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.
1. eBay
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.
2. eBay Wholesale
Since 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.
3. The IMASD
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 www.theimasd.net and fill out the form with details about your inventory.
The information you fill out will be automatically emailed to thousands of wholesale companies nationwide and you are bound to receive inquiries and hits on your listing.
4. Craigslist
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.
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.