Dealing With a Bad Buy

It happens to everyone, even the most skilled and experienced buyer gets a bad deal every now and then. And most people foolishly believe that bad deals always come from bad sellers... Not so. Many times a perfectly good seller has a bad deal.

But how can this be? Because most of the terminology used to describe off price apparel is subjective: good, beautiful, quality, slight damage, these all depend on the frame of reference of the people involved in the buy. And they are not always the same.

So you're going along, selling stuff, buying stuff, life is good, business is good, the birds are singing at your window in the morning. You place a reorder with the same supplier and BAM! What happened?

The sizes are all off, there is damage, the quality is not the same, something is wrong. This happens more than you care to believe. This merchandise is something you cannot move to your normal customers in your normal venue.

So what to do?

Think outside of the box.

Well, let me rewind that for a minute. Don't try and buy yourself out of a bad buy, don't try and buy something else to compensate for the loss.

Promise me this: Try to sell what you have before you buy anything else.

What MOST people do when they get a bad buy is try and make another buy, a better buy, to offset the money they lost on the bad buy. Meanwhile, they never move that merchandise and it sits around forever. Pretty soon, hose bad buys accumulate and the seller has a load of stock to move-- only now, it's much older.

Whenever you get a bad buy, always try to sell it before moving on.

This is important. You have many different opportunities to sell if you think outside of the box. However, don't sell it to another buyer via the internet, because most likely, the merchandise will seem misrepresented to them. You can have a small trunk sale, a sample sale, find a mid to lower end consignment store, find another seller that deals in that type of merchandise, find a store that deals in that type of merchandise. There are tons of ways to get rid of it. But get rid of it before moving on.