What Is Excess Inventory And How To Sell It.


sell inventory, wholesale liquidation

If you have excess inventory in your 3PL warehouse it is likely taking up valuable warehouse space and costing you money. For those of us in the wholesale merchandise business, we know it is bad policy to hold onto dead inventory that doesn’t sell. It makes much more sense to sell inventory and turn goods rather than hope for the right customer to eventually come along who may or may not buy something.

The wholesale liquidation business model is built around the idea of liquidating old inventory to free up cash and warehouse space for new goods. Any old merchandise or dead stock that isn’t moving quickly would be considered extra or surplus merchandise. You can liquidate merchandise and sell inventory of this nature a number of different ways. Below are three of the more popular and standard methods:

1. Promote. Sometimes simply promoting your products is enough to increase the rate of sale on slow movers. In this case you may consider giving salespeople bonuses for selling old merchandise or you can offer increased commissions for selling stale inventory. When you sell your wholesale merchandise this way, it allows you to get the most money for your products while taking the smallest price reductions.

2. Discount. You can discount your inventory to make the prices more attractive to your customers. If you have excess inventory that either is selling slowly or is not selling at all, it may only take some appropriate price reductions to create value. This type of wholesale liquidation process should always be part of your plan in alleviating extra merchandise. If this doesn’t work you can move onto more aggressive methods to sell inventory and have a wholesale liquidation.

3. Auction. You can hold an auction to sell inventory to the highest bidder. In this case you would have to be willing to take whatever prices are offered. You can wholesale merchandise by the item, by the case, or even by the pallet or truckload. The common denominator is that you will be accepting whatever prices the buyers are willing to pay. The downside to this is you lose all control over how much your products sell for and you may find your wholesale liquidation sale did not bring in as much money as you anticipated. If you have excess inventory that doesn’t seem to move any other way, this may be an option.

There are still other ways to sell closeouts. You can try selling merchandise out of the country, you can sell closeouts online, you can try posting a closeout sale on social media, or even trading inventory with other wholesalers, But if you have excess inventory the key is you must find a way to get rid of it. Storing old merchandise is very expensive and it stops you from selling inventory that is more profitable. When you have excess inventory, the best practice is to have a wholesale liquidation to clear out the warehouse.