Liquidator helps manufacturers reach store shelves

Excess Technologies LLC, a Duluth, GA, merchandise liquidator, is using the Internet to help manufacturers put their products on retailers’ shelves. In one example, the liquidator helped a plumbing fixtures maker buy out the 900-store inventory of a competitor to open up some space in a national home center chain, Joel Holtzman, president and CEO, tells InternetRetailer.com.

Without the Internet, the whole process would prove “tedious, time consuming, more expensive and less successful,” Holtzman says. “The web is the enabler to make this happen.” The liquidator uses the Internet to prospect for merchandise, locate and contact buyers, sell merchandise on surplus sites, and monitor inventory in real time.

Under Excess Technologies’ “shelf pulls and store re-set program,” the fixtures manufacturer was able to buy the retailer’s entire stock of a competitor’s merchandise because Excess was ready to dispose of it, Holtzman says. First, the manufacturer and the retailer agreed on a price. Then the manufacturer and Excess Technologies set a discounted price. As part of the agreement, the manufacturer also worked out a deal with the retailer to take over the space that would be vacated.

The retailer’s 900 stores then used small parcel carriers to send the goods – in this case, faucets – to one of the Excess warehouses. Some 3,500 of the faucets, each with a retail price of $196, were collected at an Excess facility in Florida. The manufacturer could monitor the roundup of product in real time, thanks to the liquidator’s central warehouse system.

From there, Excess distributed the faucets to discount home improvement retailers with a single store or just a few, as well as to exporters, flea marketers, eBay resellers and surplus merchandise web sites that are a key to the liquidation of goods bought or taken on consignment from Excess clients, Holtzman says.

Excess also uses e-mail programs hosted by third-party providers to communicate with the 16,000 registered buyers of its products. When a product becomes available the company can send e-mails to people on the list. Many clients and buyers find Excess Technologies on the web, so the company relies on organic search optimization and paid search.