If you’re a professional in the retail or manufacturing space, you probably know what a problem returned and excess inventory can pose to your operations and bottom line. The reverse logistics process required to get these items out of your warehouses and distribution centers can include intake, recataloging, inspecting, repackaging, transporting, and more. Further, the traditional liquidators that many organizations use tend to be reliant on manual processes and inflexible in their pricing or the goods they will accept. This means that if you hope to keep excess inventory cycling out of your possession on a consistent basis, you’ll find yourself developing and managing relationships with several different brokers and wholesalers. Depending on the scale of your business, this task can be a full-time job in itself. Together, all of these factors can make for an undertaking so time consuming and resource intensive that many businesses conclude that liquidation’s not even worth their trouble. Unfortunately, that’s when perfectly good items get trashed or destroyed.

Thankfully there is a better way. B-Stock has expanded it’s solution to provide its sellers with a full suite of B2B recommerce solutions. In addition to the our classic auction format, we are now proud to offer: The B-Stock Futures Market Flash Auctions Direct Placement. Each of these has it’s own specific purpose, making B-Stock the most powerful and versatile B2B recommerce platform on the market. Let’s dive in and learn more about each one.

The Spot Market
This is one you might already be familiar with. As our flagship sales model, the auction-based Spot Market is a great option for Enterprises or smaller brands and retailers that—frequently or periodically—deal with large amounts of returned, obsolete, seasonal, slow-moving, scratch-and-dent, or even salvage inventory. Once you’ve identified exactly which goods you’re looking to cycle out of your warehouse, you’ll submit a manifest of these wares to B-Stock’s team of auction experts. They’ll create a listing on your custom storefront for all eligible buyers to see, and set the auction to launch at a predetermined time, at which point the bidding begins. After time expires the high bidder has won the lot, we collect the funds, send you a purchase orders. Simply arrange shipping with the buyer, and your payment is released when the carrier indicated to us the order has been delivered. So why use this model? There are a few key benefits:
– Competition-driven Recovery: Competition drive up sale prices which means you extracts the highest willingness to pay. When potential buyers can see in real time that they’ve been outbid, they’ll often spend a little more than they intended to—and bidding wars are always good for your bottom line.
– Flexibility: You can move out as much inventory as you need to, whenever you have it ready—you’re never committed to any schedules or quotas.
– Extensive Buyer Network: Our massive worldwide buyer network means there’s always a buyer who will pay top dollar for your goods—and always a few more waiting to fill their spot. And your storefront is as open as you want it to be: sell to everyone, or hand-pick only those you want bidding on your goods. You can (and should) even bring your current liquidation partners with you.
– Protecting Your Brand:You likely put a lot of research and effort into developing your brand and making sure your customers perceive you in a certain way—fun, trustworthy, luxurious, sustainable, and so on. But when goods travel through several layers of jobbers, brokers, and other middlemen, your goods might start turning up for sale in places that don’t agree with your intended brand perception or customer experience. Further, depending on where the goods wind up, they may also be actively luring buyers away from buying new on your website or preferred retail partners. B-Stock allows you to require your buyers to sign agreements as to where and how your goods are sold to help prevent the secondary market from cannibalize your primary sales channels.
– Efficient Listings Process: We have an entire Listings Team on staff to review, polish and post your manifests ahead of an auction. These experts know what buyers like to see and will work with your dedicated account manager—your day-to-day contact—to help optimize your listing according to your business goals. Additionally, a full marketing is continuously working to build demand and bring in additional relevant buyers.

The Futures Market Though the auction model does scale easily with all the efficiency-minded features and data-backed insights that B-Stock offers, the Futures Market is designed with a very specific use case in mind. With this solution, very high volume brands and retailers—such as apparel suppliers that tend to rely on large discounter chains—can smoothly, predictably, and quickly clear out inventory by the truckload. If your business reliably finds itself in possession of the same types of inventory every month, this solution is ideal.
– Streamlined Process: Our experts will match your organization with a willing, relevant buyer and then create a contract between the two parties that outlines the goods to be sold, the delivery schedule, pricing and more. For the duration of this contract, all transactions are tracked through the platform and our staff will assist in the even that any disputes over this contract arise.
– Inventory Management: Unsold and returned inventory is already spoken for before it becomes a problem. As soon as you have the expected goods packaged up for shipping, you’ll submit a manifest to us and we’ll notify the buyer as soon as possible. All terms are prenegotiated, so from this point, the inventory will be out of your warehouse within a short 24-48 hours timeframe. Not only do prenegotiated terms speed up the reverse logistics process—they also lock in your resale prices, meaning your organization is guaranteed a known recovery rate for the length of the contract. Since the standard length of a Futures Market contract is 12 months or more, you’ll can be confident that your most common surplus is spoken for at least a year in advance—surely a relief to any accounting department.
– Improved Forecasting & Resource Management: Fixed pricing isn’t just about reclaiming cash for peace of mind. A big part of this solution’s value is the certainty that it enables for planning purposes. Without the monthly threat of the the same old unsold inventory straining your carrying capacity, your company can order, market, merchandise, forecast, and budget with confidence.

Flash Auctions & Direct Sales Sometimes circumstances find you holding onto valuable, salable goods that it doesn’t normally sell. Perhaps a workspace renovation, downsize, consolidation, or move has left your apparel business with truckloads of perfectly good, barely used office furniture. Or maybe a market anomaly, or purchasing error, or business experiment has left your outdoor store with several pallets of packaged food goods. Or it’s possible you have some bulky damaged units that you need gone as quickly as possible, no strings attached. For handling the occasional challenge of such atypical and unexpected lots, you might turn to B-Stock’s Flash Auctions and Direct Sales.
– Flash Auctions: When using the Flash Auction solution, you’ll contact your account manager and tell them about the special, atypical, or one-off lots that you’re looking to sell. Even if you have no idea where to begin looking for a buyer, they’ll quickly identify and approach a few relevant buyers for you, and iffer them an invitation to a highly exclusive, one-time-only auction.
– Direct Sales: On the other hand, the Direct Sales solution involved our account management team will approach a single suitable buyer with a standing offer to buy some or all of the lot—no contract or listing needed.

Although less common than the Spot Market or Futures Market solutions, these alternate sales models do serve a specific set of needs:
– Separation of Special Lots: Don’t want irregular or one-off lots to confuse or distract your regular secondary market buyers? Not a problem. Goods sold via Flash Auction and Direct Sale won’t appear on your public listings.