Air fryers, toys, Halloween decorations, electronics and scores of other items are stacked to the ceiling on rows of towering shelves inside the cavernous RK’s Liquidation Warehouse east of Orlando.
Shoppers could find an Emeril Lagasse four-in-one pasta maker, juicer, grinder and frozen dessert maker for $95. An Instant Pot had a price tag of $65. An extra large anti-gravity chair was going for $48, and a Woozoo fan was $35. One part of the warehouse is filled with yards of clothing, including some racks marked at $5.99.
The 11,000-square-foot liquidation warehouse in a business park off Forsyth Road has been getting at least twice as many items as it did a year ago. It buys from a retailer overstocked goods, end-of-season products, returned items and things pulled from the shelves that just aren’t selling, said Ravi Panchal, one of the warehouse’s owners.
“In the last month, month-and-a-half, I’ve been getting a tremendous amount of inventory,” he said.
Discount liquidators like RK’s in Orlando and across the nation are helping big retailers trim back excess inventories created amid pandemic-driven supply chain woes and shifts in how consumers spend their money.
Panchal said he has a contract with a big box store. He didn’t name it, but many of the things in his not air-conditioned warehouse featured Sam’s Club markings as well as the Sam’s Club brand Member’s Mark. So in effect, he is a discount store for a discount store.
Panchal said he is hearing that retailers are “getting the stuff that was stuck in the ships, or it was delayed or whatever it may be, and they’re getting it like almost towards the end of the season and they’re also getting the new merchandise. … They just don’t have space to accommodate all of that.”
Other items on shelves right now include Halloween decorations, such as an $85 lighted, twinkling spider web. It wasn’t released this year, however.
“The Halloween merchandise that we have is from last year,” Panchal said, citing shipping delays. “The reason for that is the [big box retail] stores got all this merchandise after Halloween. So it didn’t even make it on their shelves. It came directly here.”
The Forsyth Road liquidation store is part of Panchal’s 24,000 square feet of storage space around Central Florida.
And it’s not just RK’s Liquidation Warehouse or Orlando where business is busy. The New York Times reported in July that a Liquidity Services warehouse in Pennsylvania was “operating at exceptionally high volumes for this time of year.”
The story noted that inflation is hurting discretionary consumer spending, leaving stores with more goods. The federal government’s Consumer Price Index increased 8.5% over the year ending in July.
Some retailers noticed earlier this year consumer purchases were shifting as more people left their homes coming out of the coronavirus pandemic.
In June, Target said in a news release it was taking actions to “right-size its inventory” amid what it described as a “rapidly changing environment.”
The pandemic’s disruption of the supply chain is also a factor.
“The pandemic put a lot of strain on the supply chain overall,” said Axel Stock, associate professor of marketing at University of Central Florida.
That meant retailers had a problem selling what customers were looking for and then ordered more so as not to end up in that position again, Stock said. He added it is “very challenging for retailers to predict the future demand,” especially when they can’t order on a short-term basis.
Online shopping habits during the pandemic also led to customers becoming more used to returning items, Stock said.
So there’s more inventory for liquidators such as Panchal, who estimated about a quarter of his goods are returns.
The big appeal for customers to shop at the liquidation store is the deals, with Panchal saying items are marked down 25% to 70% compared with what they sell for in stores.
(Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/ Orlando Sentinel)
Jessica Whitehead, 41, was shopping there recently with her daughter, Dakodah Maleshefski, 19. The family recently moved to Mims from Massachusetts and are waiting for construction on their new home to be finished.
Whitehead ended up buying two candles, for just under $13, and said they would be back once they’ve unpacked and gone through what they brought down to Florida.
“When we left home, we had to make everything fit in one thing,” Whitehead said. “So we got rid of a lot of things.”
Whitehead also pointed out the toys available at the store could be good gifts to send back to children in Massachusetts.
“We don’t live next to everybody that we used to, so it would be great to come in here when we need a birthday gift or whatever,” Whitehead said.
She had checked out the store’s Facebook page before driving over to Orlando.
“I’m kind of in awe because they only show so much online,” Whitehead said. “It only shows so much, but then you walk in and there’s so much, just walking in the front door. They do have a lot of things to offer, floor to ceiling.”
Panchal has a plan if his own inventory keeps growing.
“We’re probably going to open up more stores,” he said.
afuller@orlandosentinel.com
