Closeouts Hit the High End
If you ever wanted to carry a big-name designer but couldn’t, the economic squeeze may give you a second chance. Some formerly exclusive territories are opening up as stores drop lines or close their doors. And recent bankruptcies and closings also mean that high-end merchandise is now starting to appear in the close-out market. For example, liquidation specialist Simplex Diam has acquired the branded inventory of Christian Bernard, which filed Chapter 7 the day after Christmas.
Brands Simplex Diam has available include Tacori, Ritani, Hearts On Fire, David Yurman, John Hardy, Mikimoto, Lagos, Tissot, and Hamilton. The company will be selling some of the close-out merchandise at the In Store trade show this weekend.
“Some of the product in mint condition an easily be sold for 10 percent below retail,” Neel Madhvani of Simplex says. “The rest can be sold for around half to 75 percent of retail and because most stores simply can’t get their hands on it, it is immensely advantageous. Just having a designer piece of this caliber in your store raises your status in a community.”
The effect on the brands themselves and their authorized retailers, most of whom aren’t allowed to discount? Not quite as positive.
While I believe this is a tough economy and that some brands have too much stock and need to clear their inventory, our brand is new to the market, and careful to manufacture small quantities at a time. Further, our brand would never sell close-out merchandise because it not only affects the brand’s image, but drastically reduces the trust factor that the retailer has in a brand. Our company sells its products to retailers who care about the product and in finding new and different ways to sell timepieces. This is succeeding for our company, and I wish that larger brands would hopefully follow suit. The brands that are listed are all top brands and hopefully it will not hurt their reputation, but their retailers should at least be notified in advance of this sale and the product that replicates what they have in their showcases should be pulled out so as not to cause the jeweler to have to play ‘price wars.’
Visit our new web site at http://www.gergeswiss.com and you will understand that offering new and different in this type of economy will help stimulate new sales with new customers, and even help those larger brands move product.
I have been looking for a some high end closeouts to sell. The Hearts on Fire collection would be killer to sell. Times are tough right now and most people are looking for a bargain.