With the warm weather around the corner, families are starting to look for something to do on the weekends. One such popular activity is spending the day at a local flea market. According to the National Flea Market Association, “Our country has over 1100 flea markets that provide opportunities for approximately 2.25 million vendors conducting over $30 billion in sales annually. Flea Markets are visited by over 150 million customers each year.”
Flea market vendors are cashing in as families enjoy a day of wholesome time at the market, in addition to shopping for deals on much needed and/or wanted items. Flea markets today are not just for used items or collectibles, in fact, just about anything that can be purchased from a large big box store can now be found at the flea market.
To keep up with the steady demand for goods, flea market vendors are buying in bulk quantities from wholesalers, but savvy vendors are now reaching out to yet another product sourcing option, the liquidation industry.
The liquidation industry, or sometimes referred to as the secondary market within the supply chain, offers bulk access to top name brands at drastically low pricing. Liquidation merchandise is an umbrella term for several categories of consumer items including customer returned items, shelf pulled items, and retail overstocked items. Without getting too technical, liquidation merchandise is available from big box retailers who:
Cannot Resell Items as New – otherwise known as customer returned merchandise. Most all big box retailers have liberal return and exchange policies for retail customers that creates an influx of open box, damaged item, and in many cases, items that were purchased on impulse. This stock cannot be sold as new; therefore it gets liquidated in bulk quantities, at a fraction of original retail or wholesale cost.
Marked Out of Stock (MOS) – referred to as shelf pulled items, this is merchandise that is no longer being sold for various reasons including past season items, discontinued, new improved model/items available.
Flea market vendors who retail name brand items bought from within the secondary market are finding that competition with other vendors is no longer a problem. Other vendors, who may be traditionally sourcing inventory from a wholesale company, cannot compete with non-branded or cheaply imported goods.
If you’ve been thinking of starting a business at the flea market, maybe it’s time to take a hard look at liquidation merchandise. Start searching for wholesale liquidators who specialize in supplying department store goods at rock-bottom pricing.
