How to Determine If You Should Buy From a Wholesaler

How to Determine If You Should Buy From a Wholesaler

By Clifford Woods

With all the current news regarding striving and faltering stores, considering liquidation sales is a profitable alternative.

 In the case of liquidation sales, things are not necessarily as they seem, so you will have to keep an eye out for the things below anytime you are at a liquidation sale.


What is a Liquidation Sale? To begin with, liquidation sales are usually managed by a liquidator who purchases the inventory in declining stores and then resells it on their own. Doing away with the goods is really a supplementary goal, at least in the beginning.

The main objective of liquidators is, needless to say, to make all of the profit they can. Therefore, products are not necessarily listed to sell, though eventually after some time they will simply want to get rid of their current inventory which means you can snag it for a cheap price.

Know the Real Price: To be able to offer a noticeable price cut, liquidators actually increase costs above the manufacturer's suggested retail price before listing any discount rates. Therefore, despite having a 10% discount, you may find yourself having to pay a lot more for the product than you might have before the sale began.

Since sales usually run for a few months, the liquidator has enough time to target consumers who do not know any better and make huge profits by offering small discount rates on overpriced items. When they finally get right down to real discounts, the majority of anything that you really wanted in the first place is going to be long gone. 

One more problem is that, since the store is not going to exist soon, all product sales are usually final. This means that, if you find that you have problems with your purchase, you will have to address the manufacturer instead of taking it back to the store.

Helpful Advice for Getting the Most Out of a Liquidation Sale: For anyone that is considering buying products from a liquidation sale, below is a list of a few guidelines to get the most out of your shopping experience:

1. Use a Credit Card to Buy: This is especially true for goods that will be shipped. In the event that your goods never arrive, you are able to go through your card company to get your cash back.
2. Watch Out for Extended Warranties: You need to be cautious about extended warranties. When it comes to liquidation sales, you need to be a lot more careful, as the guarantee might outlive the vendor. In many instances, it is probably best to just depend on the manufacturer's extended warranty, which is not affected by the merchant's shutting down.
3. Do Not Go to a Sale for the Sake of It: It is easy to be caught in the thrill of a sale and make buys that you will later on regret. The issue here is that, as mentioned above, liquidation sales are usually final and you will not have a chance to re-think your choice and return the item.
4. Check if You Have Gift Cards: Considering that the business is going out of business, time is running out for you to use your gift card. If you do not spend it before the liquidation sale comes to an end, your gift card is going to completely useless.
5. Research: Although it is possible to get a good price, it is just as likely that you will lose money. If you know what you would like to purchase then there is absolutely no reason for not knowing just how much you can get the item for somewhere else. This is especially important for those who want to resell the items themselves.

---

Clifford Woods is the owner of Rapid-Liquidations
We buy complete inventories of unwanted or discontinued consumer merchandise for cash and sell complete inventories of consumer merchandise at about 15 to 20% of retails prices!



If you are interested, we also have a complete, easy-to-follow manual on how to get started in this business yourself.

More Basic Liquidation Terms to Know

More Basic Liquidation Terms to Know

By Clifford Woods

Below are some more terms that are commonly used in the liquidation business that you will surely come across.

Manufacturing Cost
This term stands for the overall costs of all the resources used in the creation of a product. The production cost is usually split into about three groups: manufacturing overhead, materials cost, and labor cost.

This is basically the cost to a manufacturing company of making a product consisting of direct materials, direct labor, and factory overhead; also called manufacturing expense.


Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price: MSRP
The price that a product is to be sold for in the retail stores as suggested by the manufacturer that creates the product. MSRP doesn't always match what the store sells the item for or the price that buyers would like to pay for the item. Stores might need to set their price ranges lower than the MSRP in order to move stock, particularly for products with minimal demand or in a slow economy.

Retail
Retail is the word used to describe the sale of anything. It is the selling of products and services from people or organizations to the buyer. Retailers are a section of an integrated system referred to as the supply chain.

A merchant buys products in huge amounts from producers and manufacturers directly or from a wholesaler, after which they sell smaller amounts to the customer to make a profit. Basically the sale of something in general. Retail is the sale of goods and services from individuals or businesses to the end-user.

Bulk Purchasing
This particular term refers to the purchasing of a large amount of units. If more units are purchased, then the price per unit can be lowered to a negotiated price. Wholesale is essentially the selling of goods in large amounts at a reduced unit price to retail vendors.

The wholesaler typically sells at a slightly cheaper sales price per unit if the retailer agrees to buy a large amount of units so that the wholesaler can make some profit.
In a nut shell; the purchase of much larger quantities than the usual, for a unit price that is lower than the usual.

Creditor
A creditor is any person or firm that provides credit by lending another company or person borrowed money so long as it is repaid by a set date in the future. Creditors are typically labeled as either real or personal. 

Real lenders have authorized legal agreements with the debtor allowing the lender to take any of the debtor's possessions if they do not repay the loan. 
Personal creditors are simply your family or friends that lend you money.

Wholesale List
A wholesale list is an accumulation of data providing information for numerous wholesale businesses. Anybody can use a wholesale list instead of creating one from scratch.  This can save a lot of time as the producer of a wholesale list have already done this. A person planning to purchase computers from suppliers do not need to waste time and energy trying to find such companies since there already exists a wholesale list on that type of product already.

Estate Liquidation
An estate liquidation is just like an estate sale in that the primary purpose is to liquidate the property with an estate sale firm. In a liquidation, the items too valuable to be safely kept in the home are sold. The majority of liquidators that carry out the estate liquidation will charge a percentage of the total net profit for their services.
---

Clifford Woods is the owner of Rapid-Liquidations.
If you are interested, we also have a complete, easy-to-follow manual on how to get started in this business yourself.