Selling Excess Inventory And Upcoming Trade Shows.

We’ve all had a challenging 2020 and have come a long way in navigating our way through Covid-19.

But now things are starting to open up and trade shows are finally beginning to reschedule events. This is great news if you are interested in selling excess inventory because you can schedule meetings again with your excess inventory buyers. For the past year we have been buying closeouts on either Zoom or Face Time calls, but soon we will be able to attend trade shows and selling obsolete inventory may once again become a little bit easier.

Excess inventory buyers have had their hands full trying to buy during the pandemic. Without shows and other in-person meetings buying closeouts has been a lot of work. There is no substitute for being able to see something in person, hold an item in your hands, and touch and feel it. As buyers, we had no choice but to make adjustments in order to get through Covid and we were forced to find new and unique ways of buying closeouts, selling overstock inventory and making deals in order to keep our businesses operating.

The same is true on the vendor side of things. Our methods of selling obsolete inventory changed and we were forced to find creative and imaginative ways to move goods. We did a better job than ever of keeping our website inventory up to date, we regularly scheduled video conferences on our phones and iPad's, and we made a diligent effort to find excess inventory buyers who were willing to do business this way.

In March 2020 when it became clear the economy was shutting down and we would be working from home, I was concerned about how we would continue selling overstock inventory. Trade shows were the lifeblood of our business and we rarely picked up the phone anymore to make a sales call. So at the time I had no vision of how we would make it through by selling obsolete inventory on Whats App, Zoom, Face time, etc.

I was pleasantly surprised as I saw we were still selling overstock inventory to most of our accounts. Some customers who were considered “essential” from the beginning of the pandemic had an even stronger need for buying closeouts because their stores were so busy. I thought selling obsolete inventory and selling overstock inventory was going to be a bigger problem than it was. What we learned was that there was strong demand for product at many levels of the market and a lot of customers were still buying closeouts. Excess inventory buyers were plentiful and it seemed almost as if we were seeing the opposite of what was expected. Selling obsolete inventory was not the problem I thought it was going to be.

So here we are, hopefully at the tail end of Covid-19, with hopes of a brighter future filled with in-person meetings and trade shows in convention halls. For those of us who make a living buying closeouts and selling excess inventory this is welcome good news.