Case Study: Building a Scalable B2B Marketplace Solution

One of the world’s largest online destinations for home furnishings and décor was experiencing a higher volume of customer returns and other excess inventory due to explosive growth in sales. The inventory – consisting mostly of truckload-size quantities of home goods, including bedroom, kitchen, and dining furniture, upholstery, home décor, and other household items – was currently being sold to a small group of buyers for a pre-negotiated price. As the volume of inventory grew so did the need for more qualified buyers.

In need of a liquidation solution that could effectively scale with its primary business while maintaining good recovery numbers, the retailer turned to B-Stock Solutions with the following goals in mind:

• Maintain or increase current recovery rates for the higher volumes of inventory
• Increase demand for the inventory to handle anticipated volume growth
• Move the inventory as quickly as possible, reducing the need for more warehouse space and freeing up working capital

Solution

B-Stock launched a customized, private-label B2B liquidation marketplace platform for the retailer via the B-Stock Sourcing Network, enabling large numbers of approved business buyers from across the U.S. to bid directly on inventory via competitive online auctions. Data-driven auction strategies were applied to maximize price, while accommodating the substantial increase in volume. This included:

• Optimizing lot configurations to match demand
• Adjusting how and when auctions were scheduled
• Updating auction descriptions to include more detailed information

Results

B-Stock’s flexible and scalable online auction platform easily handled the 138% increase in inventory volume over the first five quarters, allowing the retailer to sell truckload-size quantities of merchandise to thousands of approved business buyers quickly and effectively. Since inception, B-Stock’s customized data-driven methods have generated a 31% increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) over the retailer previous solution and target recovery goal – with the latest quarter generating a 59% increase in GMV. Meanwhile, B-Stock’s demand generation services have driven thousands of new, qualified business buyers to the marketplace, increasing registrations by an average of 33% per quarter.