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Boosting Liquidation Innovation


BOOST LIQUIDATION began in late September of 2011 with the intention of doing business in a diff er- ent way and utilizing innovative methods that would best serve its customers. Selling customer returns in a wide range of merchandise categories, Boost seeks to expand its business in new and exciting ways. T e creators of Storage Unit Auction List, a state-by- state subscription-based service that gives people the latest information on storage unit auctions, used their successful earn- ings from the service to start an appliance store in North Carolina called WNC Appliance. Notic- ing that there was no middle ground between big box sellers and thriſt stores, WNC bought liqui- dated appliances that were brand new, but scratched or dented, which they sold retail for about 50 percent off MSRP. While waiting for people to come into the shop to buy the merchandise, they started thinking about other ways to sell items, eventually get ing into mixed loads. “We bought some customer returns by the truckload, and between trying to fi gure out ways to move inventory from the appliance store and looking at auctions and liquidations, we started get ing mixed loads, which led us towards what Boost is now,” says Lloyd Handy, COO of Boost.


Moving into a larger warehouse that enabled them


Boost gives the customer the option to mix the pallets themselves.


to store more inventory, Boost became a 3PL Asset Recovery liquidation business. “For now we just deal with customer returns, but down the road we’ll look at overstock and other sources of inventory,” notes Handy. “As far as prod- uct quality and variety, we have anything you can think of available to buy online, from appliances to diapers to XBoxes. Customer returns are always a bit dicey, but for our suppliers, we’re fi nd- ing what we think are the best customer returns on the market right now. We go through a pret y good process of assessing the products.” However,


Boost


has rethought the way it does business by giving the customer the option to mix the pallets them- selves. “T e liquidation


business has been growing for the past 40 years, so while we saw a lot of expansion, we didn’t see a lot of innovation,” Handy adds. In December, the company decided to try something really diff erent in the liqui- dation industry, developing the system of “build your own pallet.” “Now, when you go to our website, you can choose exactly what you want on the pallet. We’ve received a lot of feedback so far from buyers who are really pleased with the idea. We are also off ering free


Continued On 56  54 March 2012


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