Retailers have to deal with excess and returned inventory somehow. There’s only so much warehouse space to accommodate unsold or returned merchandise—not to mention damaged and defective inventory. In order to make way for new inventory, retailers are choosing to offload these goods via liquidation sales.

Liquidation sales present an opportunity to resellers and store owners looking for discounted inventory. We explain how liquidation sales work and how buyers can participate online below.

How do liquidation sales work?

Most excess inventory comes from customer returns. And retailers typically cannot re-stock and sell returned merchandise in their stores. In fact, $761 billion worth of merchandise was returned to retailers in 2021. eCommerce returns account for roughly 20.8% of returns made—that’s almost a third of all returns! A percentage of returned merchandise is because the shopper received the wrong item, or the goods were damaged or defective. Needless to say, many of these items are sold at a huge loss to a few large liquidators. These liquidators, in turn, resell the inventory to small resellers, other liquidators, and wholesalers.

Online liquidation auctions

But rather than selling to a few liquidators who go on to resell that inventory to other buyers at a markup, many retailers are choosing a different option. Retailers like Walmart, The Home Depot, Target, and Macy’s use B-Stock’s online auction platform to help them build and manage their own private auction marketplaces. This allows them to sell directly to the different types of liquidation business buyers themselves through B-Stock. This provides liquidation buyers with direct access to retailers and access to highly discounted inventory that they previously could not buy or have access to. The inventory is usually listed at a fraction of the MSRP, with listings worth thousands in value starting at only $1 or $100.

Many retailers now include online liquidation sales as part of their reverse logistics strategies. Thus allowing buyers to browse online liquidation auctions and bid on the inventory and lot sizes that fit their needs.

View Marketplaces

What are the best liquidation auction sites?

While there are many liquidation auction sites out there, there are few that offer businesses direct access to a retailer’s liquidation inventory. You should also make sure the site offers flexible buying options, has thousands of auctions to choose from, and services to grow your resale business.

The best sites will have:

  1. Pallets as well as truckloads of inventory
  2. Manifested and unmanifested lots
  3. Filtering features that allow you to search through auctions based on region, inventory type, condition, shipment size, etc.
  4. Shipping cost estimates based on the miles your lot has to travel
  5. Popcorn bidding features (this gives all bidders an equal chance of winning an auction if a last-minute bid is placed)
  6. Partners to help your resale business with lending, logistics, and inventory

Lucky for you, B-Stock has all of these things!

Browse Live Auctions

Get to know B-Stock liquidation auctions

B-Stock powers and manages a network of private liquidation auction marketplaces for large retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Unilever, The Home Depot, and Best Buy, among others. We enable these retailers to auction off their excess inventory directly to buyers at a fraction of MSRP.

Thousands of resellers love B-Stock liquidation sales because it gives them direct access to retailers and their overstock inventory. On B-Stock, buyers can confidently bid on excess inventory since they are buying directly from the retailers, not a middleman.

Join the largest global network of B2B liquidation marketplaces.

Buy directly from the world’s largest retailers and manufacturers

register now

Author

Editorial Team

Author

B-Stock Editorial Team

Amberly Bliss, Owner

Amberly Bliss, Owner

Retail Deals

"I feel so confident shopping and bidding on items knowing that I am going to get what I paid for. And if not, there’s a killer customer service team that’s going to make sure everything’s alright in the end. That’s huge. It’s hard to take that risk when you’re first starting out."

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