I have no earthly idea why I would ever possibly need five 32 inch flat screen TVs but after cruising Liquidation.com, I am tempted to start bidding. Think of the Liquidation.com as a sort of bulk eBay. Instead of one TV to bid on, at this auction site, most likely they could be sold in sets of five. There might be bulk lots of various sporting equipment, toys or clothes. Liquidation.com is a company that buys up the merchandise that national retailers don’t need. The Christmas gifts you didn’t want and returned might end up on Liquidation.com. So would surplus items that stores can’t sell. The company won’t name the stores it buys from, but claims it does business with all the biggies. If you win an auction, you can have the stuff shipped to you or you can pick it up from one of the company’s six warehouses. We’re live from the facility in Garland.
So how does all this translate into extra dollars in a tough economy? We talked with some of Liquidation.com’s customers. Some are small business owners who buy items at a discount to then resell in their store. Others are individuals who only have a storefront in cyberspace. They may buy those five TVs for example, and then sell them individually on websites like eBay and Craigslist. How good are the deals? We talked with one man who bought four pieces of office furniture for $200. James Kelly needs only one or two of the pieces, which he says would have sold retail for what he paid for all four. The other furniture Kelly doesn’t use, he will resell to cover the cost of entire purchase and maybe even make a buck or two.
We also talked with a woman whose name is Maria. She didn’t want us to use her last name. Maria lost her job about six months ago and turned to Liquidation.com because she says she needs some way to make money while she’s looking for a job. When we met Maria, she was picking up about four iPod docking stations and a couple of boxes of other audio equipment. She paid $300 for the lot of it. Maria was hoping at least to make a couple hundred dollars. She says now, anything would help.
Apparently, Kelly and Maria are not alone. Rob Caskey with Liquidation.com says while the company seems to do well in any economy, during the past holiday season, auctions were up 20%.