Holding A Retail Liquidation Sale – Event Sale

There is a very popular trend in the retail liquidation industry called “Warehouse” or “Event” sales. There is little doubt that you have had a couple of these types of sales in your home town by various retailers. Some will be held at your local fairgrounds or other large venues.

An Event sales is simply a scheduled day where a retailer will sell off large quantities of merchandise at “Below Retail Pricing”.  Some of the more popular categories of merchandise to resell at Event Sales are: Tools, Apparel, Toys and Home Decor items.

I had an email conversation with a seller who is planning on holding an apparel liquidation sales in her city. It would be her first and she had many questions about getting this event organized. Here are her questions and my answers:

QUESTION: Would I rent a hall, since I have no warehouse?

ANSWER: We already had a warehouse that we used. You could look into renting a location for a day or two. You will also need what they call one day event insurance and each location will require a certificate from your insurer listing the ”The Location” as an additional Insured or additional policy interest. I would think renting a facility a couple of time a month on a per needed basis might be spendy. Depending on the market in your city…maybe rent a location by the month? You might have 2-3 event sales per month and the balance of the time the facility is used to warehouse and sort for the actual sales days. What ever does not sell could be wholesaled on eBay as just a way to keep inventory moving (this is what we did)

QUESTION: Would I sell out of boxes?

ANSWER: I think it is important to make the overall feel as though you are not a retailer, but a liquidator, and so yes…sell out of boxes. We used to actually make up “Mock” pallets (Fake) to separate our retail area from our warehouse. We made the people feel as though they were getting some special deal shopping in a warehouse. It was a gimmick and it worked – people loved it. Hey, Home Depot filled their pallet racks with fake pallets when they opened their first store…..it works!

QUESTION: We want to retail apparel at our sale. Do you separate merchandise by category,i.e., sizes, men’s-women’s-children’s?

ANSWER: By category men’s, women’s and children’s—-but not by size. HERE is WHY and my thinking. If you were shopping at my event sale and say maybe you are a size 7. If you know exactly where the size 7′s are you will go right there and be done. If you have hunt and peck for sizes, you might see a cute dress for your sister who is a size 9 (might as well take that too) : )We had people shopping for themselves and their entire family with this strategy.

QUESTION: Should we accept cash Only? How many check out points?

ANSWER: Cash and credit cards. If people can use a debit or credit card they will shop till they drop.

QUESTION: What mark up did you use?

ANSWER: We subscribed to the Ray Croc (McDonalds founder) theory. Better to to sell more hamburgers at a lower profit margin than a few at a higher markup. We used several diff strategies depending on what we were selling. The one I like the best is one price point for everything. If you can pull this off it works great. We gave people bags to shop with and they just filled them right up. Checkout was a breeze as there was no question of pricing – “Price check aisle 7″ was never heard at our sales!

QUESTION: Final sales or did you take returns?

ANSWER: Absolutely no returns period. We would hand small flyer to each person as they came in the door explaining the nature of our business, what to expect and our no return policy. They never complained!

Holding Event Sales in your town will create a huge shopping frenzy! We had people lined up at our warehouse just waiting to get in! It really does not matter what type of liquidation merchandise you resell, holding a sale such as this is a great alternative to reselling on eBay.

Have you held a one or two day event sale? I would love to hear from you about your experience!