Ideas For Companies To Liquidate Surplus, Overstock And Excess Inventory

Ideas For Companies To Liquidate Surplus, Overstock And Excess Inventory

Many retailers and manufacturers find liquidating slow moving inventory difficult. Selling a product at a loss is difficult to swallow but it is always better than sitting on excess inventory that is losing value every day and costing money to store and keep secure. Instead of relying on infrequent sales of distressed, surplus and overstock inventory, often out of desperation at the end of the quarter, companies must find new methods to get rid of their inventory.

Disposing of inventory liquidation at the best price possible is one common goal in the liquidation of surplus, overstock inventory. Unfortunately, because liquidation is typically a money losing enterprise most companies do not apply the same sort of operational rigor as they do in their primary business. In fact, every dollar by which losses can be reduced is like an additional dollar of earnings. Liquidating slow moving inventory may be done in a variety of ways but always requires a trade-off between recovery and velocity.

One way to liquidate inventory from a warehouse is to see if any of the excess stock is in demand via another one of the company’s sales channels. This is an idea if a company has multiple channels. The process of moving inventory from one channel to another is called inventory balancing. Balancing the type or amount of inventory across multiple channels is effective inventory management and generally maximizes recovery at the expense of velocity.

Another way to liquidate inventory is to sell it in bulk at a significantly reduced price via auction liquidators. This is traditional liquidation and it effectively clears inventory out of a warehouse by maximizing velocity at the expense of recovery.

There are also new solutions that now exist that actually allow companies to improve both recovery and velocity simultaneously. B-Stock bstock solutions sourcing (sourcing.bstock.com) is an example of this type of solution. Their approach eliminates a great deal of inefficiency in the process and involves applying much of the same marketing and analytical rigor that any sophisticated retailer or manufacturer applies to their primary business every day.