Your Local Liquidator Can’t Compete with an Online Solution

The retail industry is steeped with historical best practices going back hundreds of years. Traditionally speaking, retail has been a slow moving industry where not much has changed over the decades, including the use of a single, local liquidator who buys your overstock and returned items. Many retail professionals are most likely still working with local liquidators who were passed down to them through the years. This ‘best practice’ worked well while brick and mortar ruled and sales were mostly local. But as time moved forward, so did technology, and what worked well before might not be working so well now. This article takes a look at how current technology offerings can vastly improve recovery for your returned and excess inventory slated for liquidation.  

If you’re like most retailers, chances are your company has been working with the same one or two local liquidators since the business was founded. And that relationship is based on a mutual understanding. You, the retailer, know you can count on your trusted liquidator to buy your excess inventory; and the liquidator knows it can take the inventory off your hands at a rock bottom price. That plan worked great while you were a traditional brick and mortar business, but now as your business moves online there are new dynamics to take into consideration, and your local liquidator might not be able to scale as your business grows. As an online retailer, it’s important to understand current stats and growing return trends.

Online sales returns are estimated to grow 15% annually—as it stands now, almost half of all people who shop online will at some point return an item or items that they’ve purchased.

As your returns increase, so does your dependence on your local liquidator, who can now leverage their position to reduce the price of your increased quantity of returned merchandise. Also, as your returns grow, you will risk the probability of your local liquidator not being able to scale up and purchase your increased amount of returned goods.

While you may feel comfortable working with the same liquidator as you have for years, the reality is that your local liquidator won’t keep pace with your online returns. This is where an online marketplace platform such as B-Stock, for both Enterprise and small businesses, can help. B-Stock’s service offerings includes a massive number of qualified, professional business buyers across the U.S. Our buyer network is interested in goods across all categories and conditions. The above map shows shipping locations for items purchased within the U.S. alone. Does your local liquidator have that kind of reach?

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