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Handling Overstock The Easy Way
There are many ways to deal with your closeout inventory. You can create an eBay account and try to sell them yourself. You can experiment with different special sales direct to your customers. You can try different reward systems with your best accounts.
All of these things assume that you have endless free time to experiment and find ways to get rid of the overstock yourself. None of these methods will rid you of all your overstock; in most cases it won’t rid you of even the majority of your overstock.
The goal is to make the process easier. While you could immediately go to a certain closeout company, there is no need for that. We believe there’s a better, step-by-step process.
We recommend you walk the path of least resistance. First, try a simple closeout sale. Do not spend too much time advertising or organizing it. Just put up a few signs and a few bins, and see what happens. But keep in mind that if something didn’t sell in your regular season, it won’t magically fly off the shelves in a closeout sale, no matter how you do it.
If you think you can make a few tweaks and increase the quantity being sold in your simple closeout sale, by all means do so. But don’t fall into the trap of believing that you can go much further than that. If you only manage to sell 10% of your overstock using a closeout sale, don’t be disappointed that the sale didn't bring you to a 50% rate – it most likely won't.
At this point, it is time to contact a closeout company. We recommend calling a few fellow business owners, preferably in a similar market. Ask them what closeout company they would recommend and consider their choices.
If you have nobody to ask for recommendations, then you will probably have to do some deeper interviewing of the different closeout companies to see which ones fit your needs.
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