Liquidity Services, a major marketplace for returned and overstock merchandise, has opened a second AllSurplus Deals location at its facility in Hebron, KY, outside Cincinnati, allowing local consumers to find and purchase deals online, then pick them up at its warehouse.
The Cincinnati location includes parking spaces outside where buyers can come to pick up their orders. Inside the 100,000-square-foot facility, returned goods are triaged, stored and refurbished if necessary for resale. The first AllSurplus Deals location opened in Phoenix in October 2021.
About, 1,200 items are listed per day for the new Hebron site, a figure that’s expected to increase, and offered via auction a la eBay. Some current deals include a KitchenAid mixer for $47, a Cuisinart air fryer/toaster oven for $22 and a pair of JBL noise canceling Bluetooth headphones for $12. Road trip, anyone?
To add new products to its sites, Liquidity Services has built proprietary tools for item identification and listing processes. These tools leverage internal catalogs as well as APIs links to other data sources.
Jeff Rechtzigel, VP and GM of retail for Liquidity Services, said the only criteria for opening up a new AllSurplus Deals site is a ready supply of merchandise from retail clients, and enough demand from a dense metro area population. The company has eight facilities in North America, and claims seven of the 10 top retailers as customers. According to CNBC, they include Amazon, Target, Sony, Home Depot and Wayfair.
In addition to retail, Liquidity Services has segments servicing industrial and government clients. At the moment, the industrial unit is looking to offload a 110,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery in Portugal – in case anyone reading this is in the market.
Since its launch in 1999, Liquidity Services has sold over $10 billion worth of goods to more than 5 million buyers and 15,000 corporate and government sellers worldwide.
Rechtzigel said the ability of local consumers to do curbside pickup at AllSurplus Deals locations is what sets Liquidity Services apart from others handling overstock and return merchandise, such as B-Stock Solutions and Optoro.
“The typical process is, we get in a truckload of merchandise, returns from a retailer – they want to get them out of their supply chain as quickly as possible,” Rechtzigel said. “Then our team uses technology we developed to sort and grade it and allocate it to a variety of sales channels. Product attributes and condition are communicated to the consumer. It’s generally high quality at a good price.”
He said Liquidity Services also sells some non-functioning items, such as televisions, to specialist companies that do refurbishing and reselling of consumer electronics.
Demand comes from people on the hunt for great deals, as well as those wanting to keep more stuff out of landfills, or both. “They may get 80% off on some items,” Rechtzigel said. “Consumers are also more motivated do something that helps the world. My college-age daughter loves to shop in thrift bins, and she feels she’s doing some good. AllSurplus Deals supports that buying group that’s emerging.”
Now Cincinnati shoppers can cart off an oversized item, like a used snowblower, that would be cost-prohibitive to have delivered, at a steal of a price, Rechtzigel said. Even a zone 1 shipment of a 100 lb. item via UPS Ground would be $63.13, plus a $40 oversize surcharge.
“It’s hard to afford to ship a snowblower, but if we can resell it online, they can come get in their pickup truck,” he said.
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