Het Financieele Dagblad - 14 March 2023 - Richard Smit

Those who really want to save money can turn to consignment dealers. They snap up surplus stock for next to nothing and sell it on to retailers or directly to consumers.

Bert Hesselink buys everything. Chocolate almost past its expiry date, perfumes and vases gathering dust in warehouses, onions, medicines, even mattresses. 'I've just bought 300,000 packs of coffee creamer,' says the owner of the Action-like shop format Medikamente Die Grenze. 'Those normally cost €1.19. With us, you have four for one euro.'

The former market vendor bids on leftover stock from wholesalers, from supermarkets and manufacturers. They call him. He always answers and they have an answer within five minutes. A few days later, it is already in the shops. There are now 57 of them in the Netherlands. 'There will definitely be 10 more this year,' expects Hesselink, who is aiming for annual sales of €100m.

The shops were already running well, but he has the impression that they have been a bit busier lately. And he quite understands that. 'The supermarket is getting more and more expensive. We are visited by people who have money but are frugal, because that's how you get rich. And people who are struggling financially. They look for alternatives. With us, they pay half the price, or less.'

Santa in spring

More and more entrepreneurs are going out of business. Party traders - there are some 130 on the classified ads site Partijhandelaren.nl - are buying up their stocks. As well as leftovers from importers, manufacturers and retail chains. Buyers sell them back to shops or other traders, but sometimes also through their own shops to consumers.

Food in Die Grenze shops often has a shorter shelf life, but that does not seem to bother customers. Hesselink: 'We sell two 220-gram bags of M&Ms for €2.50. Even if these are past their sell-by date, there is nothing wrong with them.' He now also quietly sells Advent calendars or M&Ms Christmas men.

This overproduction used to be thrown away by manufacturers. They are doing so less these days, as such waste is being looked at more critically, Hesselink notes. He also has the impression that manufacturers are holding on to some more stock, because some customers are dropping out because of the sharply higher prices.

139,827 hairstylers at €2.99

One hundred and twenty kilometres to the northwest, 15,000 square metres of Frisian wholesaler Kooistra.com is full of bargains. Hairstylers at €2.99, 139,827 still in stock. Cans of spray paint for 99 cents. A few hundred four-piece sets of BK pans for €34. Market traders, buyers from chain stores and other buyers come here to make their move.

Most customers do not even come to the wholesaler in Leeuwarden, says co-owner Tjitse Lawerman. They receive the new batches with a picture via Whatsapp and hup, it is sold. In the world of batch trading, everything goes fast. Other batches are sold to chains such as Wibra or Big Bazar.

His trade, some twenty thousand pallets a year, comes from everywhere and nowhere. Batches from an importer that do not meet all requirements but can be sold abroad. Wrong orders. Bankruptcy estates. Contents of shipping containers whose owners have gone bankrupt. Obsolete collections. Items incorrectly labelled.

And products that chain stores like Blokker, Albert Heijn or C&A want to get rid of. 'A vase with a colour the customer is done with, or that is replaced by a new model. We take off the address and barcode and sell that in Eastern Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.'

Webshops shutting down

Lawerman sees the biggest shift in supply in online shops. 'Those internet entrepreneurs have tried it for a while, but cannot compete with the big players and decide to go back to work anyway. This results in a lot of small stock, a few pallets. No junk of a few euros, but stuff of €10 to €20.'

The company, which once started selling from a cargo bicycle, puts those in about 10 of its own shops. The largest is the Maxx XXL in Leeuwarden. From the ceiling, big yellow signs scream texts like Always 50% - 70% discount and Weekly changing stock. On the floor are clothes, ceramic stoves and toy unicorns with yellow-pink moons.

'In wholesale, we have to earn it, with dimes and cents,' says Lawerman. 'The shops are nice for side business and we like doing it too. Consumers are looking for low prices. When Action was just starting out, people were still hesitant to enter such a shop. That is completely gone and we notice that too.'

50-kilometre drive to the shop

The same goes for Winstpallet in Schagen, North Holland. The company prefers to buy remaining stock directly from A-brand manufacturers. Often products that are going out of stock or almost past their sell-by date. These are sold to supermarket operators, discounters, petrol stations and garden centres, but many batches go on sale in their entirety through fourteen of its own Budget Food shops.

There, customers will find, for example, two trays of Johma salad for €1.50, a container of Skyr for 39 cents or a bottle of Remia Chip sauce for 89 cents. People on a tight budget come to the shop especially for these, says director Maarten Muller. 'We see many new faces in the shops. There are people who drive more than 50 kilometres to buy from our shops.'

A manufacturer can never produce exactly to order, Muller said. Budget Food shops sell products left over from a promotional campaign, going out of range, having outdated packaging or almost past their sell-by date. 'The quality, there's nothing wrong with that,' he says. 'But it is 30 to 50% cheaper.'

Saving food from wastageFigures on leftover batches do not exist; manufacturers and shops do not run with them. Parties that want to combat food waste are throwing themselves at leftover food. The app Too Good To Go collaborates with manufacturers, shops and restaurants to create surprise packages of products that can no longer be sold through regular channels. Another example is Foodello, an online delivery supermarket that launched in the Netherlands from Finland in February last year. 'We have now had more than 100,000 orders,' says marketing manager Bas Dekker. 'With that, we have avoided wasting 700,000 kilos of food.' Apples with hail damage, rice with a misprint on the packaging or a short expiry date used to go to the biogas plant or animal feed factory, says Dekker. Now Foodello buys spotty products from about 150 suppliers. Customers buy these primarily because of prices that are on average 40% lower, says Dekker. 'The fact that there is less waste is a nice bonus.'

Read the full article: https://fd.nl/bedrijfsleven/1469947/klanten-rijden-kilometers-om-voor-spotgoedkope-restpartijen-onc3cazosc1S