Meet Travis Neumann: Owner of Wholesale Remarketing Company

Travis Neumann is no stranger to the remarketing business. In fact, he’s built up over 30 years of relationships in the industry! Travis uses B-Stock as a way to facilitate broker buying of liquidation inventory for his customers. In his words, “I love the remarketing business and I love the relationships in the remarketing business. And I love companies like B-Stock that are just such a great fit.”

Travis started his career as an engineer and got involved with equipment distribution in the cable television industry. Eventually, this led to a partnership that set the foundation for the rest of his remarketing career. Fast forward to a few positions later, Travis is now the owner of Wholesale Remarketing Company—and through it all, he still finds the time to support his pastoral ministry. He now plans to slowly transition from his pastoral role into retirement.

In this edition of our Reseller Community Spotlight, we go through the beginnings of Travis’ career and where he hopes to take Wholesale Remarketing Company from here.

The beginnings of a 30-plus year career

We went back to the beginning to learn more about how his business came to be.

Q: How did you first get into remarketing?

“Another guy in the company and myself thought there might be an opportunity here to remarket excess broadband equipment; new inventories, used inventories, refurbished products, and the like. In 1998, both of us left that company and we started a company called Broadband Remarketing International. We ran that through 2006 and then sold that to a company on the American Stock Exchange.”

Twelve years and two churches later…

“After planting a small church in 2015, I needed to get back into the workplace to support myself. So, I got involved again in the remarketing business. Then in 2018, my former partner at Broadband Remarketing called me up and said, ‘What are you doing these days?’ And so, we started a remarketing division within a company called CRS Recycling. I was there from 2018 to 2021, helping to get that remarketing division started. We got into Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart, Kohl’s, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Costco.”

Wholesale Remarketing was born

“In 2020 during COVID, I started my company called Wholesale Remarketing Company. The idea was that when I’m eventually done with CRS, and I’m eventually almost retired from my pastoral ministry, I still wanted to be in the remarketing business as part of my work in retirement. B-Stock is just the perfect company for the business model that I’ve created and most of the product that I get is from you guys.”

Q: What motivators do you have to be in this business?

“It has allowed me to grow our church, which has been wonderful. I work 30 hours for the church and then I work 30 hours doing this stuff with CRS. And last September, it dropped down to 15 hours at the church, and I’m still trying to do this at 15 hours as well. It’ll probably pick up a little bit more in the fall as I try to grow this other entity [360 Liquidation Group], but I’m going to do it passively.

I’m going to train some folks and tap my 30-plus years of experience in it. I’m motivated by, one, the opportunity, and two, the chance to build something when you’re retired. It’s not just playing golf and sitting on the front porch and smoking your pipe. It’s engaging, it’s of interest, and I can monetize and leverage it.”

Q: What’s one thing you’ve learned along the way that you’d like to pass along?

“The money is made on the buy. Learning to buy product right for your customer is where you will make money and they will make money.”

Q: What’s that secret weapon that makes you successful doing what you’ve been doing?

“I want my customers to be successful and I want my proposition to them—my value—to be compelling enough that they really don’t want to go anywhere else for the product categories I can provide. And compelling, not in the sense of price, but in the sense of the depth of relationship.”

Q: What advice would you have for others looking to start exporting?

“So, at the top of the list in doing international business, for me, is the relationship with the business owner. All three of the times that I set up international shipping points were through fairly deep relationships.

One of the gentlemen I graduated from seminary with was a pastor in The Bahamas. I sent him a letter when I was looking to start asking if anybody in their church was an importer that did this type of general merchandise retailing on the islands. That got the ball rolling.”

Lessons learned along the way

With so many lessons to share—going beyond even remarketing—we can only summarize a few. Understanding customer profiles and creating a compelling value proposition for customers in order to meet their product needs is what ties these lessons together. We summarize a few below:

Ask your customers what they want

By being attentive to your marketplace and asking your customers what they want, you have the potential to create more opportunities for yourself. So don’t be hesitant to survey your shoppers and see what other value you can add! You could discover shoppers are seeking new apparel or toys, thus indicating what you could potentially source next.

Recall Travis’ words:

“The marketplace will tell you what they want and what they value. Are you proactive at capturing that data? And then leveraging that data to opportunity. “

Simply by asking what customers want, business buyers can grow their market space and create compelling value.

Depths of relationships matter

Exporting can be quite a high-risk area, especially with international laws and regulations. Having established international business relationships has worked well for Travis. For one relationship in particular, Travis even said, “We basically have the equivalent of a one-page contract!”

He elaborated on maintaining relationships:

“So initial point of contact of high trust relationships is absolutely key. You crawl before you walk and you walk before you run and you don’t put a whole lot of big bucks into the pot until all the relational issues are pretty solid.”

Buying strategically

Everyone has different inventory needs, for some, it’s ready-to-buy brand name goods. For others, it could be scrap parts for appliance repairs. The important thing is matching the value of their marketplace.

Travis shares:

“I have a large customer down in Florida and I buy a lot out of the West Palm Beach Costco facility there, but I also buy up into the Southeast from them as well when necessary.”

He continues:

“I take advantage of the localities that B stock has with the shipping. So, high dollar-density product mix, a low shipping cost, watching and trying to get as low percent of retail [value] for the product mix that’s of interest to them.”

Generating leveraged income

Travis uses remarketing as a way to generate leveraged income. Essentially, sourcing and buying the product for the right customer (and at the right price and quantity) is a repeatable process that can have increasing results with the same amount of work.

Here’s a metaphor he offers to explain this concept:

“If I have a 300 pound rock in my backyard and I need to move it to the other side of the yard for my landscaping, I can’t pick it up and move it. But if I’ve got a two-by-four and a piece of cut log as a fulcrum, I can flip that thing the whole way across the yard, but I gotta put the fulcrum at the right place to get the leverage.”

The future of the business: A vision for a much larger entity

On the horizon are plans to launch 360 Liquidation Group, which Travis and his grandson—along with two other partners (son-in-law and father-in-law!)—will run together. Travis hopes to show his grandson the ropes as an apprentice business manager.

“I’m going to be alongside him for the first two years, teaching him how to do this and helping him to figure out how to scale it beyond what I’m doing. We can buy much larger entities because of eventually having a building and employees. I’m largely going to be in the backseat, in a consulting-mentoring role to get that company launched.”

We can’t wait to see what future success is in store for Travis at Wholesale Remarketing Company!

If you’re interested in broker buying, you can check out Wholesale Remarketing Company’s Services page and get in touch.

B-Stock’s Reseller Community Spotlight is an ongoing series that aims to highlight our unique buyers in the B-Stock network.

Are you a B-Stock buyer who wants to tell us more about your reselling business? Let us know and we can feature you in an upcoming edition of B-Stock’s Reseller Community Spotlight series.