All retailers have display merchandise, discontinued and shelf pulled items. In addition to as much as 6 percent of all items sold at retail level will be returned. Processing returns alone is estimated at a 200 billion dollar industry.

With all this merchandise, larger retailers hire or partner with companies to handle liquidation. A high percentage of this merchandise will be in new or like new condition and even some still in the original box.

Some of these third-part liquidation companies bring the merchandise into their facility and will “cherry pick” the loads (pulling out the best items). They will then markup the items and offer the remaining merchandise for sale to retailers, flea marketers, and online auction sellers. You are stuck with the hard to sell or slow moving merchandise.

Almost all closeout companies will advertise, “We do not Cherry Pick pallets or loads”. Can this be true? I am sure there are some companies who honor this guarantee, but proceed with caution.

Some liquidation companies will also operate a retail store or sell online through Ebay. Be weary of a wholesale liquidation company that also retails merchandise. Ask up front when buying your pallets or truckloads. Research the company you are going to buy from to make sure that they do no retail merchandise.

You want to make sure that when you buy pallets or truckloads of closeout merchandise to resell…you are getting all of the cherries (High value, fast selling merchandise)