If you are trying to start a business selling products to the general public then an excellent source of cheap, good quality merchandise is to source customer returns, closeouts and retail overstocks. These are products which offer great profit potential, especially if you understand what they entail and the ways that you can onsell them to customers.
A lot of people don’t realize that they can make money from buying customer returns and reselling them in their stores, whether those are e-commerce stores or physical retail outlets – but it’s an excellent source of profits because you can buy the items so cheaply and can easily sell them to your customers. Of course, there are a few pointers that you should take into consideration when you buy customer returns.
Often the products have been purchased and taken home by the original buyer and that means that the majority wholesale liquidators will not be able to provide you with the packaging for the goods that you are buying. So you’ll just need to advise your buyers when the items don’t come with a box.
The reasons that customer returns happen include being a wrong size, color or unwanted gift. Also there are many items that will have some cosmetic damage, including being dented or having something missing, or not working when it was taken out of the box. Sometimes these goods are repairable and other times they are just suitable for parts for other products.
On the other end of the spectrum are store overstocks – which is also a great way to buy wholesale products in bulk. Store overstocks happen when the items simply don’t get bought in the original selling store. They will be brand new, undamaged merchandise and sometimes even a sale price won’t make them sell in the location of the store. These are great goods to sell online, as often you will buy them at rock bottom prices and you will be able to reach a market that is happy to buy them – making you profits along the way.
If you obtain customer returns, you may wonder where you can resell them. The truth is that is entirely dependent on what you are buying. Many of these products will sell extremely well on places like eBay, at flea markets and on craigslist. Other times you may need to look for slightly more specialist sites where you can offer items directly to the market they are intended for. Items such as clothing will sell very well in a general retail store, as well as at market stalls and online.
When you buy customer returns you should always think outside the box when you are reselling. Sometimes it’s good to package these wholesale goods in similar ‘lots’ so that you can sell many at a time to someone interested in a particular type of product. If you offer a good combination of mechandise at a cheap price, you will set yourself amongst many successful retailers who understand what great profits they can make from wholesale customer returns.
