Sell excess footwear inventory

What footwear can I get an offer on?

We make offers on new overstock, closeouts, discontinued styles, shelf pulls and customer returns in every footwear segment: women's, men's, kids', athletic, work and casual. Lots can be a single style in deep quantity or a mixed truckload across brands. Footwear is always counted in pairs, and the size breakdown inside each style matters as much as the brand.

What moves fastest:

• Branded athletic and running shoes in full size runs
• Work boots and safety footwear with intact certification labels
• Kids' shoes in core sizes before back-to-school
• Women's seasonal styles (boots, sandals) bought ahead of their season

What is harder to place: single shoes with no mate, heavily worn returns, one-size remnants, and fashion styles two or more seasons past their peak.

How do condition tiers work for shoes?

Box condition is a real price line in this category. A boxed pair can go to an off-price chain; the same pair without a box usually goes to a bin store or an export bale.

What drives the price of a footwear lot?

Size run. Stores buy styles they can stock across sizes. A full run (for example, a women's run covering the core sizes plus half sizes) lets a buyer put the style on a shelf. When the core sizes have sold through at retail and only the fringe sizes remain, the lot is worth less per pair even if the brand is strong.

Style depth. A few thousand pairs of one style is easier to sell than the same count spread across hundreds of styles with a few pairs each. Deep lots go to one buyer in one deal.

Season. Boots lose value through late winter; sandals lose value through late summer. Selling just ahead of the next season's buying window is usually better than holding a full year. Resellers stock boots before cold weather and sandals before warm weather, so they buy a season ahead. In the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed, which is one reason export buyers can take off-season styles that domestic stores will not.

Width and fit. Wide and extra-wide widths have a smaller market. List them separately so they are not averaged into a standard-width offer.

Brand rules. Some athletic and fashion brands ask for no online resale. That is a fair request; it removes some buyers, which lowers the offer.

New in box sits well above customer returns, because a return needs inspecting, pairing and often reboxing before it can sell. Where live sold-deal data exists, the recovery block on this page shows the current band.

What should I send for a footwear offer?

• Style number, description, color and gender for each line
• Size grid: pairs per size per style (this is the most important column)
• Width, if not standard
• Boxed, damaged box, or no box, with counts for each
• Retail price or MSRP per pair
• Condition per line; returns split from new
• Photos: the box label, the sole, a carton opened to show how pairs sit, and the full pallet
• Carton count and pairs per carton; pallet count and height
• Location and dock access
• Any brand or channel restrictions you need

If your current spreadsheet only lists a total pair count per style, say so; we can often work from a sample size count while you build the full grid. Our guide on building a manifest shows the layout.

Can I control where my shoes are resold?

Yes. Footwear brands ask for this more than most categories, because a discounted sneaker on a marketplace can undercut their own retailers. Common requests:

1. No online marketplaces
2. Export only, or export to named regions only
3. No resale in the brand's home market
4. Removal of retailer price stickers from boxes

We agree the restriction first and price with it in mind. Read how to liquidate without hurting your brand for the wider approach. Listings that buyers see never show your company name.

Mistakes that cost footwear sellers money

• Counting units instead of pairs. It confuses the offer and invites a recount.
• Mixing returns into new stock. One pallet of worn returns inside a new-in-box load makes buyers discount the whole load.
• Sending catalog images. We need photos of your actual cartons and pairs.
• Holding seasonal styles too long. Each season you wait, the style looks older to the buyer's customer.
• Hiding missing mates. Singles are fine to sell; they just need their own line.
• Re-boxing returns into new boxes without saying so. Buyers check, and trust is hard to win back.

Compliance notes for footwear

Children's footwear is a children's product under U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission rules, so buyers may ask for the Children's Product Certificate and lead-content testing on kids' shoes. Have it ready if you are the brand or importer. Sending it with the manifest saves a round of questions and widens the pool of buyers who can take the lot.

Safety footwear (steel or composite toe, electrical hazard rated) is sold on its rating label, so keep inner labels intact. Country-of-origin marking must remain on the shoe or box for resale.

A worked example

For illustration only, not market data: a footwear brand discontinues a casual women's style and has a few thousand pairs left in a 3PL, across several colors. The size grid shows the core sizes thin and the fringe sizes heavy. Some of the boxes are crushed.

How we would look at it:

The brand asks for no online resale. That excludes marketplace sellers but leaves off-price stores and export buyers, so the offer reflects a smaller buyer pool. How much depends on how strong the style is offline. Freight from the 3PL is one trailer from one dock. The brand clears the whole style in one deal, with no listing under its name.

If you buy shoes rather than sell them, see wholesale closeout footwear. Apparel from the same brand can often go in the same deal; see selling excess apparel. When you are ready, send the size grid and photos through the offer form on this page.