Opening a Liquidation Apparel Store

Are you thinking of opening a liquidation apparel store? How do you compete with larger chain department stores who seem to have the biggest market share? You must capitalize on one of the most basic marketing principles most recognized by Ray Croc, founder of McDonald’s fast food chain. Ray believed that success could be earned by selling a quality product at rock-bottom pricing. It was his strategy from the beginning to lower pricing and thereby increase sales volume. I do not think anyone would disagree that Ray’s model for success propelled McDonalds into a multi-billion dollar, worldwide franchise. Working on a lower profit margin can really work to your benefit as consumers will spend more at your store. Retail shoppers today are looking to stretch dollars as far as they will go.

People feel empowered when they know exactly what they are spending. If you remove the “Anxiety” of spending too much….people will “Shop till they drop”. Think about it, have you ever went into a Dollar Store with a calculator? I do not think so! You know exactly how much everything is. You feel subconsciously empowered because you know you can afford anything in the store.

You can create this same shopping experience with an Apparel store.

Take a look:

Susie’s Deals operates 90 locations throughout AZ, CA, NV and UT. The stores, offering apparel for the entire family, including junior, misses, plus sizes, men’s and children’s apparel, all priced at $5.99 or less, occupy spaces of 5,000 sq.ft. to 6,000 sq.ft.

With a selling point of $5.99 you need to make sure that the apparel you are buying costs no more than $3.00 per unit delivered. Finding clothing overstocks, shelf pulls and customer returns below $3.00 is not hard to do, In fact there are many sources to choose from. You can purchase pallets and truckloads of below wholesale clothing direct from several department stores starting at a dollar per item! Most of the apparel in this low price category will in the form of customer returns and will require some work to make “retail ready”.


There are wholesale liquidators like, Via Trading who offer pallets of mixed catalog overstock apparel that will fit into this inventory pricing structure. They are advertising new Overstock Mixed Clothing Pallets consisting of dresses, suits, denim pants, jeans, jackets, tank tops, light sweaters, button-down shirts, jumpsuits/sweat suits, skirts, shorts etc. Via Trading is selling pallets containing 750-800 pieces of clothing for $799.00, which will definitely work in a $5.99 and lower store. Assuming each pallet had 750 pieces and your cost to have a pallet delivered was $350…your delivered cost per clothing item would be $1.53 each. This represents a good markup for a $5.99 retail sale.

Maybe a $5.99 apparel store is just what your town needs? At this pricing structure you could operate a successful store creating a frenzy of budget minded apparel shoppers.