The Secret Sauce To Running A Great Closeout Business.


sell excess inventory sell surplus inventory

There are many parts to running a successful closeout company. Selling closeouts takes a lot of work and liquidators often don’t have what it takes to become exceptional over just good enough. Companies that sell excess inventory exist in all different shapes and sizes and they all have the same goal – to get rid of obsolete stock. But there is a difference between companies that do a great job and companies that just get the job done. Here are 4 things that I think make up that “special sauce” of excellence.

1. Treat all customers the same. I believe in trying to treat all of our customers alike. Naturally, due to human nature we just want to do more and do better for the “big buyers”. But overall we try our best to treat everyone with respect and give all our customers the courtesy and attention they deserve. We sell excess inventory and closeouts to small family operations all the way up to publicly traded companies. As liquidators we deal with many different types and sizes of customers, and to succeed we need all of them. Many of the small customers we do business with today are the same accounts we relied on when we first started in the closeout business more than 35 years ago.

2. Treat all vendors alike. We also expect all vendors will be treated the same. Some vendors can only supply us with small amounts of inventory that we don’t make much money on. Other vendors sell us large volumes of closeouts that we can distribute throughout our entire network. Liquidators are a dime a dozen so to be special we go out of our way to treat people with respect, regardless of whether we are going to hit a single or a home run.

3. We do exactly what we say we will. When a company sells excess inventory we tell them they will be paid immediately. The price to get rid of obsolete stock is often having to sell at a big loss. Our business model is one in which we buy closeouts and liquidate inventory cheap; there is nothing we can do that will allow us to pay more. But we can do everything else right. We can meet our vendors expectations of us by doing exactly what we promise. Take the entire inventory, pickup quickly, pay right away, keep product away from regular existing accounts, etc. We keep our word through the entire closeout process.

4. Make it happen. We are committed to always having new merchandise for our customers. The only thing we can offer our accounts is the new inventory we have today. Yesterdays closeouts are already old news so we have to begin again everyday and just make it happen.