Comment by tao97

Working on a liquidation marketplace for small retailers with stale inventory. The hypothesis: independent shops have thousands sitting in dead stock, but liquidation is either too time-consuming (eBay listing = 20-30 min/item) or too brutal (wholesale = 10-20¢ on the dollar). A marketplace that handles cross-posting + buyer matching for ~12-15% commission could work if you avoid the physical aggregation overhead. The interesting part is virtual aggregation - by knowing what's sitting at Shop A, B, and C, you can pool inventory into larger lots that are more attractive to bulk buyers. All goods ship seller-to-buyer directly. No receiving, no warehousing. Main questions I'm trying to validate:

Unit economics - Is 30-40% recovery at 12-15% commission compelling enough vs. just donating it? Or is the delta too small to care?

Trust problem - Will SMEs actually hand over inventory data and logistics coordination to an unknown platform? What's the minimum viable trust signal?

Adverse selection - Is "stale inventory" just another way of saying "unsellable garbage"? How do you filter what's worth listing vs. what should just be donated?

Buyer side - Do liquidators/resellers actually care about aggregated lots, or is that just something that sounds smart but doesn't matter in practice?

Currently testing manually with a few local boutiques. The hypothesis is speed matters more than optimizing for maximum price - SMEs want cash flow, not an extra 5% after 6 months. Has anyone here worked on inventory liquidation, reverse logistics, or similar marketplace dynamics? What am I missing?