Prior to purchasing most closeouts and Surplus merchandise from various retail stores or liquidators you will be required to sign, date and adhere to strict reselling restrictions. Each big box chain store will have different requirements for reselling customer returns or shelf pulls. Most of the time you will have to either deface or remove store brand labels and/or tags. Some stores will ask that you not sell liquidation merchandise within a 50 mile radius of the particular chain store.

You can imagine one of your customers buying an item from you and then attempting to take it back to the origin store to try and get a refund. This is a big issue for you the reseller. If this happens stores do have a way of tracking back inventoried “Liquidation” items. This can mean big trouble for you. It is imperative to follow each big box retailers’ guidelines when it comes to defacing and/or de-labeling closeout and salvage merchandise.

Here are a few examples of brand protection agreements

Kmart Delabeling and Defacing Agreement & Procedures

Target Delabeling and Defacing Agreement & Procedures