Some tv’s, stereos, DVD players, digital cameras and the like are returned due to impulse purchasing. What happens to the all of the customer returns? What if a portion of the salvage returns are damaged?

Big box retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Kmart, Costco, Sams Club and Target will liquidate customer returned electronics. By liquidate I mean re-wholesale to smaller retailers and eBay auction sellers.

Customer returned electronics are placed on pallets and shipped by the truckload to tech savvy entrepreneurs who are reaping the benefits of reselling top name brands like Sony, JVC, Sanyo, Toshiba, Alpine, Panasonic and other brands.

Often referred to as salvage electronics, many of the items will be broken or missing pieces, but on occasion you can find open box and floor model units to resell. If you are looking to resell electronics and you have the ability to fix and/or recondition items, buying customer returned electronics might just offer you small business excellent profit potential!

Most of the suppliers I find today do not offer low enough pricing by the time you pay listing fees and final value fees on eBay. Profit margins are razor thin with electronics to begin with so adding additional costs to the sales equation leaves most aspiring eBay entrepreneurs in the dust.

I found a wholesale supplier of refurbished small electronics that I think will work for eBay sales. In fact, I have spent some time cross checking closed auction on eBay with this suppliers pricing. Researching closing completed auctions is simply a matter of choosing the “completed item” button when performing an advanced search. By doing this you can get a good idea if supplier pricing will allow enough profit margin to warrant an inventory purchase.

I have created a small chart to show a few items that I researched:

While the above markups are not huge, I believe most of those who are selling small refurbished electronics on eBay are doing so in volume. Closing 100 auctions making $10 each amounts to a $1000 profit!

Here is a listing of what this supplier currently has to offer. Please note full contact details are also given on the PDF list.

Some third party reverse logistics companies handle electronics returns, refurbish products and sell consumer returns by the pallet and truckload in an effort to recoup otherwise lost dollars for the original retailer.

If interested, Wikipedia offers a full page description and explanation about the reverse logistics industry.

Why do we care? We as resellers of retail merchandise can find suppliers tracking down those that are involved in the return processing of retail merchandise, especially electronics. Finding reverse logistics providers is not hard, but it takes time. One way I routinely search is to Google the current attendees of the reverse logistics conferences that take place each year.

Google each one and investigate each website; some will offer sales of raw returns or refurbished products, while others will not. Also check event sponsors.

I have found several sources for cell phones, ipods, small electronics and computer equipment using this method. Good luck and let me know if you find a Wholesale goldmine!

The HDTV’s featured from the link below are open-box customer returns from one of the world’s largest online retailers. All TVs have been power tested by Liquidation.com and have intact screens and frames. As customer returns, there may be blemishes or minor damage from handling and they may be missing accessories. This is the extent, which sounds like a great deal to me!

They do recommend that you pick the units up rather than ship, but this should not be a problem as they have the HDTV’s in three warehouses across the country. You should be able to find one near you.

Incredible deals on open box brand name HDTVs.

I have found that these loads have a great resell value for eBay. I thought I would show our readers here at the blog the actual manifest from the load I just purchased…it is below. I paid $1,500.75 for the entire lot below and I am hoping to more than double my investment by reselling on eBay and through our retail discount store.

I bought the following load, which was fully manifested, from the source found in my guide….Liquidation Secrets. Loads of wholesale and customer returned video games can also be purchased from Doba.com.

Wholesale Video Games

I have access to hundreds of manifested loads of apparel, electronics, general merchandise, furniture, shoes and tools at anyone time. I have a manifest below of a single pallet of customer returned electronics. It looks to be a good assortment of DVD Players, Video Game accessories and a few iPods.

By viewing the pallet manifest I can get an idea of contents before I make the decision to buy. Years ago (and I am talking years), the norm was “Blind” pallets. You would shell out the dollars and hope to God when you pallets arrive you will be able to recoup your investment and make a profit.

Lets look at this pallet load:

This pallet contains 102 items with an original retail value of $12,887.00

The pallet below has a current liquidation price (your Cost) of $1,289.00!

Would you like to be able to view extensive manifests before making a pallet or truckload purchase? I share all of my liquidation sources with you in my guide. If you are new to purchasing closeouts, liquidations, returns and excess merchandise do not make another purchase until you read my 137 page guide below!

The lot consisted of 18 cameras including Sony, Sanyo and kodak. They are not real high-end models, but somewhere in the $100-$250 retail range each. My plan is to auction the cameras off on eBay.

All of the cameras were listed as customer returned and the auction even stated that the cameras would power on, but some units had screen damage.

I know many of you have read my posts here at the blog about selling broken items on eBay. Yes, I said broken….Here is the thinking behind selling one mans trash: eBay provides a huge audience of “tech” savvy individuals who scour the auctions for repairable electronic items. If you do not believe me go right to eBay and search in the “Completed” auctions for “Broken Digital Camera”

Here are a couple of the cameras in the lot I purchased:

I have paid for the auction and shipping to my estimation should be around $50 to my door. My total cost for 18 cameras will come in at about $350.00. This averages out to about $19 per camera. I will do my best to list all at once on eBay and let you know how the bidding goes. Wish me luck-

Auctions Closing Today at Liquidation.com

 Wholesale Electronics

What could be better than Wholesale Electronics? How about below wholesale liquidation electronics?

Take a look at the following manifest of customer returned iPod mp3 players, which is currently up for auction with a bid of $650.00!

Wholesale iPod Manifest

Most small retailers including eBay resellers cannot get wholesale access to the large electronics distributors unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in inventory. But, you can purchase liquidated, customer returned electronics. In you are unfamiliar with customer returns, please check out our blog post on our sister site Wholesale Secrets.

The best place to purchase smaller lots of name brand electronics below wholesale is Liquidation.com . All of the electronics auctions start at $100 and the great thing about bidding on small lots is the low shipping costs! Think about it…How much do you think it would cost to ship 10-15 iPods? Not much.

Bulk lots of consumer electronics start at just $100!

I went ahead and uploaded the full manifest so we can review this pallet together. I like to review each item on the manifest and cross reference the list with completed auctions on eBay to get a good idea if a particular manifest will be profitable.

Keep in mind that although you can purchase this pallet well below wholesale, some item will be damaged as the entire pallet is listed in the condition of “customer returned”.

If you are interested in finding pallets of customer returned video games and electronics for that matter, you should check out my guide “Wholesale Liquidations Exposed” where I share all of my liquidation buying experience. I also disclose the source for purchasing pallets such as the one I am about to review today.

Lets look at two items from this manifest, which contains a total of 193 items including duplicates of some titles.

Keep in mind that at the time of this blog post, this pallet had an average cost of $6.85 per unit before shipping.

The first item that caught my attention was the item listed as, Xbox 360 Rock Band Special Edition. I went over to eBay and entered this title in the “completed” auction search and found that a total of 17 auctions have closed within the last 24 hours with successful bids. The lowest being $37 and the highest closed at $158.19. That is a huge range, but at least I was able to discern whether or not this item would sell.

The second item I researched was the Nintendo Wii Guitar hero. This item on eBay was selling just as well with a low closing bid of $44 and a high of $95 (with free shipping).

All in all, the pallet seems to be filled with some of the most current video game titles that would sell on eBay. You must factor in the the amount of damage you would receive as this is a pallet of customer returns which could range from damaged packaging to broken and/or missing pieces. In addition, you will have to factor in shipping to your final cost per unit.

Have you had experience buying pallets of customer returned electronics? What was the damage ratio versus “open box”?

 More salvage electronics available now?

With the news of Circuit City closing its doors after filling for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection back in November of 2008, you might be thinking about a flood of liquidation merchandise.  Personally, I would think twice before I bought of truckload of liquidation merchandise from this insolvent retailer.

“All Sales Are Final” when a retailer is liquidating stock for a scheduled store/chain closure.  Just from a logical standpoint, if Circuit City is not accepting returns, there becomes a shortage  of inventory for those who purchase salvage electronics…right?

I would think that any pallets and truckloads of salvage electronics bought from this retailing giant should be considered “The Bottom of the Barrel”.  In addition to that thought, most vendors of Circuit City will probably be accepting a massive amount of “Vendor Returns” to offset and/or recoup outstanding debt.

Liquidation Advice - Stay away from Circuit City salvage merchandise. Those who purchase salvage electronics should look into buying Best Buy pallets and truckloads of customer returns. We share full contact details for Best Buy in our informative book… Liquidation Secrets Revealed 2009. Check it out by clicking the link below.