Inmar: Inside a Liquidation Center Where Retail Returns Go to Be Resold

December 24, 2022

"We get this truckload full of various stuff, and then our job is to accurately account for it and separate it out," Curtis Greve, vice president of operations for Inmar Intelligence, told Insider during a tour of the facility.

Inmar's goal is to maximize the money still to be made on those items by determining where to send them, whether that's back to the store, to an outlet or discount seller, donating them, or, in about 1% of cases, responsibly destroying them.

"It's ugly, it's hard, and it's not intuitive," Greve said. "Retailers are used to shipping things out — filling stores and sending out orders. Receiving returns is an entirely different process," he explained. "We've already got the best practices. We've got the technology. Retailers and manufacturers just don't want to invest their resources in developing those."

Tony Sciarrotta, President of the Reverse Logistics Association, told Insider that there's a dearth of processing capacity in the US market, especially when it comes to the human labor needed to inspect items and make sure they're suitable for resale.

Read Insider's full article with photos and descriptions on how Inmar's facility works:

https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-returns-liquidation-center-where-retail-returns-resold-trash-2022-12?utm_medium=email&utm_content=EE5EpVIkM23Mw7R3NNhV6_ioSeZrM_9fNFvYJEMyX-XG1IKgDRssh1jKDxRGT44v#shipments-come-in-four-or-five-days-a-week-by-the-truckload-from-inmars-retailer-and-manufacturer-clients-1