Future of Excess Inventory Liquidation and Reverse Logistics Industry

Adrian Gonzales over at Logistics Viewpoint just posted the mid-year update to his 2009 Logistics Predictions this week.  His predictions have so far been on the mark and we still agree with them now, just like we did back when he made the predictions back in December 2008.

Still the most interesting trend to us is:

3. More logistics software companies will venture into managed services.

This trend is one of the founding principles of the B-Stock Solutions model.  At eBay, our model was primarily on the software side, providing the custom auction platform for our customers as well as driving additional buyers from the eBay marketplace.

However, while at eBay, we discovered that many of the companies we called on:

1) Did not want to invest in a money losing operation like liquidation
2) Had little or no experience or knowledge in liquidation beyond “what has always been done”

With that knowledge, when we left to start B-Stock Solutions, we knew that many of our customers needed and wanted extra help developing their liquidation strategies.  This realization led us to offer our turn-key solution which enables our customers to outsource their liquidation process to us – allowing them to concentrate solely on their core business.

With our senior team’s 20+ years of auction-marketplace management experience and knowledge of the liquidation business, we are able to bring efficiency to this inefficient process and thereby drive increased recovery rates on excess inventory.  This includes pricing optimization via auction strategy and marketplace management and the testing, measuring and iteration that goes along with it. In addition, increasing the number of buyers for your product while protecting your channel partners, and handling all of the administration work associated with your liquidation transactions are all parts of this outsourced service that most companies will never invest in directly.

A managed service liquidation solution is the future of the industry. Can you afford to still be in the past?