![]() The return rate of overall retail sales jumped by one-third in a decade, from around 6% to over 9%. That’s because the volume of returns has soared, fueled by e-commerce, according to a 2019 report by Deloitte. But increasingly, sellers are opting to sell off the returns rather than restock them. RL Liquidation is part of the reverse logistics industry, which moves products from customer back to the producer or vendor. It has annual contracts with the likes of Amazon, Target, The Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wayfair to buy, sight-unseen, truckloads of returns. ![]() They are independent dealers for RL Liquidators LLC, a 13-year-old Sacramento business with now 24 locations. “Every Tuesday is like Black Friday, where people go in and forage through the bins,” said Richard Cawood, who owns the business with his wife, Ruth, and business partner Sam Pierce. The store is then restocked for the next week. The concept is that everything in the store - from pet food and litter to socks to books to toilet paper - is priced successively lower each day: $6 on Tuesdays, $4 on Wednesdays, $2 on Thursdays, $1 on Fridays and whatever is left for 25 cents on Saturdays. On Tuesday April 19, Falling Prices opened in a west Santa Rosa neighborhood shopping center anchored by grocer Safeway. But the pandemic and now rising inflation appears to have been a great time to launch a Santa Rosa venture that sells retailers’ returned merchandise at big discounts. It’s been a tough two years to run a business, no less start one.
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