Clearance inventory — which is often more aptly dubbed “despised inventory” — is the bane of most furniture retailers’ existence. Despite bringing in much less revenue than its full-price counterparts, clearance furniture takes an undue amount of bandwidth and resources to showcase and sell. It's no wonder most retailers are quite happy to part ways with it, even if this means taking a loss.

Fortunately, clearance inventory no longer has to be a thorn in furniture retailers’ sides. With SaySo's end-to-end clearance solution, profitably offloading overstock inventory can quickly transform from a hindrance to your competitive advantage.

Why clearance inventory is such a nuisance for furniture retailers

As most furniture retailers know, clearance items are notoriously tricky to move, especially online. The eCommerce ecosystem is built to move inventory in bulk and doesn't cater to retailers selling unique pieces with product-specific attributes or defects. This means creating a listing, even for a single clearance item on one’s website, can take an exceptionally long time. 

And since clearance items aren’t exactly high-margin, many retailers choose not to give them any attention at all. Instead, they take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to their existence. They’d rather let years’ worth of unwanted furniture idle in a warehouse than jump through hoops to salvage some of its rapidly declining value. This is also the logic that motivates big-box stores to issue refunds on damaged orders without even bothering to ask for them back.

Despite this generally indifferent approach to clearance, some resourceful retailers still labor to profitably move their overstock items. To do this, they take one of two equally cumbersome routes:

1. Sell it from a regular showroom: In this scenario, retailers usually lose money on transportation fees as clearance inventory moves back and forth between showrooms and distribution centers. The process looks like this: A damaged couch is transported to a distribution center for repair, gets moved to a showroom for display, gets moved back to the distribution center if it isn’t selling, and the cycle repeats. Meanwhile, the couch steals valuable square footage from higher-margin inventory — as its own margins erode at every step.
2. Sell it from a clearance outlet: Although this approach centralizes operations and saves showroom space for full-price inventory, it comes with its own set of expenses. In addition to paying rent on an extra space, the retailer has to pay to set up the store, maintain it, and then staff it.

Moving clearance inventory is, in short, a huge drain on a retailer’s resources. And, while some may wish to move their clearance operations to a digital storefront, they aren’t always equipped to do so at scale. The furniture industry is one of retail’s last brick-and-mortar holdouts, and many in that space haven’t made the full pivot to omnichannel.

How SaySo is solving the clearance problem

SaySo simplifies the clearance sales experience from end to end. We help retailers launch a co-branded digital storefront where they can profitably offload clearance stock without the headache.

The bread and butter of our solution is gamified shopping experiences. By enabling customers to bid on clearance inventory at the prices they actually want to pay (via a Dutch auction format), retailers can drive user engagement and move products faster. What’s more, in transferring the shopping experience to an online format, we help substantially reduce rental and transportation costs to protect profit margins. With the retailer’s stock already on full digital display, they can simply store it in a distribution center until it sells — no transportation costs or showroom space lost.

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Best of all, SaySo does all the heavy lifting to get the site up and running. Building out the shopping interface and sophisticated back-end integrations would be a huge time investment for any retailer — to the tune of 20,000 development hours, in fact. That’s five full-time engineers working 40 hours a week for two straight years. But SaySo offers a ready-made, customer-friendly experience that easily integrates with your existing product catalog and workflows.

To get started, all you have to do is grant access to your website’s domain, inventory solution, and payment processing tool, and we’ll take it from there.

Here’s how easy it gets after that:

Instantly upload your entire product catalog

Syncing your product catalog with a new digital storefront and then maintaining the integration would be an ongoing hassle for any team. But, with SaySo, you only have to upload your catalog once. Whether you want to input it as a CSV or an SFTP product feed, we give you plenty of options. The best part? There’s no maintenance required. As soon as the integration is complete, you’ll always be able to pull up any SKU data — even as you keep updating the catalog on your main website.

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Seamlessly generate product listings

After syncing your catalog, you can effortlessly generate auction listings for every SKU. We automatically populate each listing with essential SKU data, including the product description, handle, dimensions, stock photos, and more.

From there, all you have to do is set the warehouse location of the product, a serial number, and then add in a few condition-specific details. You can set the condition using a simple drop-down menu and then use our picture-taking feature to add photos showcasing any gentle damages or distinguishing attributes.

This streamlined process condenses the time spent listing clearance items from hours to minutes. Plus, once you’ve filled in the auction listing, you can easily manage it in our integrated dashboard.

Easily integrate your existing workflows

SaySo operates like a natural extension of your ecosystem. Not only do we sync with all your workflows, but we unify them into your existing order management system so you can see all your orders in a single place — whether they’re made in-store, through Descend, or through your full-price eCommerce channel.

Plus, we transfer all imagery and copy from your full-price website so that you can retain its precise look and feel on your clearance storefront. This means everything from your branding to your shipping policies will carry over.

Finally, our payment processing integration transfers sale proceeds directly to your bank account, eliminating the need for manual reconciliation and end-of-month accounts payable.

How Ashley Canada reinvented its clearance operations with SaySo

Ashley Canada gave new life to five years’ worth of unloved clearance inventory using SaySo. Rather than relying on showrooms to market and sell clearance items, Ashley Canada worked with SaySo to launch a co-branded online storefront (Ashley x Descend) that helped the brand profitably offload dead stock directly from its distribution centers. 

The best part? Ashley x Descend customers are now visiting the brand’s main site to make complementary purchases at full price — driving additional conversions and LTV. Not only did launching this storefront reduce Ashley Canada’s transportation fees by 20%, but 75% of clearance customers also said they would purchase using the site again. 

Are you ready to turn your dead stock into a new revenue stream?

See what SaySo can do for your clearance inventory by booking a demo today.

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