Excess inventory is a big headache. So in this blog post, we’ll cover 7 ways of how to liquidate inventory and have better cashflow. And we’ll introduce you to the most efficient solutions for dealing with overstock inventory.
What is excess inventory?
Excess inventory refers to the products either hasn’t been sold or been kept for a long period of time. Those products are unlikely to ever move from the shelves because they are outdated, low or no demand in the market. So the longer your inventory is stored, the more Amazon storage fees you pay, thus reducing your cash flow and eating into the profit margin.
Why Reducing Amazon Excess Inventory Is Crucial
For most Amazon sellers, product inventory management has always been the focus of Amazon operations. As the SKU number increases, excessive inventory also tends to increase. Properly clean up excess inventory is the key to reduce losses, manage cashflow. It will also help the Amazon inventory score stay healthy.
In the case of having excess product inventory, many sellers choose to clean up products directly at low prices. However, on the Amazon platform, low prices are not necessarily useful. Not only can they not attract more orders, they may also be Forced to join “Add-on Item”.
7 Effective ways on how to liquidate inventory?
- In-site promotion, bundled promotion
Low-value products can choose to do “buy-one-get-one-free”. High-value products can be bundled with low-value items or drive the sales of another product.
- Outlet clearance
Outlet is Amazon’s promotion method for sellers. Professional FBA sellers can participate in Outlet activities. Sellers is able to apply for the program on their own. They can directly manage the activities on the redundant inventory interface.
- Make off-site discounts
An promotional code can be generated and used in the promotion activities of the seller central. The seller sets a deep discount discount, sometimes more than 50% to get a good sales velocity. In terms of sales channel, seller could use a Facebook group or some discount website.
- Participate in Amazon BestDeal
Sign up for BestDeal(BD). BD has 14 days. Comparing with Lightening Deal’s only 4 hours, BD has a much promising result.
- Multi-channel inventory cleaning
Open an eBay store and list the product as second-hand at a heavy discount (50%). Use FBA multi-channel distribution to deliver to the customer.
- Offline sale
Consider finding a local offline wholesaler. If you have this resource, you can sell it to them at a discount. This will involve a 3rd party warehouse. Some sellers might find it troublesome.
- Free give away to bloggers
For some products that are ready to be sold in the peak season, but are still far from the peak season, you can send some to social media key opinion leaders on Facebook, Twitter, and other popular bloggers in exchange for their advertising. When the peak season come, you will be able to harvest those traffic.
Refer to our earlier post on why ForwarderOne is your best Amazon FBA freight forwarder from China.