Trading Wholesale Stock - Options for better profitability

The current economic landscape offers great opportunities for sole traders of wholesale stock and trading companies to consolidate their profits by looking after specific categories of stock, such as obsolete and surplus stock, ex-catalogue stocks, customer returns and refurbished products. If you are in the business of trading wholesale stock, here are a few of these options explained.

Surplus Stock
Surplus stock normally refers to unsold brand new products, with no signs of usage or damage, that are still in their original package. It originates mainly from manufacturer overstock or obsolete stock (end-of-line or unsold products that can’t be sold by the manufacturer or the retailer anymore because of age of model).

Stock types that are similar to surplus stock:
- Factory first choice and second choice stock : products that have been rejected at factory quality inspection for cosmetic reasons. These products are perfectly functional, but cannot be sold as new because of manufacturer standards.

- Ex-catalogue stock and cancelled orders: products that are brand new items that have been exposed in stores and showrooms and haven’t been sold or have been returned without being opened by end-users.

Surplus stock is usually available at specific wholesalers and stock liquidators in your market.

You can find their offers of surplus stock on trading shows and trading magazines, but also on big marketplaces and all over the Internet, such as Liquidation.com and Stockshifters.com

You can always try to reach brand manufacturers or retailers directly but these companies usually work with preferred partners for clearing their entire excess inventory stock in bulk. This is the case for Britcomdirect.com, a company that deals directly with manufacturers and retailers and sells online branded surplus stock to traders and other wholesale buyers.

Refurbished Stock
Refurbished products are customer returns that have gone through a grading process (full functional testing and cosmetic upgrade). The degree of their repairs and aesthetic look result in different grades of refurbished products, which are priced and sold accordingly. This is why having full information on the grading system and condition of the refurbished stock is usually desired when doing trading deals with this type of goods.

Refurbished appliances such as electronic devices and home and garden products are fully functional products that can be traded at considerably big discounts and represent a convenient way of leveraging income for retail businesses.

Customer returns offers can be found on many occasions in the trading business, but there are actually very few companies that offer professionally refurbished products in massive quantities. Anovo and Britcomdirect.com are two examples of European companies that own their own refurbishing facilities. The latter offers real opportunities, through it’s B2B Trading Platform, for traders who would like to buy refurbished appliances and consumer electronics by the truckload.

Reasons to consider surplus stock and customer returned refurbished goods when trading:

1. Retailers and manufacturers of consumer goods are constantly looking for efficient channels of clearing their overstocks, obsolete products and customer returned goods. This is especially the case in the most dynamic industries, such as consumer electronics, household appliances and fashion. Brand manufacturers and big retailers in these industries usually demonstrate a real urgency in clearing their old lines of products or surplus stocks in order to deal with cost management pressures and market trends.

2. The potential margins made on trading surplus stock and refurbished appliances such as gadgets and Hi-Fi products are considerably higher, because of the discounted nature of these goods but also because of the expansion of these type of niche businesses in the retail sector - from discount shops and factory outlets to online shops and small resellers on Ebay.