antways An Expert For Closeout In China Sell To Us: Buy From Us: Support:

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1 antways An Expert For Closeout In China Sell To Us: Buy From Us: Support: Call: Telephone: Whatsapp: Skype:

2 Articles & Advice

3 5 Ways to Turn Excess Inventory into a Marketing Opportunity Every retailer has dealt with excess inventory in some capacity. You know, that purchase you were excited about but your customers didn t feel was a good deal? The one that has been sitting on the shelf getting price reduction after price reduction, but just isn t moving? Many retailers walk away from such purchases and consider them a loss, but you don t have to! The following solutions offer five ways to clear slow moving inventory, while creating marketing opportunities for your business.

4 Solution 1: Turn them into promotional items Everyone likes to get a freebie or a buy one, get one free offer. If you re willing to let excess product go for less than you originally intended, consider giving out gifts with purchase. For example, if someone spends $50, they get a free (insert excess product here). This works by increasing customer loyalty, while helping you upsell. It also gives you an eye-catching message to advertise. You can also have items printed with your company logo, and use them as branded giveaways to further solidify your message. Solution 2: Sell them through Daily Deal sites. Daily Deal sites have soared in recent years, and sites like Groupon Goods, No More Rack and Daily Steals are dedicated to offering popular consumer goods at a discount. They are often looking to source several hundred or thousand units of products for daily deals. If you re sitting on let s say, 200 excess pairs of purple sandals that just won t sell, consign them to a daily deal site. You ll get money for them, and in some cases a bit of exposure for your business brand. In many cases, deal sites want you to ship the goods to their warehouse so they can ship them out promptly, while others work on a drop-shipping basis.

5 Solution 3: List them on ebay Wholesale What happens if you re stuck with 73 pieces of completely assorted items? It used to be challenging to move mixed items in one small lot, until the arrival of ebay Wholesale. ebay Wholesale is a great platform for listing small or large lots of excess inventory in varying conditions. The buyers on the site are looking for wholesale and closeout deals, and the site is consistently growing in popularity and attracting new buyers. Listing your lot there can also give you an avenue to connect with other wholesalers who might even become future suppliers for your business. Solution 4: Create a coupon You can also create coupon codes for your items and submit them to major couponing sites likes RetailMeNot, Wow-Coupons, CouponSherpa and more. There are dozens of these out there, many of which are free. Anytime a prospective customer looks up a discount coupon for your store, your special offer of a discount on your excess inventory item will pop up, and help get that customer into your store where he or she will likely find additional items to purchase.

6 Solution 5: Liquidate Many retailers don t have the time to do the research that some of the above solutions suggest. If that s your case, or if you have a larger quantity of inventory to move, consider partnering with a liquidation company specializing in selling off excess or obsolete goods. Programs like Via Trading s LiquidateNow, among others, offer several options, including selling the goods to one buyer as one lot, or selling it as multiple lots to multiple buyers to recover a higher return. As you research, pay attention to what liquidators do for the vendors they work with. Programs like LiquidateNow write short case studies for their vendors, giving them added online exposure. In addition to these solutions, retailers can consider donating their excess goods to charities. This usually means a tax write-off, and some charities will link to the donor on their website, or otherwise allow the retailer to use the donation as a PR piece. Craigslist can also be a great way to move larger items like furniture, and has the added benefit of being very regionally targeted. Any ads you place on Craigslist for your inventory can include information about your store or website, to help drive additional foot or web traffic to your business. The point is, just because it s not making you money the way you hoped it would, doesn t make it an outright bad purchase. You can get creative and recuperate at least part of your investment (if not all), while simultaneously creating opportunities to get your business s name out into the world.

7 Alternative Ways to Liquidate Merchandise Large liquidation companies tend to help businesses liquidate larger lots of inventory. There is often a lot of work that needs to be done to prepare a lot for liquidation, and small quantities are often times not worthwhile for liquidation companies. However, this doesn t mean that you re stuck with your excess inventory forever! The following are additional suggestions you can use in your excess inventory liquidation efforts through publicly available channels.

8 1. ebay 2. ebay Wholesale ebay is a global marketplace with millions of worldwide users, and it is increasingly visited by retailers looking to purchase wholesale goods. Did you know that there is a whole section of ebay.com? Virtually all ebay product categories contain a wholesale subsection. If you have a smaller lot (a few hundred pieces) of a given item or mix of items, list it on ebay with as much information as you can. You can set a or best offer price and field offers from interested buyers. You can also split the inventory into multiple smaller lots and make more affordable bundles that can be purchased by multiple buyers. You can also split your lot up by category and list each category separately on ebay. ebaywholesaledeals_logosince the traditional ebay marketplace was doing so well with small wholesale lots, ebay opened up its own wholesale branch! wholesale.ebay.com features tens of thousands of wholesale lots from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. The marketplace is growing and there are not yet as many users as there are on the retail side of ebay, but if you have a larger lot to liquidate, you may find excellent leads on ebay s wholesale section.

9 3. The IMASD Believe it or not, Craigslist can be a great way to liquidate smaller lots of inventory, especially larger items that are most appropriate for in-person pickup (versus small items that can be easily mailed to a buyer). If you are sitting on overstock of furniture, large appliances or other difficult-to-move items, post some local listings on Craigslist and move them unit-by-unit to people in your area. There are often dealers on Craigslist looking to purchase bulk lots of merchandise that they can then resell by the unit (also on Craigslist). Look up postings by dealer and contact those people directly to pitch them your liquidation lot. 4. Craigslist The Internet Merchant Association of Surplus Dealers was developed decades ago; it is an online community of business owners who are looking to buy and sell inventory. If you have a larger lot of inventory to liquidate and haven t had luck going through a dedicated liquidation company, visit and fill out the form with details about your inventory. The information you fill out will be automatically ed to thousands of wholesale companies nationwide and you are bound to receive inquiries and hits on your listing.

10 5. LinkedIn LinkedIn is quickly becoming an increasingly popular space to do business. While it used to be much more about networking, it is now full of actual sales opportunities in the form of LinkedIn groups. Find groups that relate to the product you are looking to sell, to your industry or to the wholesale, closeout and liquidation categories and send out a group message to the members of those groups. Your liquidation offer will show up right in their inbox and the networking nature of the website will help spread the word quickly to a global audience.

11 How to Prepare Liquidation Goods for Shipping Wholesale liquidation merchandise is typically shipped in one of two ways: by the case (in boxes) or by the pallet (boxes stacked on top of wooden pallets). Depending on the types of liquidation goods you are working with, the quantity and the weight of the individual items and boxes, one shipping method may be more appropriate than the other. In general, if a single shipment is to contain more than 20 individual boxes, it is usually more cost-effective to ship it on a pallet rather than by the box. Wholesale liquidation companies who will liquidate your goods for you are likely to need the items to be packed in these ways.

12 1. By the case. Smaller loads of items (under 20 cases) can be packaged in brown boxes and sealed with packing tape. These boxes would then be weighed individually so that the liquidator can generate shipping labels for each box in preparation for shipping the lot to the end buyer. You can use new or used boxes for this, as long as they are in decent condition. Boxes can have printing or markings on the outside they do not need to be blank. Ensure the packing tape used is strong enough to withstand handling by shipping carriers.

13 2. By the pallet. Larger loads (over 20 cases) should be stacked on top of pallets. Pallets are wooden grids on top of which boxes are stacked for each maneuvering and shipping. Boxes should be stacked with the heaviest ones on the bottom, and no more than 8 feet tall so that they can fit into the back of a truck. Pallets should then be shrink-wrapped (preferably with blank shrink-wrap) to keep the items steady on the pallet and to hide the contents from curious eyes. Shrink-wrap can be purchased from any warehouse supply store or ordered online. Each pallet should be individually labeled and a total weight for the full load should be provided to the liquidator and/or shipping carrier.

14 Important Terms: Pallet A grid of wood on top of which boxes are stacked for easy shipping and maneuvering. Pallets have space for a forklift to pick them up and move them in and out of a truck. Shrink Wrap Shrink wrap is plastic film that is used to keep boxes steady on top of a pallet, and to hide/protect the items from being seen during shipping. Shrink wrap can be clear/transparent or black. Black wrap is typically preferable when preparing items for shipping, while transparent shrink wrap is appropriate for staging merchandise in a warehouse so customers can still see the contents of the pallet. Liftgate A motorized platform on the back of a truck that allows the pallet to be lowered to the ground from the truck s bed for easy loading and unloading. If your load is being picked up from a shipping location that does not have a loading dock, your goods will require a truck with a liftgate an important detail!

15 How to Prepare Goods for Liquidation When liquidating excess merchandise through a liquidation company, there are several steps you should follow in order to make the liquidation and proposal process as smooth as possible. Liquidators often receive many inquiries from companies looking to move their excess stock, and the more information you can provide, the more likely you are to get a deal going quickly with minimal back-and-forth s requesting additional information from you. Every merchandise liquidator works a little bit different but the general rules of thumb are that the following information should be available in some form:

16 1. A list of what you need to liquidate. Know your product, and know what you have. It is okay to have a mixed lot of every assorted items but you should be prepared to discuss the category of product, the condition of the product and approximately what your load is made up of. Liquidators will need to create website listings and marketing materials based on the information you provide so the more you know about what is being liquidated, the better. You do not need to have an exact manifest (although manifests are always preferred), but a general list of the products and quantities is usually a good starting point. 2. Photos of the products you need to liquidate. In many cases, liquidators will work on selling your lot for you sight unseen meaning you need to provide as many images as possible so that the liquidator can design the marketing materials appropriately. You can also send samples to the liquidator, but it is a good idea to take some photos of the items as well and send them over with your initial liquidation inquiry . If your product is not mainstream, a photo can help the liquidator determine what the item is, if they have a market for it and what it can be priced at.

17 3. UPC codes or other identifying information. If available, provide the liquidation company with the UPC or ASIN codes of the product you with to liquidate. They will conduct research online to see what the items are selling for across various selling platforms and being able to pinpoint the exact item is very helpful. 4. Collect your marketing materials. If you are liquidating products that you were previously selling in your core business, you may have marketing materials, brochures, campaigns, images and spec sheets that were used in your original marketing of the product. All of these items are very helpful to liquidation companies who will work with your product. Collect these materials and send them to the liquidator to help them in creating the promotional materials for your load. The more information you provide, the richer and more enticing their product listing will be for potential buyers. 5. Know the size and weight of your lot and how it is packaged. Liquidation companies will need to get shipping quotes for their customers before they can close a sale of your products. For this, they will need to know how the lot is packaged (in loose boxes or on pallets), the weight of the lot and the type of pickup location it will be. Are the items housed in a home garage? Are they in a commercial warehouse with a loading dock? Are they in a storage facility? This information is necessary in order for the liquidator to make the sale of your products to their customers. The sooner you provide the information, the sooner your lot can be pitched for sale.