Closeouts Made Easy

Retailers of all sizes have never had as many buying options as they do now. The Internet has matured substantially over the years, and has become a dynamic marketplace for merchants looking to fill their needs for apparel, electronics, gifts, jewelry, and novelties among many other categories.

Leading the way has been CloseoutCentral.com, where the nation's leading suppliers come to post their current closeouts in 50 product categories. An average of 7,000 lots appear at Closeoutcentral.com, with new ones being added daily.

For retailers or buyers in general, using the website is absolutely free, and a membership is not even required in order to take advantage of the great values. An increasing number of buyers are discovering this everyday at the site, where they can use a slew of navigation tools that make it easy to find the best products at the right price.

Navigating the Site
The most popular way to search for closeouts is by product category. Running down the left side of the home page is a list of 50 major product categories, including apparel, electronics, furniture, jewelry, handbags, DVDs, sporting goods and many more. Buyers wishing to search for merchandise within these broad categories can simply click the category to get a list of all closeout lots currently available in that category.

EASY NAVIGATION TOOLS
• Keyword Search
• Quicklink
• Category Search
• Seller Directory

For a more specific search, Closeoutcentral.com offers a keyword search, located on the top left of the home page, just above the list of categories. Buyers can enter any word and Closeoutcentral.com will search for that word in every lot currently posted. A search for "jeans", for example, will normally render a return of over 100 lots from a variety of distributors looking to sell bulk pallets of jeans at bargain prices.

In either case, the lots are listed in an easy to scroll vertical list showing the date the lot was posted, with most recent posts first, while the oldest ones move to the bottom. Clicking on a lot reveals detailed information about the lot, complete with images. Every lot detail page displays links that allows the buyer to "Make Offer to Purchase", "Ask Seller a Question", "View Seller's Other Lots", and "View Seller Profile."

At the top right hand corner of every CloseoutCentral.com page appears the QuickLink search. Each seller on the site has its own personal keyword, or QuickLink, which can be entered into the bar in order to go directly to that seller's page. If the buyer knows a seller's QuickLink, this method of navigation provides the fastest way to see the desired company's lots. Ease of use is a key ingredient to the CloseoutCentral.com formula for providing value.

"It's no surprise that the websites that have the best navigation are also the ones where buyers can find what they are looking for and leave happy," said Jack Aaronson, CEO of multichannel marketing agency Aaronson Consulting Group, New York. "A website that provides numerous avenues of search is even more user friendly. Customers visiting a site with that type of effective routing want to come back and do come back."

Closeoutcentral.com also features a handy Seller Directory. When buyers click on the Seller Directory button in the orange bar below the Closeoutcentral.com logo, they are taken to a page that offers three ways to search by company.

Firstly, the viewers can utilize the "Find Company" search box by entering a company name. In the instance of entering "Sav-On Closeouts", the viewers would be taken to a direct link to see the lots for the company that's based in Gwinn, MI. After tapping the "Click Here To See Our Lots" button, countless lots often appear offering a range of books, apparel, candleholders and many other categories.

Secondly, buyers can click a letter of the alphabet to see all companies whose name begins with that letter. And lastly, a viewer can click on links that break the sellers down into the categories of Manufacturer, Distributor, Wholesaler, Imports/Exports, Closeout Brokers, Liquidators, Retailers and Services.

Featured Sellers
It should be noted that retailers and other types of buyers most often take advantage of the Featured Sellers that are showcased daily on the home page of the website. Around a dozen lots are highlighted with either product pictures or lot descriptions, which make it extremely convenient for buyers who happen to be looking for those items.

All in all, the multiple search methods available at CloseoutCentral.com give buyers easy access to the most current closeouts offered by the leading and largest group of suppliers on the Internet. And without question, success stories deriving from the website's fruitful capabilities have been piling up in recent months.

"I think retailers like to use CloseoutCentral.com as well as WholesaleCentral.com because they are one stop shops," said Mark Reisdorf, president of Twin Cities Wholesale. "You can find anything you'd possibly ever need. I would definitely use this site if I was on the other side as a retailer."

Reisdorf should know, since he managed a retail business before founding his wholesale company a little more than a year ago. Recently, Twin Cities Wholesale was able to sell four truckloads of Oreo branded cookies in one day to a lucky retailer who got them at a bargain price via CloseoutCentral.com. Understandably, Reisdorf didn't want to risk a relationship by disclosing the name of his newfound retail partner. However, he wasn't shy about expressing how he believes that CloseoutCentral.com is the best online closeout venue and that it creates profitable dealings for sellers and buyers.

"Of course, I was very pleased with the Oreos sale when it came through because that's the type of response to your product lots that you look for in a marketplace," Reisdorf said. "But frankly, I wasn't too surprised because we have had other sales like that at CloseoutCentral. And, we will see more noteworthy transactions in the future."

In another sale that proved to be even more profitable, Twin Cities Wholesale sold 100,000 tee shirts in four days at the site.

Online Success
"The potential for sales there is amazing," Reisdorf said. "Other sites keep bugging me about joining, but I only primarily advertise with CloseoutCentral.com and WholesaleCentral.com because I've been so happy with their performances. They give you such a large exposure in terms of a worldwide audience. Being a small company, I could never get that anywhere else because I don't have a big budget to spend."

Truth be told, Twin Cities Wholesale is a supplier of far more than just cookies and tee shirts. The company also offers categories for toys, books, collectibles, candles, dolls, fashion accessories, industrial gloves, home décor and lawn and garden, as well as others. In addition to CloseoutCentral.com and WholesaleCentral.com, the company's product lines can be found at www.twincitieswholesale.com.

"I began advertising at WholesaleCentral.com about a year ago, and I started getting about an order a week, but now I get eight to 10 orders a day there," Reisdorf said. "I use CloseoutCentral.com to sell major items that I really want to push. It's always been very successful for me in that way."
So successful, he said, that his company recently moved into a new facility in Minneapolis entailing 44,000 square feet to accommodate the growing business. Twin Cities Wholesale, which employees six workers, originally settled into operations that were only 10,000 square feet when it launched in January 2005, just after Reisdorf had bought a bankrupt business called Westbury Sales and changed the name.

"I purchased a business that was making about $100 a day," he said. "I am now doing considerably more transactions and bigger transactions than I had ever hoped to do at this point in time. I don't want to say what dollar amount. But we are thousands and thousands percent ahead of the previous owner, let's put it that way, thanks to transactions like the ones we have been talking about."

Simple and Effective
As Reisdorf and the many other member sellers like him already know, becoming part of CloseoutCentral.com is incredibly simple and surprisingly inexpensive. First and foremost, CloseoutCentral.com staffers will input new members' information and produce company profile pages for them.
Within 48 hours, a technical expert from CloseoutCentral.com will call the company and give them a walk through tutorial on how to log into their accounts, manage and edit their listings and upload new products lot images and information. All of these production elements are performed in a template system that's friendly to computer beginners. It's simple to master and only requires the user to fill in the blanks.

Additionally, members make their products available 24/7. For an annual fee of $398 sellers can post unlimited lots all year long. In terms of purchasing ads in the Featured Closeouts section, those cost a mere $5 a day for text only ads and $8 a day for product images and text copy. For $150 to $240 a month, sellers are able to put their product lots in front of countless targeted prospects who are in the buying mode.

The website does not charge a "cost per click" rate as do most others in the online marketplace sector. In addition, CloseoutCentral.com doesn't take a commission on sales, which is a profit reducing practice often seen by its competitors. All of this adds up to a lower cost of business for sellers and better prices for buyers.

"I think the Featured Closeouts section at CloseoutCentral.com seems to really work in terms of attracting buyers at the site," said Reisdorf of Twin Cities Wholesale. "It's so simple for buyers to use that your sales seem to grow everyday. All you have to do is make sure you get their purchased lots or items to them."

Companies included in this story:

CloseoutCentral.com
24 Stony Hill Road
Bethel, CT 06801
Tel: 203-748-2050
Toll Free: 800-999-8281
Fax: 203-748-5932
Email: info@sumnercom.com

The Aaronson Group
666 Greenwich Street, PH-2
New York, NY 10014
Tel: 212-691-4725
Fax: 917-591-5818
Email: info@aaronsongroup.com

Sav-On Closeouts
105 W. Hwy. M-35
Gwinn, MI 49841
Tel: 906-346-7065
Toll Free: 888-662-1097
Fax: 906-346-9463
Email: ben@sav-on-closeouts.com
Website: www.sav-on-closeouts.com

Twin Cities Wholesale Inc.
2626 2nd Street North
Minneapolis, MN 55411
Tel: 612-529-4644
Toll Free: 888-529-4644
Fax: 612-529-0106
Email: info@twincitieswholesale.com