Private sales - how can online retailers take advantage?
Private event retailing, or private sales as they are otherwise known, are an interesting area for online retailers. They bascially allow manufacturers and retailers to sell off excess stock.
Retailers can take two different approaches to online private sales:
1. Depending on your product, you can use one of the growing number of online private sale services - Vente Privee is arguably the most famous of all of these in Europe but more seem to be springing up.
2. Set up private sales as part of your own website - Koodos offers a fairly simple private sales service, for example.
There are also various options for how you run them. Koodos allows customers to sign up for free and choose which brand sales they want to join. Vente Privee is much more exclusive - you have to be invited to join.
Offline, private sales have been popular in France for years, usually held in dusty basements. As this article in Business Week explains, 5-10% of manufactured goods end up as overstock and clawing back some of that revenue can be lucrative for certain retailers.
One alternative to private sales is to clear excess stock through Ebay auctions - Littlewoods and Schuh both do this. However, private sales can be made much more engaging and personal, especially if you're selling a range of different brands.
