This is the presentation that Kim Lohrberg (aka the Liquidation Lady) gave at the WHSL conference in Louisville, Kentucky.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n I originally started my company, Key Internet Marketing, Inc<\/a>. (acronym KIM) by making websites and monetizing them with affiliate marketing<\/a>, and my first website was about coupons and saving people time and money. Then I made one about my preemie twins, my love for shoes and even one for my favorite team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers! These websites were my main source of income for over twenty years. I had the luxury of working at home (before it was the norm) and being there for my children when they were little.<\/span><\/p>\n My children are now grown (and require less of my time), so in 2016, I started dabbling into retail arbitrage, which led to online arbitrage<\/a> and the world of liquidation. In 2020, I sold my websites which gave me more time (and money) to invest in the liquidation aspect of my business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Side Note: To create your own action figure, type the following prompt with your changes into ChatGPT:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCreate an image of an action figure in packaging labeled \u2018[Your Label]\u2019. Use the attached photo as a reference for the face. [He\/She] is dressed in [Outfit Description], and holding [Item, e.g., Coffee Mug]. The cardboard section should be [Color]. Include an \u2018Accessories\u2019 section with items like [List Accessories]. Make the design visually appealing and reflective of a [Describe Industry]. Do not include the character image on packaging.\u201d<\/p>\n We now buy truckloads of liquidation from Target<\/a>, Macy\u2019s, Dollar General, Walmart and more and resell items online. We are in the top 5% of third-party sellers on Amazon FBA<\/a> and are rising on Walmart Marketplace.<\/span><\/p>\n When we started to become overwhelmed with inventory that we couldn\u2019t sell online, whether it be damaged product, returns or just something we can\u2019t sell, I came up with the idea of a $5 Liquidation Popup sale where we sold all our extra inventory \u2013 everything was $5 \u2013 we were basically a bin store before bin stores were a thing!<\/span><\/p>\n We started selling at flea markets<\/a> and vendor shows.<\/span><\/p>\n Then we rented a building just for popup sales.<\/span><\/p>\n And now we have our own warehouse where we host sales.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We have Liquidation Popup sales about once a month, usually on Sunday afternoon from 1-3 pm, and the theme varies every month. It may be \u201ceverything is $5\u201d or \u201ceverything is $25\u201d or it may be a big appliance, furniture and\/or mattress sale. We tested being open more hours and days even, but it turned out everyone wanted to be there right when we opened. Now people line up hours in advance for our sales. It\u2019s like Black Friday at every sale. Woman\u2019s World even did a story<\/a> about our Liquidation Popup sales!<\/span><\/p>\n One thing we noticed with our $5 sales is that no one took the time to look at the clothing, and we get nice clothing. So in 2021, we opened up what we call a \u201cliquidation boutique\u201d called Bend The Trend<\/a>. Those same clothes that we couldn\u2019t sell for $5, we now sell for $12 a piece \u2013 go figure?! We just raised our prices from $10 earlier this year due to inflation. <\/span><\/p>\n Our liquidation boutique is only open Thursdays 12-6 and Saturdays 10-2. We were originally open 6 days a week, all day long, but realized Thursdays and Saturdays were the busiest. And now, much like our popup sales, the shorter hours gives a sense of urgency, and we have lines at the door when we open Thursdays and Saturdays. And our staff overhead is less, so it\u2019s a win-win.<\/span><\/p>\n Actually, all of my paid staff are retired women. I\u2019m telling you retired women are the best reliable and honest workers. We also have about a dozen friends and family help with the popup sales, but they all work for free lunch and free stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So how do we get traffic to our store and our popup sales? It\u2019s all through social media. We\u2019ve tried newspaper ads and radio ads, but our real sales came through social media. So, I\u2019m going to share the exact methods that I use to be successful.<\/span><\/p>\n Facebook is by far the most popular social media network that we utilize so we are going to focus on that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have a Facebook business page? You need a Facebook business page! The \u201cIntro\u201d on the page allows you to include a physical address, a link to your website, a link to your Instagram profile (because Meta who owns Facebook also owns Instagram), your open hours, your price range ($) and a link to your Reviews.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Update your cover photo periodically as every time you edit that, it shows up as a post.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have a Facebook group? If you don\u2019t have a Facebook group, start one today. Yes, you need a business page and a group. Groups get more interaction than pages, and lets people ask questions that give you more exposure. You may get sick of someone always asking \u201cwhen are you open\u201d or \u201cwhat\u2019s your address\u201d but that\u2019s more eyes every time you reply and pushes your posts up in the algorithm.<\/span><\/p>\n Plus Facebook has been really touchy lately, and if you lose your page or your group, you\u2019ll still have the other. A couple of years ago, I posted about some \u201cdesigner inspired\u201d perfume that we had for sale at the boutique, and Facebook shut down my page claiming that meant \u201ccounterfeit\u201d. Never use the words \u201cknockoff\u201d or \u201creplica\u201d \u2013 I\u2019m even leery of using the word \u201cdupe<\/a>\u201d nowadays.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I highly suggest that if you don\u2019t use the Meta Business Suite \u2013 business.facebook.com<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 start immediately. It\u2019s totally free and actually has a ton of features.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It integrates with your Facebook page, Instagram and Facebook groups, and you can see and respond to comments and messages in the interface. You can also toggle easily between accounts, for instance I have pages and groups for all of my different businesses. And I can post quickly to pages and groups at the same time. <\/span><\/p>\n The above is a post for the sale we had this past weekend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The most used tabs I used in the Business Suite include:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I could probably do a whole talk just on Facebook Business Suite, but we need to move on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s go back to groups for a minute. Join local exchange groups as your business (not all groups allow this). For example, I live in Pierce County, so I joined the \u201cPierce County Exchange\u201d and all of the surrounding county exchanges.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When you post via the Business Suite, you can post to your page, Instagram and up to 3 groups which one being your own. Also join exchange groups with your personal page, and you can share your business posts as your personal page. Be sure to include some content\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Make events with your page as the host. We have events for our popup sales and our in-store liquidation boutique sales. Use as many keywords (otherwise known as keyword stuffing) as you can in your title (up to 100 characters) and description so when people are searching events, they can find your event (I always include the date and location as well as what we are selling and payment types. Let them know you take credit cards! And if you don\u2019t take cards, I\u2019d highly recommend it. We personally use Square<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Then when logged in as your Page, invite Page followers to the event (limited to 500). And when logged into your personal account, invite your local friends. After you do this once, it\u2019s easy to invite the same friends that you invited to a previous event with one click.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The only advertising that I pay for is Events. I pay $25 per event,\u00a0 but be sure to change who the ad is shown to. You want to be shown in your local area (which will show up to a 50 mile radius). Since I live in a rural area, I manually input all of the surrounding zip codes. I\u2019ve found this reaches more than just clicking \u201clocal area\u201d but could be cumbersome if you live in an urban area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Make an announcement about your event and pin it as \u201cFeatured Post\u201d so it\u2019s at the top of your page\/group.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n According to SproutSocial (who is more social media savvy than me), they did a study and the best times to post on weekdays in the morning. Personally, I try to post, once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening. I can schedule out a whole week in less than an hour usually on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think several other liquidation businesses can attest that the content that does the best among readers is videos of forklifts unloading pallets. Even photos of pallets on the truck and lined up do well. While I do use and recommend Canva<\/a> to create posts, Facebook prefers to show raw images with no editing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Facebook allows you to post live videos, which you can turn into reel. You can also post videos as a regular post and story, so post that same video as many ways as you can.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You may have heard the marketing phrase \u201ccontent is King\u201d \u2013 so I\u2019m going to talk about several post ideas which can be posted on all platforms, not just Facebook.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you can\u2019t think of anything to post or don\u2019t have anything good to sell at the moment, make a post and ask questions, like \u201cwhat kinds of liquidation would you like us to get?\u201d. I asked that recently, and the top response was sporting goods, so if someone out there has sporting goods, let\u2019s make a deal!<\/span><\/p>\n You can also encourage interaction with polls. Facebook even has built-in poll options, but getting readers to comment their option is good, too. For example, we wanted to have a popup sale the weekend of the Superbowl, so asked our readers what day\/time worked best for them. If you are thinking about what types of liquidation to buy next, ask your readers? What products would you like best to see in our store? Toys, Bedding, Appliances, Mattresses?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re still stumped, use AI \u2013 artificial intelligence<\/a> \u2013 ask ChatGPT (there is a free version). You tell them an overview, and they will give you several options. For instance, I\u2019ll type in that \u201cBend The Trend is having a summer sale with 50% off shorts. What are some good Facebook posts?\u201d In less than a second, they will spit out easy to copy and paste content to post complete with hashtags and emojis.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Giveaways are a great way to grow followers. You can give away products (which I know you have), but I personally give away store credit, and I\u2019d rather have several small winners instead of one big winner. That way people have to come into the store to redeem the credit and usually end up buying more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When I do a giveaway, I make a page on my website for people to enter to win. I like to use \u201cGiveaway Tools<\/a>\u201d (it\u2019s free) that gives people more entries for completing more items, such as visiting your Facebook page.\u00a0 Facebook does not allow users to incentivize people to like a page, so it will say \u201cvisit\u201d instead of \u201clike\/follow\u201d for Facebook, but chances are the people will like when they visit. It collects email addresses that I can then add to my mailing list. Giveaway tools will also randomly pick winners for you if you don\u2019t want to pick them yourself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My mom used to work in a furniture store. She said the owner always had a \u201closs leader\u201d meaning you have to take a loss on some items to get people in the door. Recently I had some snowblowers that I got on a Home Depot salvage load. It\u2019s a good thing my husband is handsome because he\u2019s not handy. My husband couldn\u2019t get any of the snowblowers to start, so we decided to sell them \u201cas is\u201d for $25-$50 each. You can see the actual post on the screen. \u201cWhy are we offering them for so cheap? Because we don\u2019t know if they work!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I was honest in the post, and there was a lot of controversy in the comments. People saying we were a scam, that the snowblowers are junk. They say any publicity is good publicity. But we had several defend us saying we were indeed legitimate and even more people wanting to buy them now (even though we said no pre-sales). We actually had people camp out of the night before the sale wanting these snowblowers. And come to find out, most of the snowblowers worked just fine (it may have been user error on our end).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Do we have anyone here that uses the Ikea blue tote bags at your store? I don\u2019t live near an Ikea, so when we originally started our popups, we told people to bring their own tote bags and boxes \u2013 some even brought trash bags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then I looked into ordering our own tote bags from China through Alibaba<\/a>. I was able to get non-woven laminated bags custom sized at 19\u2033x19\u2033x10\u2033 with bottom base and customized side walls made for $1 a piece (I can not guarantee you can get them now for this price due to tariffs). I did have to order 2500 at a time \u2013 it was $1500 for the bags and $1000 for the freight making them $1 per bag. I also sold advertising spots on the bag for $50 an ad (which I set up as a product on Shopify<\/a>) which helped offset the cost of the bags. I had local and online businesses both buy ads.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We originally gave away the tote bags to people that didn\u2019t bring totes, but no one brought them back because they wanted another free one. <\/span>We wanted people to reuse them. So we now charge $5 per bag and give away a free mystery bag when they reuse their yellow tote. The mystery bags are a 10\u00d713 colored polybag filled with 5 items \u2013 basically crap that we can\u2019t sell or is low value (think Dollar General liquidation<\/a> or Bullseye). I\u2019m sure those of you with bin stores can easily fill up some mystery bags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n P.S. I just saw someone post that you can get bags similar to Ikea\u2019s blue bags at Harbor Freight for only 79 cents per bag. I have not confirmed this though.\u00a0<\/p>\n I love cookies as you can tell. I actually looked into a cookie franchise a few years ago but realized I have enough irons in the fire. So I was super excited when a couple of local moms recently started a cookie business. I asked them if they wanted to set up a table and sell cookies at our popup sales. They sold out and were ecstatic, so now we have a standing relationship with them. We post about them, and they post about us. We bring each other sales and offer more of a fun and tasty experience for our customers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then I got a great idea from \u201cDeals 4 Days Bin Store\u201d who posted \u201cWho wants donuts in the am?! If we can get 2 dozen shares we will bring 2 dozen donuts for the line!\u201d They got 24 shares in an hour. So I decided to offer free cookies with purchase for shares!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Look for local content creators \u2013 not famous ones that will charge you an arm and a leg, but micro influencers that are willing to post about you in exchange for free stuff. We offer free outfits from our local boutique to fashion influencers. It gets us free publicity and free content that we can repost as our \u201coutfit of the day\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Now I suppose you\u2019re wondering how you find influencers? One, you can post saying you\u2019re looking for content creators and tell them to DM you links to their social media so you can see what they post about it and how many people follow them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You can also search location-based hashtags. For me, this would be #NortheastNebraska and #NorfolkNE Not a lot of people use hashtags on Facebook, so I would suggest searching Instagram and TikTok for hashtags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You can also google your location with the word influencers, but it mainly brings up companies wanting you to pay. If you do have a marketing budget, there are several websites out there that will connect you with local influencers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have an email list, you need one. I\u2019m sure you all have a handful of customers that don\u2019t use social media. Ask them for your email address. You own your email list. You don\u2019t own any of your social media accounts, so if any of those go away, you still have your email list. Free services that I recommend are MailerLite<\/a> and MailChimp (both are free for up to so many subscribers).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Once a month, I\u2019ll make a social media post about \u201cbe the first to know\u201d about a sale and tell people to DM their email address to get on the list. There are paid tools to automate this process, but it doesn\u2019t take me much time to copy and paste the email address into MailerLite. You could also set up an Automation like we talked about earlier saying comment #email with details on how to get notified of our next sale. Then set it to ask them respond with their email address or enter it here with a link.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Then I email my list every time we have a popup sale, an in-store sale and\/or an online sale. The average email open rate is 15%, but we have a 46% open rate!<\/span><\/p>\n I do recommend that if you do have a list to download periodically as even though you own it, if too many people flag you for spam, you could get your account shut down.<\/span><\/p>\n If you use Square as your payment processor, you can also download the email addresses of your customers. I presume other processors, like Clover, allow the same. Square also offers email and SMS (text) campaigns in their interface, but I\u2019ve been too cheap to test that out. Text open rates are way higher than email open rates!<\/span><\/p>\n I asked AI to help me come up with closing statement with the top takeaways from my presentation, and these were it:<\/span><\/p>\n In the actual presentation, I asked the audience for their top take aways and gave away free editions of the Influencers in the Wild Board Game<\/a> to those that participated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"disclosure\"\/](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/disclosure.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Action](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/ChatGPT-Image-Apr-19-2025-04_13_24-PM.png\")
![\"Liquidation](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/liquidpopup1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Building](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-19-125829.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/488936196_1233714202088758_7199357575489186853_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Bend](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/475861587_552352247853389_8391713716954446008_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"liquidation](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/popup-workers.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Facebook](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-19-125951.png\")
<\/p>\nFacebook<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
Facebook Page\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Facebook Groups<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Business Suite<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-06-171905.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Facebook](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-06-172504.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
Other Facebook Groups<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Events<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Best Times To Post<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Best](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-06-174013.png\")
<\/p>\nPost Ideas<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Facebook](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-05-172821.png\")
<\/p>\nPolls<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Artificial Intelligence<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Giveaways<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Giveaway](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-06-174444.png\")
<\/p>\nLoss Leader<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"snowblowers](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-06-174703.png\")
<\/p>\nTote Bags<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Liquidation](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/476165564_1183108893815956_3639604401202245370_n.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPartnerships<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Liquidation](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-05-173322.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Who](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-19-153959.png\")
<\/p>\nInfluencers<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Email Marketing<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"Be](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Screenshot-2025-04-05-173622.png\")
<\/p>\nSMS \/ Text Marketing<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
Final Tips<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
\n
![\"Kim](\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0ae6d224ba77e19db82c576333416509?s=250&r=g\")
<\/a> <\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/savingk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/liquidation-lady-presentation.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"