a 31% increase in overall recovery for the merchandise – even after a triple digit percentage increase in inventory volume.

To read our full case study, please click here. For more information on how B-Stock can help you create a successful and scalable solution for your customer returns and excess inventory, please contact us.