Doing Overstock Auctions the B-Stock Way

To remain competitive in today’s ever-shifting retail environment, you need to stay ahead of the times. This includes finding new and better ways to handle returned and excess inventory.
Traditional methods for selling liquidation inventory are becoming increasingly outdated. Luckily, there is a more profitable way to recover revenue on unsold merchandise. Put simply, when you’re looking to unload shelf pulls and overstock, auctions are the way to go.

Read on to learn more about what the nation’s top big-box retailers are doing to streamline liquidation processes, increase recovery rates, and maintain control of their sales channels and brand reputation—even after clearing the inventory.

Conventional Methods Bring Conventional Results

Businesses around the world stopped using the typewriter once the computer became available. Most stopped mailing correspondence when it became clear that email could do the job faster, more reliably, and cheaper. In order to bring a business to new heights of efficiency, decision makers need to eliminate the slow, expensive processes holding them back.

The practice of inventory liquidation is no different. Using manual methods like back and forth phone calls or faxing spreadsheets to a handful of buyers will always leave money on the table.

The Trouble with Old-School Liquidators

Traditional liquidation services buy large quantities of goods and make their fortune reselling them to stores that ultimately put them back on shelves for consumers to buy at discounted prices.

Unfortunately, traditional liquidators are notorious for extremely low take-it-or-leave-it offers on your inventory—sometimes just pennies per unit. A liquidator that buys from you may even be the first of several layers of middlemen, each taking a larger and larger cut of the value of your perfectly good inventory before it finds its way back to shelves.

If you want to secure better deals, you’ll have to negotiate—if the buyer is open to it—or juggle relationships with many liquidators. That means calling one after another looking for a better price. Factor in the time and labor investment involved in that process and you’ll probably find that the effort is barely justified by the value that you recover. To take this scenario further, say that you do have a fruitful relationship with a preferred liquidation partner. If they close up shop for any reason, you’ll find yourself back at square one, shopping around for a reliable and trustworthy liquidator that will pay fair rates.

Here’s another issue that traditional liquidation methods can’t solve. Retailers don’t want to sell to just anyone; they need to be sure that their buyers won’t interfere with their primary sales channels, and that they won’t be selling in ways and places that don’t fit their carefully cultivated brand reputation. When you liquidate unsold stock, you’ll want to know that the buyer will respect your wishes, for example, that your goods must be sold in Europe where you don’t do business. Only with such agreements in place can a retailer rest easy. However, this is not a benefit that all traditional liquidators offer.

When Managing Overstock, Auctions Increase Recovery

It’s for all these reasons that B-Stock’s online auction format is the superior option for retailers looking to make the most of their unsold goods. With a network of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneuring, merchandise-hungry buyers, B-Stock brings the demand to you.

Retailers can either build customized private online auction sites or leverage our multi-seller liquidation marketplace, B-Stock Supply. Both allow buyers to compete for your inventory, pushing prices up versus negotiating a rock-bottom price offline with just one or two buyers. What’s more, retailers have complete control over the process, including logo usage and dictating where the product will be sold.

There’s a reason why the top retailers in the country—not to mention thousands of others—are leveraging B-Stock marketplaces. With this solution, retailers recover up to 30% more of their stock’s value when compared with traditional methods, and faster too. From uploading your manifest to B-Stock to cash in hand the entire process takes an average of just 15 days. Even better? You’ll never have to pick up the phone or mail out inventory spreadsheets to multiple parties again.

How B-Stock Overstock Auctions Work

B-Stock’s team of auction strategy and liquidation experts will be with you throughout the process. We’re here to ensure you’re getting the tools, data and information you need to generate the highest recovery possible.  These resources include a dedicated Account Manager to help you launch, manage, and grow your marketplace. Another key behind-the-scenes resource is a full-time marketing team to help drive buyers your way. Finally, you get a full support staff to help you troubleshoot.

Curious about how the listing and auction process goes? Here’s a quick snapshot:

1) You send B-Stock a list of what you have to sell. You can list bulk quantities of inventory—anywhere from a single pallet to a full truckload—across any product categories or conditions.

2) The B-stock team reviews this and posts your listing. Whether a lot or a little, used or overstock, auctions launch with a start and end time according to your preferences.

3) B-Stock promotes your auction to our vetted buyer base. We can also limit the auction to a list of preapproved buyers to ensure trust between all parties.

4) When the auction start time arrives, the auction goes live. Watch in real time as buyers bid against each other to purchase your excess inventory. As time ticks by, your recovery rate ticks up.

5) When the auction ends, B-Stock automatically invoices the buyer and collects funds via wire transfer.

6) B-Stock sends a purchase order to you, officially documenting the sale.

7) You arrange shipping with the buyer or use one of B-Stock’s logistics partners to manage the process.

Getting started with B-Stock

In today’s competitive business climate, organizations can’t afford to utilize traditional manual methods for liquidating excess inventory. If you’re ready to increase pricing on your liquidation merchandise by as much as 30%, reach out to us today.