Bulk Stock Clearance UK: The Options Compared

Route one: the clearance buyer

You are offered a price for the lot, it is collected, you are paid. Fastest and most certain route there is.

You give up the difference between what they pay and what the goods make, which on mixed stock is substantial, and you give up all control over where the goods go afterwards. Published liquidation research puts recovery at roughly five to thirty percent of original retail depending on condition, and the buyer needs their margin out of that.

Route two: the traditional auction house

Sold in public to real bidders, which is a genuine advantage. The structure is where it gets expensive. You pay a seller commission, commonly around 25 percent plus VAT on general goods, and the buyer pays a premium on top, typically 25 percent plus VAT.

Bidders bid the total they will spend, so a premium at checkout suppresses the hammer price. Of every pound the buyer spends, the seller typically sees a little over half. There may also be entry fees, photography charges and storage on unsold lots.

Route three: live consignment

The stock stays yours. It is sold item by item on a live marketplace channel and you take a share of what each item makes.

There is no buyer premium available on eBay, so nothing is added at checkout and nobody is bidding down to make room for it. Our rate returns 50 percent of anything selling under 20 pounds, 60 percent from 20 to 100 pounds and 70 percent over 100 pounds, taken after platform fees, with no entry fee, no minimum and no storage charge.

The trade off is time. Money arrives over weeks as the stock sells, rather than in one payment on collection day.

Route four: disposal

Sometimes correct, and the only route where the number is negative. Worth doing for genuinely unsellable goods, and worth avoiding for goods that merely look unsellable in bulk. That distinction is where a lot of money gets thrown away.

Side by side

• Fastest cash: clearance buyer. Days.
• Most money on mixed consumer goods: live consignment. Weeks.
• Most control over where goods end up: live consignment, because title never passes.
• Least effort for you: clearance buyer, closely followed by consignment, since in both cases somebody else does the selling.
• Best for one product in real quantity: a clearance buyer or a trade sale, where uniformity is genuinely worth something.
• Best for mixed, odd quantities and returns: live consignment, because that variety is a feature rather than a problem.

How to decide without agonising

Get a bulk offer and treat it as a benchmark rather than a decision. Consign one representative pallet. Compare the statement against the per pallet share of the bulk offer.

That converts an argument about percentages into a number about your actual stock, and it costs nothing if there is no fee to send a pallet in.