By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Most of the time, The Licensing Letter writes about the licensing deals that go well and succeed.
But, what happens when a product doesn’t succeed, and your company or client ends up with thousands of consumer products that can’t be sold through your retail network?
That’s where Kole Imports comes in, as a company that buys up excess stock or closeout sale goods, and then resells to a wide range of discount retailers.
Kole Imports VP Kevin Kole says the company is now trying to get the word out to more people in the licensing industry that when demand dies down for a product line, there is still a way to clear out your warehouse while still making money from your leftover stock.
“The primary message we want to get out to the licensing industry is that we are a great place to sell and offload their excess or overstock merchandise,” Kole says. “We’ve been doing business with buying closeout and overstock for close to 40 years now, and we have a pretty stellar record in terms of paying people on time, and how people are satisfied in their experience with us.”
Anyone who’s been in the consumer product industry for any amount of time has had to deal with overstock items at some point. Sometimes it may be the leftovers for products licensed to a movie that’s been out of the box office too long, or it could be items that were on trend last year, but this year need to move to a discount retailer.
Kole Imports is a top company when it comes to moving merchandise, particularly because the team prides themselves on living up to their word, and taking the stress out of the process for their clients and partners.
“We’re the people that will gladly take merchandise that has become a problem for them,” Kole says. “What we bring to the table is a truly stress-free, seamless experience for the customer when they are selling closeout merchandise, as well as the ability to pay immediately.”
Kole also points out that some companies are leery of closeout deals because they’ve been burned by a broker who backed out of a deal. Kole Imports, however, is not a broker, and the company says that once the deal is done, they never back out of the deal, because they have the resources to make it work.
Kole says it’s important to know the difference if you need to offload excess stock.
“There are those who broker merchandise to discount retailers, and rather than storing the merchandise themselves, they will only do a deal if somebody else on the other end is there to take it from them,” Kole explains. “That creates a whole set of issues, because a lot of the time the retailer might back out and then the whole deal falls through.
“Brokers are known in our industry as being less reliable than someone who owns their own warehouse space,” he adds. “We never broker merchandise because we have a quarter million square foot warehouse where we house the merchandise, so people can know that when we agree to a deal, there is never going to be a situation where we go back on our agreement.
“We are people who, if we say we’re buying into a deal, then we buy into the deal, no matter what, once we’ve agreed to it.”
So, how does the process work?
As Kole says, it’s both pretty simple and quite seamless. Anyone with excess or closeout goods can contact the company by email with photos and descriptions of the goods to be sold, as well as where they’re located and how many items are involved.
Once the parties settle on a price range, Kole Imports will ask for samples to be sent for inspection. Having been burned before, the company never does a deal without seeing a sample of the goods in question.
If the product is as advertised, Kole then makes official offers and if both parties can agree on that price, Kole then arranges for shipping, and does all the clerical and logistical work. “If there’s an agreement between both parties, we work very quickly on our end, and then once we receive the actual merchandise at our warehouse, we’ll do a quick quality control check, essentially, open a couple boxes to see that everything looks good, and as soon as that’s done, we pay.”
Kole does say that for people in the licensing industry, there can often be additional hurdles to overcome due to the nature of their licensing agreements. For example, licensed products may not be allowed to be sold in a variety of retail outlets under those agreements, but Kole Imports says that’s another reason they can help where others may not.
“Often times Licensed closeouts cannot be sold to specific retailers due to existing agreements with these retailers, making it much harder for some companies to sell these goods with part of there customer base being off limits,” Kole says. “At Kole Imports, this is not an obstacle for us, as we have a lot of different channels where we can sell Closeout Merchandise.”