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Hello World ! What is a Closeout?

Where do our goods come from that we use on a daily basis? Consumers are always interested in knowing where an item started and what journey it took to get into their house. The gambit runs all the way from manufacturers to distributors and then from wholesalers to retailers. Finally, it hits the end user. But what happens when it doesn’t ? What happens to all that merchandise that never makes it to the consumer ? There are literally millions of pieces of merchandise every month that go unpurchased, so where do they end up. Well my friends, that is where we get into the concept of closeout merchandise.

Dollar Bills

Have you ever been into Ross, TJ Maxx, Marshalls or one of those other outlet stores ? You go in and you see the perfect pair of jeans that you saw several months before at Macys for $69.99 and at this outlet store they are only $19.99 !!! OMG !!! How is that possible ? Well here is what happens:

The manufacturer, Nautica for example, produces 1 million units of jeans. They send it off to their distributors that in turn send it to Macy’s. (In this example, we skipped the wholesaler because of the size of account that Macy’s is, but we will come back to the wholesaler shortly). So Macy’s ordered 100,000 jeans from the distributor and split those up between all their stores. They sold great in New York, great in California, ok in Florida, but they just went bust in Texas and most of the South.

Closeout Discount StickersSo Macy’s lowers the price on them, maybe a 25% discount, then a 50% discount, but they just don’t sell. So what’s next? They go on the clearance rack and they make it 75% off, but still, they just won’t sell because of either the color, or the style or something else. Maybe it’s a long inseam or plus size and no one wants to buy it. So now what?

Pallet of Merchandise
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So now Macys takes all the items on the clearance rack that are taking room and they put them all in boxes and the boxes on pallets, which are wooden platforms used to move merchandise with trucks or containers (for export). Once they have a pallet done, they can do one of a few things. Either they can take the original value of all the merchandise on the pallet and figure a price based on a certain percentage that they want back as a recovery price, or they can simply just say that they want a certain price per pallet, usually depending on what category of merchandise is on it.

So back to our example. All the jeans that didn’t sell were boxed up and palletized and now are offered to a few different types of companies. The first is usually the big outlet stores like Marshall’s and Ross. The second is usually closeouts companies, like Closeouts World. The prices are usually pennies on the dollar, so either the outlet stores or the closeouts companies will buy them. And then what?

At that point the big outlet stores will distribute them in their stores and sell them at a big discount from the original price, or companies like Closeouts World will resell them in smaller quantities to smaller clients that don’t want truckloads or even pallets, ones that can handle only 250 pieces or 120 pieces.

So this is how the item gets from the retail store to the outlet store or closeout companies. It is a vey interesting process, especially when it comes to different categories such as food, toys, electronics and other items.
The question is now asked

So now the question that lingers in your mind is: “What happens when I return something to the store? Do they throw it away? Do they return it to the manufacturer? Do they resell it?” All great questions. Tune in next time for Part 2 of our Closeouts Series which will focus on what returns are and what happens to them?

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