A few days ago, I received a really nice email from someone who bought our guide way back in 2010. I always appreciate hearing from our blog readers, especially those who take a step forward buying one of our educational guides.
Anyway, this individual bought our guide specifically looking for closeout and liquidation jewelry sources. In addition to actual sources, this individual wanted to learn how to contact prospective catalog companies and manufacturers about the prospect of buying excess stock, i.e. overstocks and customer returns.
So, this individual was kind enough to save her email to me back in 2010, and when she contacted me the other day, it was a forward of our email exchange four years ago. I must say, I re-read my email to her and it was pretty good advice in terms of product sourcing. I thought my canter to her might prove to be of value to everyone, so here is a portion of our email exchange from four years ago:
Before I get to the email, let me clarify what we were talking about. Our conversation was related to finding jewelry sources by contacting catalog and manufacturers direct, looking for excess stocks to purchase.
Email: I never really got into jewelry, so you might have better insight as to catalog retailers to potentially check out. You could do what my wife and I did in our search for apparel overstock, which was simply Google-ing the term “apparel catalog retailers,” and then sign up to receive as many catalogs as possible. Once we had the physical catalogs we would review their inventory and then flip the catalog over and call customer service to inquire about purchasing overstock and returns direct.
Do not get discouraged in your hunt for new jewelry sources, it takes a lot of time and patience when trying to secure a new liquidation source. If product sourcing was easy, every eBay and Amazon reseller would be buying in mass quantities taking advantage of liquidation pricing. Let’s hope most resellers remain lazy, so our secret product sourcing strategies stay on the down low.
To give you some idea as to my hit ratio when calling prospective catalog companies trying to buy overstock, I would say I was able to make a single liquidation purchase after calling about 25-30 companies. That’s a lot of calling and a lot of “No’s” to stomach, but trust me, it was worth it.
Another way to locate excess stock is to simply turn retail items over while your out and about shopping. Yes, in your own hometown! Let me explain: Just about every retail product found in a store will offer a “manufactured by” or “distributed by” label clearly marked on retail packaging or on product hang tags. Write this information down when you find a product your interested in reselling. once you have this info, go home and Google info to find contact information…viola, your have a new source to call!
A quick story about flipping tags and finding sources: I was in a food store a few years back called FoodMax, here on the west coast. On aisle seven I was shocked to find a round rack of apparel (yeah, in a grocery store!). It was a rack filled with, what looked like, liquidation clothing- odds and ends. Clearly, on each clothing hang tag it said Roundy Apparel. When I got home that day, I Googled Roundy and found out this company supplied clothing closeouts and irregulars to grocery chains across the country. I called and told them I was a liquidator and they sent a huge box of samples for me to check out at no cost! I ended up finding an excellent source for liquidation apparel while grocery shopping…go figure! ….[End of Email]
Back to today, and her email to me last week. Low and behold, this individual, who bought our Liquidators Guide, started her own wholesale closeout business supplying on and off-line resellers! The business is called Wholesale Runway and they wholesale costume and semi precious jewelry closeouts. Here is a snippet from their About Us Page:
WholeSale Runway is a distributor of costume jewelry and accessories. We supply closeouts, overstock and customer return merchandise from the nation’s leading department stores, manufacturers and name brand designers. Our specialty is supplying resellers large and small with merchandise at a fraction of it’s original cost.
Way to go! Thank you for getting back in touch with us. I love to hear about success stories. Do you have a liquidation story you would like to share? Use the “Ask a Question” link in our menu above to share your story…we may just blog about it and send some traffic your way!
