Liquidation and Overstock Solutions

Liquidation truckloads can consist of unsold products which include overstock, open box, and box damage. Liquidation truckloads can also consist of sold products, which are generally referred to as customer returns. Many truckloads consist of a combination of sold and unsold products. The characteristics of sold and unsold items can be quite different.

Unsold Products

The biggest advantage of these loads is that most of the items will be in good sellable condition. Overstock and shelf pulls are primarily in like new condition with good packaging. Open box assumes the box was opened, but the item is still in near new condition. Box damage assumes the packaging is damaged but not the item itself. The downside to truckloads of unsold items is the lack of variety. Many liquidation truckloads consisting of primarily unsold items will have many repeats. Sometimes there can be hundreds of the same item in a load. Some loads with over 4,000 items could still have only 20 or 30 different items.

Returns or Sold Products

There are many reasons people return merchandise. Changed their mind, did not fit their needs, wrong color, wrong style, and more. Let's call these remorse returns that were sold and returned but not used. There is always a percentage of returns that are damaged. That can vary greatly by the retailer. Online returns are generally cleaner than store returns, but there are some stores that consistently turn out nice clean returns loads. Many customer returns truckloads contain a wide variety of items.

Salvage

The word salvage gets thrown around a lot in the liquidation industry. It means an item is supposed to still have some use but many times the only use is for parts. Don't expect to get many items to sell individually with salvage items. The parts do have value in many product categories like appliances.

What Loads are Best For You?

Single stores or stores with only a few locations will be better off with customer returns truckloads in many instances. A good variety of merchandise on each truckload is important. There will be some loss due to damage but there are certain online and store customer returns truckloads that are consistently clean with minimal damage.

Regional stores and stores with numerous locations can do well with unsold general merchandise truckloads. They are best equipped to deal with all the repeats. The majority of the items should be in good sellable condition.

Most liquidation truckloads are processed or unprocessed by the retailer or jobber that prepares the loads.

Processed truckloads have the retailer or jobber categorize, sort, and/or remove items in the load. There are several reasons for this, most of which maximize returns to the retailer. A retailer may remove all the mixers, tools, cameras, or other premium items from a general merchandise truckload and sell them separately for a premium price. Whoever buys the sorted items probably pays too much to make any money. The remaining truckload is worth a lot less with many of the premium items removed. Most liquidation truckloads are currently processed but at many different levels.

Unprocessed or minimally processed truckloads may have some of the highest retail items like computers and mobile phones removed, but a lot of the premium items are left in the load, making for a higher value better variety load. There are a handful of retailers in the industry that still only minimally process loads. This is where our best truckloads come from.

Manifested truckloads have a list with information on each item of the load. Description of the item, SKU, MSRP, MAP (Market adjusted price or current selling price) are among some of the details. The cost of these loads is usually determined by a percentage of the stated retail value, which would be MSRP or MAP. The majority of truckloads are valued at MSRP, which is usually an inflated number. A product sells for MSRP when introduced, but that price usually falls the longer the product remains on the market. They should be stated at MAP so you are paying a percentage of current retail, but that requires additional work, and it also reduces the proceeds so they are left at MSRP. It is common for MSRP values to be 30% above MAP. That means you are paying 30% more as a percentage of current retail value. It can be difficult to get high return loads when purchasing manifested loads due to the way the items are priced, with one exception. Appliance and other high-value, piece count loads are usually manifested.

Unmanifested truckloads are sold in bulk with no actual valuation. There could be criteria like 26 pallets, average piece count per pallet, estimated load value, categories of items included, and more. There is no known actual retail value of these loads, so they are usually sold at a flat price per truckload. There is a chance you get more than you pay for since the value of the load is not limited to the actual retail value. You don’t get the inflated retail value issued since there is no manifest and no actual retail value.

What Truckload is Right for Me?

Many general merchandise truckloads are unmanifested and sold at a flat price. The majority of general merchandise truckloads we sell are unmanifested since they can offer substantially more value than manifested loads. This is common with truckloads of over 1,000 pieces with moderate retail values. Appliance truckloads are usually manifested, as are many truckloads with low-count high-value items.

A long-established business model is for a private warehouse to bring a load in from a retailer and process it in multiple ways. One way is to break the load down and sell it by the partial truckload or the pallet. There are significant overhead costs added to the items with this form of processing. Premium items are removed from the load and sold off at the retail level online or at the warehouse. This practice devalues the load. There are costs that are added to the cost of the loads including warehouse overhead, handling by paid staff, shipping from the retailer to the warehouse, profit to the warehouse, and more. Your cost on the load could be the same or even lower than a direct shipped load. The big issue is you don't know what was removed from the load by the private warehouse before shipping to you. 

Many of these private warehouses exist to service small-quantity buyers. Most liquidation merchandise comes in full truckloads from the retailer's facility. The private warehouses can offer partial truckloads or pallets, but they will have a heap of costs added to them so the prices of the merchandise need to be raised significantly, or premium items removed and sold off by the private warehouse to make the business work.

Direct Shipments

These are simply Liquidation Truckloads that are shipped directly from the retailer or jobber to the end user. No private warehouses, no middlemen. These loads may cost the same as those from middlemen's warehouses but are not subject to the additional layer of processing and premium product removal. This is the best way to purchase liquidation merchandise. Most retailers are not set up to sell their liquidation inventory to individual businesses, so they use companies like All Prime Products to do it. We ship the merchandise directly to you with no middleman monkey business.

Many retailers use online auctions to sell liquidation inventory at the retail and wholesale levels. Many of the premium items are sold at the retail level. The remaining leftover inventory is sold by the truckload. Do you want to source inventory for your store by being the highest bidder competing with others who only need a sales tax ID to participate? Many of these loads sell for amounts way above profitability due to this. We do not believe this is a good way to source merchandise for resale.

Retailers now sell a portion of their overstock and return products themselves. This is accomplished by online auctions where the merchandise goes to the highest bidder. High retail items are sold retail individually while the leftover truckloads are sold in bulk. Online auctions are not always the best way to source merchandise for resale. Liquidation stores need to sell items at liquidation prices which can be difficult while trying to be the highest bidder to obtain your inventory.

This is where retailers offer their overstock and return inventory to liquidation companies which in turn sell them to their customers at set prices. No bidding necessary. Liquidation companies better understand the value of the inventory so the prices are kept in check. No price inflation brought on by inexperienced bidders.