How many of you know how to read a pallet liquidation manifest? Have you had the opportunity to read through a manifest before making a pallet or truckload purchase? Let’s review a small portion of a Costco manifest to get you familiar with some of the terms used and liquidation merchandise pricing. Before we jump right into the review, please understand that all manifests can, and will be, different. Also, within our wholesale liquidation course, The Liquidators Guide, you can find further information about reviewing manifests.
Click this link to load a sample one page manifest listing. Please refer to this file as we dive deep into this document.
Item Number – This corresponding number is used to identify each and every item within a pallet or box lot of liquidation merchandise. This unique number might be a products SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number, retailers model or part number, or simply a number assigned to the individual product by the selling liquidator. When reviewing a manifest, take this number and perform and internet search with the number in parenthesis. 60-70% of the time, this number will pull up the actual product online where you can read further in depth about a products features and retail pricing.
Description – This line column usually offers short abbreviated information about the item being liquidated. Sometimes you can take this information and perform a Google shopping search to find out more information about the item including photos!
Quantity – How many of this line item is being sold. If the number is higher than 2 or 3, it may be assumed that the merchandise is shelf pulled, with very little to no damage at all. Take a look at the sample manifest, it shows a quantity of ten for the Calvin Klein jeans. This tells me the jeans are probably shelf pull items, not customer returns.
Sell Price – This describes a products original retail or wholesale price. Every manifest is different, so inquire about this price when viewing a manifest from a pallet you are thinking of buying. In our sample manifest, the sell price is the original retail price.
Extended Sell – Individual unit cost multiplied by quantity.
Salvage Percent – This is the liquidation buyers cost represented by a percentage of original retail or wholesale pricing (depends on the manifest). For example, if an item retails for $99.99 and the salvage cost is 25%, the final price for the wholesale buyer will be $24.99.
