Snowfall is bad news for stores but good news for Liquidation.com
At this time of year, retailers typically gather up the remains of holiday merchandise, add Valentine’s Day leftovers, and package them as a Presidents` Day sale. But this year, record snowfall on the East Coast in mid-February kept the usual hordes of bargain-hungry shoppers out of area stores.
That’s resulted in a boom at Liquidation.com, the online arm of offline liquidator Liquidation Services Inc. The b2b web site, which takes lots from retailers and sells them to smaller retailers, distributors and other professional buyers–-even other liquidators-–has seen the volume of inventory from stores increase 50% over the past 10 days over the same period last year, vice president of marketing Asad Harron tells InternetRetailer.com. The extra volume is from a combination of existing retail clients and new ones, Harron adds.
And the merchandise is moving. “We’ve found there is a very large demand for surplus. Our buyers have gladly accepted the increase in inventory,” says Harron. “They keep telling us they want more.” Harron adds that Liquidation.com’s buyer base is growing rapidly, adding new buyers at the rate of about 5,000 per month.
The sudden surge in supply hasn’t depressed prices. Liquidation.com’s recovery rate is holding steady at its usual range of 10% to 40% on the original retail dollar, Harron says. Recovery rates vary according to the category and mix of products sold in a lot, their condition, and other variables. Helping to keep prices stable are the auction dynamic-–Liquidation.com sells only at auction-–and the site’s centralized offering of a broad array of product categories in a secondary market that is generally “very fragmented,” says Harron.
Back...
