As holiday shopping begins to wind down, some ecommerce vendors might find that they have more leftover merchandise than they expected. For many sellers, liquidation seems like a bad word, but in truth it’s just part of business.
While there are various ways enterprise ecommerce sites can reduce occurrences of surplus (including limiting seasonal items or assessing market interest before stockpiling specific products), it is something that will likely happen to everyone at one time or another. Below are a few tips to turn your winter backlog into a spring cleaning windfall:
Leverage Flash Sales: The most common way to mitigate remaining goods after the holiday is to offer a flash sale! If you discount items by 30 to 50 percent, you can expect at most a 30 percent margin. And that’s good money! Sure, it’s not as satisfying as selling something for full price, but generally speaking it is much better to unload old stuff at a profit to make way for the new.
Refresh & Remarket Items: Sometimes sluggish sales have less to do with the products themselves, and more to do with the way they are presented. Revitalize interests in your merchandise by refreshing your marketing strategy. If you are selling clothes, try reshooting product images with fashion models. Or consider reorganizing your site to showcase discounted items instead of new products. There are thousands of techniques to capture shoppers’ attention, all you have to do is get creative!
Incentivize Shoppers with Freebies: Similar to the idea above, ecommerce vendors can motivate customers to buy new and more expensive products by offering older, low-cost items as freebies or giveaways. Try drumming up enthusiasm for your brand by offering ‘swag bag’ contests through your email marketing or social media pages too.
Offer Bundle Deals: Here is a perfect idea for unloading accessories and cosmetics… Offer buddle deals to get customers excited about sampling different products. While certain solo products might not be enough to entice a sale, some customers might relish the opportunity to try out a few products at once. The same thing can be said for accessories. Think about offering a mix and match deal were buyers can select a few buddle items for deep discounts.
Sell to a Third-Party Site: Some enterprise ecommerce sites live to flip overflow merchandise. Take advantage of this resource by selling them your products for a little more than wholesale. While you will likely be selling your bulk products to another site for deep discounts, it’s an easy way to unload excess goods to make room for new stock (and make a little scratch while you’re at it).
Store Seasonal Products for Next Year: Unless you have storage galore, this probably isn’t the best option, but an option nonetheless. While people aren’t shopping for holiday sweaters in February, they are guaranteed to regain popularity come November. Consider holding onto seasonal stock till the season rolls around again.
Donate for Good Karma: While it may feel like a loss, sometimes it’s necessary to just get rid of old stock. No, don’t throw it away; try giving it to someone who really needs it. Donations are a wonderful way to give back to the community and feel good about relieving backlog. Heck, you may even get some tax deductions out of the deal.
Hopefully this guide has provided some helpful information for your enterprise ecommerce store on alleviating back stock. Obviously, it is always preferable to turn a profit when possible, so please use the money-making techniques first. That being said, don’t be afraid to experiment. After all, every store is different and no one knows your customers better than you!
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
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