How To Liquidate Excess Inventory From Your 3PL Warehouse.
3PL warehouses have become wildly popular in recent years, and there is no doubt they can be a great way for businesses to manage their inventory. But when you have excess closeout merchandise or old surplus inventory that is no longer selling, it is important to get rid of this dead stock so you don’t continue paying storage fees. There are companies that only buy excess inventory and they can help you with this.
You will need to take some steps to accomplish this goal, but in the end it will be worth it because you can save yourself a lot of money. First you must identify the inventory that is no longer profitable; basically any closeout merchandise you want to get rid of. To do this you can run sales reports and flag any items that are either slow moving inventory or have not been selling at all. These are the items that are likely sitting in your warehouse not generating profits, and you will want to contact excess inventory buyers to see if they would be interested in buying closeouts similar to what you have.
Once you identify the items or inventory to get rid of, you will want to get an accurate count of what you have. Excess inventory buyers will all ask you pretty much the same questions, and one of the first will be what your quantities are. It is not uncommon for a company to have more closeout merchandisethan they originally thought, because when old inventory sits in the warehouse for a long time it is often overlooked. Once you put your mind to identifying this overstock merchandise you may find more than you think. But this should not be a problem because companies that buy excess inventory and discontinued products are accustomed to buying closeouts in very large quantities.
After you complete your inventory you will want to take pictures of all your closeout merchandise. When you contact various companies who are buying closeouts, they will likely all ask you some of the same questions. You will find that any excess inventory buyer will ask you for product descriptions of all the closeout merchandise you are wanting to sell, quantities available, case pack information and pictures. Some may also want to know where the inventory is located and how many pallets it will be.
Your final step in this process will be to do research on companies that are buying closeouts. There are some closeout buyers who specialize in specific categories, while other inventory liquidators take a more general approach when buying closeouts. There are a lot of excess inventory buyers in the United States, so you should search online as well as talk with friends and business associates. It is possible you already know someone who can buy excess stock or refer you to other excess inventory buyers. Once you have a number of viable contacts, you can begin calling each of them to find out what there level of interest may be for your products. It shouldn’t take long before you find someone who can make you an offer.
