Good liquidation suppliers

Hello,

I have been feverishly looking for a supplier of liquidation lots. I have purchased some home depot store return pallets from a local auction and they weren't so good. It was expected. But I have seen some sellers on ebay selling similar items and appear to be very successful. But there items seem to be better. I have gone thru all the suppliers listed in the directories and found a few such as Jacobs trading, genco marketplace, tdw, pallets.com and a few others. But as I research all I read is complaint after complaint after complaint of receiving nothing but junk. A certain percentage of non usuable items is expected, but it appears that entire loads or shipments are no good.

Has anyone had any experiences with any of these companies. I have been growing my ebay store and selling more and more and I want to get into this market. So when I finish selling off all my current inventory I want to make a purchase of a couple of pallets of items, I just don't want to give someone a couple thousand dollars of my money just to get there trash, or all the left overs that all the big buyers left when they got there loads cherry picked.

Jason

Hi Jason,

We do have a few surplus suppliers listed within our directory, one you haven't mentioned there is viatrading. I can't really recommend any personally, but I would suggest that they are one to take a close look at.

The problem with surplus is that many buyers have crazy high expectations, they treat surplus suppliers like wholesalers, which of course they aren't. Buying surplus for the inexperienced can be a mine field, plenty of ways for things to go pear shaped for buyers, so you need a dealer who will work with you and help you understand the market and the stock they sell.

One tip I would give when dealing in this market, be careful what you call junk and then dispose of. A broken vacuum cleaner may still have usable parts to sell, a broken stereo may still appeal to a buyer that knows how to repair it, an incomplete knife block set still has some knives you can see and even a block on its own and so on.

The point I am trying to make is that many don't see the potential if products they deem rubbish, the real trick to successful trading in this market is squeezing every last little bit of profit out of it and even when you don't think you can sell it, even for parts, keep it because you never know when you'll get another in another load that you may be able to make a complete unit out of and then sell.

A really good dealer in this market throws very little away and understands that it isn't always a quick way to make money, but most who do it right do make money from it in the long run.

Talk with the supplier, discuss the damage rate you can expect in your load of choice and so on. Keep your expectations in check and dabble a little would be my best advice. Key thing to remember with any investment, if you can't afford to lose it, then don't spend it to start with!

Thanks for the reply Marc. I don't mind getting a percentage of items that need repair or to be stripped for sale of parts. I am very skilled mechanically and with electrical. For example, with the home depot pallets I purchased all the shop vacs did not work. 2 of them I repaired the switches and 3 of them I had to take the motors apart and solder in a new thermal fuse in the motor windings. So I don't mind some of that. It's just from reading the reviews online, not here on salehoo, that make it seem that your whole load of product will be unusable or need a repair. I just want to find inventory that say is 50% resellable, 25% repairable and 25% good for parts only and so on. And thank you for clarifying the wholesale vs surplus. I was using the terms incorrectly.

Hi Jason,

You sound like the kind of guy that is perfect for the surplus market, having the skills to repair in this game is super valuable. With surplus loads, a lot depends on the loads you buy. You can buy complete junk loads if you want to, they're available, but loads are graded and better quality loads are also available, but at a more expensive price.

For example, there is something called master case stock, this is un-touched brand new stock. the store may have gone out of business or have excess stock they had to clear for whatever reason, but this is premium goods that you can get when available, but at a premium price. Then you have your garbage loads, broken, bits missing and so on, that's at the cheapest end of the stock rating. Then you pretty much have everything in between, a mixture, 10% damage, 20% damage and so on, in fact a lot of suppliers will custom load for you. You tell them what you want and the condition you want it in and, if possible, many will do that for you so you are in control of your purchase.

Of course that kind of service is again, a more premium service and will be charged as such by the supplier.

That's the beauty of the surplus market, you can pretty much make it what you want, but you have to understand how the market works and have a great supplier who will look after you, not all of them do unfortunately.