Liquidator Offers Fertile Ground For Bargain Hunters

For the benefit of readers not yet finished with their Christmas shopping and in a hurry to get after it, let me say just two words - Liquidation World.

Especially for those on a tight budget, somewhere amidst the store’s vast eclectic array of articles of commerce there must exist a match for that last empty niche on your buy-list.

From designer apparel to 50-gallon drums of commercial cleaning solvent, from paint to pet supplies, they’ve got it at prices people stand in line for in front of stores going out of business.

Here, it’s the same stuff. But you don’t have to stand in line.

Liquidation World comes in after others get wiped out by acts of God or human-made disasters - bankruptcy, fire, flood, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides.

They pick up the pieces and cart them away and sell the remains in stores like the one that opened in 1993 at 12606 E. Sprague in the Spokane Valley.

It is one of a pair of outlets in the U.S. operated by a 32-store Calgary-based chain. The company also has a store in Lewiston. The other 30 are in Canada.

But U.S. manager Darrell Fladager is negotiating the purchase of buildings in two other Washington cities. He expects to close the transactions and open the additional outlets early in the New Year.

In addition, many more stores are on the drawing board. “We are growing at a rate of 8 stores a year,” Fladager says.

Liquidation World was founded nine years ago in Calgary as a privately held company by a man named Dale Gillespie. A few years ago, says Fladager, a major shareholder, “The company went public at 8 cents a share. The stock recently has traded at about $8.50 a share.”

In addition to natural disasters, Liquidation World capitalizes on other people’s business blunders and unavoidable mishaps - manufacturing over-runs, mislabeled products, store closures, and on and on.

“One of our largest deals amounted to more than 100 tractor-trailer loads of merchandise salvaged from a major discount warehouse that had a fire,” recalls Fladager. “The insurance company came in, wrote off the entire contents of this giant store, and we bought the lot. Somebody has to buy it and resell it. That’s us.”

I caught the company’s U.S. manager packing up an apparel store in Lewiston that had just called it quits. He bought the inventory.

It was a big store - 15,000 square feet - one and a half times the size of Liquidation World’s own Lewiston store, Fladager told me. So he was preparing to truck most of the stuff to Spokane, where the company has 19,000 square feet of in-store space plus 23,000 square feet warehouse storage space.

“I always advise customers, if you don’t mind a little soot damage or whatever it might be,” Fladager told me, “what we offer is a real deal.”

He was right, I soon discovered upon visiting the Spokane store, where I came upon a big pile of soot-smeared sweat pants and tops on sale for a few bucks each. A stock lady told me lots of people came in and bought a set, took them home and washed them, then came back and loaded up on extra sets for family and friends.

The stuff goes out fast. To keep it moving, Fladager said, “We progressively mark down the price of merchandise until it’s all gone. That’s about the only way we can keep bringing in so much new stuff all the time.

“Probably, the store has $1.2 million in inventory at this time,” he estimated the day we talked. “At any one time, we may have basically, well, basically - anything and everything. Thousands of items that change daily.”

To help keep the pipeline full, Fladager invites customers to call if they spot a freight-truck roll over on the freeway or a store on fire.

He gets a good deal. The caller gets a finder’s fee. The customers get a good buy.

In one corner the day I visited, a great vat overflowed with small articles priced at 9 cents. The identity of several escaped me.

“Who knows what that is?” assistant store manager Ray Fronk responded when I held up an unidentifiable object. “But for 9 cents, somebody will buy it.”

Yeah, I know. My garage is full of such bargains.

, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel’s column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Frank Bartel The Spokesman-Review