Interview with Björn Roth, specialist online trade

We at Brodos are often asked whether we maybe have seconds or goods with damaged packaging available to sell at a reduced price. The answer is: we do indeed have a lot of seconds, returned to us by some of our customers who run an online shop. We then sell these on as seconds or B-stock via brodos.net. Several retailers take advantage of this option to make a bargain on a regular basis. Everything which is not forwarded to retailers, most of whom expect perfect, brand new goods, is then sold via our Ebay distribution subsidiary i-sell. In the following interview, Björn Roth introduces the i-sell team and explains how B-stock is distributed by Brodos.

Who is in the i-sell team and what do you do?

There are six of us in the team, specialising in the area of re-commerce and the distribution of B-stock. i-sell is a distribution platform belonging to Brodos on which we sell any remaining stock, B-stock and used goods over the sales channels brodos.net, Amazon and Ebay. The items offered for sale are generally goods returned by customers which have had a fault repaired (used goods), which have damaged packaging (B-goods) or old stock which Brodos can no longer offer or does not actively offer to their trade partners.

When did you start out and how has i-sell developed?

i-sell started properly in December 2010, when we started selling on Ebay. We then started selling on Amazon at the beginning of 2014. Last October we started distributing B-stock to our retailers via the Brodos Marketplace.  A large advantage of this is that we do not incur any charges for placing offers on the Brodos Marketplace, unlike Amazon and Ebay, and the fact that our retailers can benefit from the goods we have on offer.

What was your greatest success so far? What have you done that makes you proud?

We are currently able to deal with returns without involving third-party marketers. This applies to all returns of all standards (A, B & C stock).

At the beginning we had to use external companies for support in selling B-stock (in large quantities) and C-stock. After optimising our internal processes, this is no longer necessary and we sell our returns - no matter which quality - entirely by ourselves.

What is special about your work?

We theoretically have (or have had) all items in stock which are stocked and sold by Brodos itself.

As each item is unique in terms of its condition and properties, the challenge is to allocate the items to the best possible channel and decide on the optimal price.

Thank you for the interview.