Selling in Bulk Means Buying in Bulk

When you want to sell large quantities of a single item, you have to buy large quantities of a single item. This requires buying in bulk, so you can have enough inventory to last for several weeks' or months' worth of auctions.

Where, pray tell, do you purchase bulk quantities of merchandise? There are plenty of options, if you know where to look.

First, know that most bulk items offered are not first-run goods. Yes, most of it is new (not used) merchandise, but it's often last year's model, factory seconds, store returns, overstocked inventory, and the like. That's why it's available in bulk and at good prices; it's "leftover" merchandise waiting for someone to take it off the supplier's hands.

This means that you want to shop for bulk merchandise at wholesalers who specialize in closeout and liquidated items, or at thrift stores or dollar stores that offer large lots of items for sale. You can find lots of these closeout suppliers on the Web, including eBay Merchandise.com (www.ebaymerchandise.com), Liquidation.com (www.liquidation.com), SalvageCloseouts (www.salvagecloseouts.com), and Surplus.net (www.surplus.net). What all these suppliers have in common is that they don't sell single items; everything they offer is in bulk quantities.

A recent visit to SalvageCloseouts found such items as a lot of 2,000 girl's summer outfits ($2.95 per outfit, or $5,900 total); five plasma TVs ($1,295 per unit, or $6,475 total); a pallet of high-end linens and bedding ($850 per pallet); 1,000 pieces of costume jewelry ($1.95 apiece, or $1,950 total); and a trailer load of 34 pallets worth of Sears-brand hardware and toolsmore than 1,600 items in all (best offer accepted). That's a lot of variety.

Most of the bulk merchandise offered by liquidators consists of brand-name items that were ordered by a given department store but didn't sell; instead, the store returned the items to the supplier. Instead of destroying the returned merchandise, the supplier offers it at fire sale prices in the liquidation market. The only catch, of course, is that you have to take a large quantity, and you have no choice as to what exact items are included in the assortment.

Note

Learn more about buying closeout and liquidated merchandise in Chapter 14, "Purchasing and Managing Your Inventory."

That said, you get what you get at really good prices. It's cheaper for the supplier to sell 1,000 of an item to a single buyer than it is to sell one item each to 1,000 buyers. So you buy your 100 or 1,000 units of a particular item (in various sizes and colors, of course) and obtain your inventory at literally pennies to the dollar. Your hope is that you can take this closeout merchandise and sell it for higher prices on eBayand thus profit handsomely.

The downside of buying in bulk is that you have to buy in bulk. You're not just buying a dozen jeansyou're taking a dozen dozen, or more. Even if you get the merchandise extra-cheap, that's still a large check you have to write. And, even more challenging, you have to find someplace to store all that merchandise until you sell it. That's if you can sell it, of course.