Trading Merchandise

By Tom David Lewis | Thu, 6 Jan 2011

A trade too good to be true.

Except that it's not.  An interesting way to improve your merchandise position at the warehouse. Most liquidators don't  think much about this  but we have arranged some excellent trades benefiting both sides in the transaction.

This is barter in the common sense way we all assumed it to be before the geniuses got hold of the term and ruined it for the next 100 years. They turned it into a scam,  where you were asked to  trade merchandise for some useless advertising and other junk.   No one could understand or benefit from this. Except the Barter firms. I think that fad has passed for the most part.

The trades we consider are much different:

Each side has a product(s) in the warehouse that is not moving or where the quantity is too large for the owner's customer base. Fair values are easily placed on the items and then a trade is made. Each side, without any cash outlay,  owns a new item to sell and or less of one that was not selling well to his particular customer base. Both sides created the opportunity to turn slow inventory in to cash more quickly.  Sometimes even more cash than the original item they owned would have generated.  All this by better matching up inventory and customer bases.

I have done this several times  with more than one counter party and I am open to making more transactions. It is one intelligent way to take control over your difficult inventory and use the assets you already have to improve your overall position.


p.s. This kind of trade works particularly well in the closeout liquidation business because merchandise costs are very low and the variety of merchandise is broad for most liquidators.