Your brand represents the subtle thoughts, feelings, or ideas that are provoked when people see your logo or hear your name. It’s shaped by experience, theory, and even the experiences or reports of other people.
Your brand represents quality, value, service, relationships, integrity, and virtue, or lack thereof, in some cases. It’s all in a brand. Your brand is your name, your livelihood, your bond. If you’ve worked hard to establish that brand as one of reputable quality or service, then you’d better be willing to work just as hard to protect it. Like anything else, it’s one thing to get to the top, it’s another thing to stay there.
Brand protection and brand control are especially important when choosing a liquidation company or auction house. Once you sell your excess inventory, you’ve forfeited your power to protect, control, and maintain the good standing of your hard earned brand. When liquidating your goods, always remember that this is just as vital as the other branding strategies and marketing that you participate in with your traditional distribution. As much effort, thought, and creativity as you’ve put toward your initial branding campaigns, be ready to work equally as hard to maintain them in secondary markets as well.
Someone is eventually going to buy those goods, even if they are last season’s merchandise or leftovers from a bad deal or irregulars or whatever. If you plan to liquidate your excess inventory, you must make sure to follow these 3 rules to protect yourself, your company, and your brand.
1. Consider using a liquidation company rather than an online auction or wholesaler. This gives you more control over your inventory and closes the gap of accountability when you have an established relationship already.
2. Build in restrictions into the contract. Not only do you want to restrict the opportunity for fraudulent customer returns but you also want to limit the negative exposure that could potentially come with selling your brand in a secondary market. Such restrictions may include but are not limited to:
- blacking out the brand name
- pulling the tags
- cutting out the tags
- limiting the resellers from using your name in their advertising.
3. Channel control restrictions. Like the other aforementioned restrictions, you can easily and shamelessly build in restrictions into your contractual agreements that would limit the distribution to a certain distance away from your normal retail outlets. It is common practice so don’t be afraid to mention this or at least ask about it.
If you are diligent about following these basic rules and using your better judgment, you should be able to sleep safe at night knowing that your hard work, your commitment to building your brand, and your company’s name are in good hands.
This article is brought to you by InventoryBuyer.Net, one of the nation’s most trusted liquidation companies and market leaders of brand and channel control.
To find out if we’re the right buyer for your inventory please call us for your
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