The Challenge
A leading company in the greeting card industry produces cards specialized for every occasion found in more than 39,000 US retail stores. When the company decided to close its large greeting card production facility located in Kansas and consolidate assets from its other Kansas facilities, it needed to dispose of a large number of industry specialized assets in a short period of time.
The Solution
With more than 750,000 square feet of warehouse space to dispose of in a sustainable manner, the client turned to Liquidity Services for a strategic partnership in ensuring that the requirements of the project would be met. Liquidity Services provided resources, experience and knowledge of surplus assets, as well as a proven ability to garner higher recovery values while protecting sustainability objectives. The full project included an assessment and lotting strategy, internal redeployment of certain assets, and two online auctions to sell the remaining assets in the Kansas facility.
The surplus assets marked for redeployment or sale included:
- Printing equipment
- Die cutting equipment
- Embossing/stamping equipment
- Packaging equipment
- Printing support
- Machine shop equipment
- Plant support
- Material handling assets
- Office furniture
The Results
The two online auctions were well marketed to Liquidity Services’ global buyer base and with the company’s partnership, a press release was issued to attract additional, potential bidders to the site. Media stories about the online auctions for surplus were issued in the Kansas media, attracting buyers from all over the country and world. More than 541 total lots were sold via the AllSurplus (formerly GoIndustry DoveBid website) — a leading Liquidity Services marketplace.
In the first online auction, more than 5,482 bids alone were received for the assets in the sale. The marketing efforts for this unique sale paid off with 31,421 page views which led to asset sales of $681,960 in just the first auction. In a specific sale, a die cut press was bid on 166 times alone and sold for over $66,000. In another unique asset sale, a specialty paper plate forming machine, purchased for $15,000 more than a decade before, sold for $150,000 to a bidder who was setting up a manufacturing facility. Bidders came from across the world to the online auctions to bid — from Bangladesh to the Netherlands to Uruguay — and more than 22 countries were represented in the auction.
Total sales exceeded the client’s expectations, returning over $1 million to the client, a higher recovery than anticipated. The success from the two auctions enabled the company to complete this important project in a transparent, sustainable manner by its expected timeline.
