First you must understand why you must delabel. Liquidation, overstocks, closeouts, shelf-pulls, salvage and customer returns go to a return center. This is the begining of the end of the retail supply chain or reverse logistics or returns management.

A product that ends up in the return center has something wrong with it. It is out of season, it has been returned, the box was damaged,it was a display model are all reasons this inventory is ready to be liquidated. The retailers do not want the products on their valuable shelf space. The manufacturers and retailers have agreements on how to dispose of the distressed inventories.

The product needs to be handled as little as possible to keep the costs of labor and shipping down at this end of the retail supply chain. The merchandise is sold as salvage. Salvage creates a different legal classification. Salvage is striped of all warranties and product liabilities. The merchandise looks as if it came right off the store shelfs (because it did). Since labor and shipping costs are being kept to a minimum the label , price tage, upc bar codes are still on the items. Just the same as a product that was purchased from the retail store.

The manufacturer or supplier that sold the product to the Retailer agree to let the retailer sale as salvage and mark off inventory the liquidation merchandise.

This is why you(the salvager) must take off or de-label price tags, u.p.c. codes and anything that allows a person to be able to re-return the product to the retailer. The retailer is not taking the hit as much as the manufacturer or supplier does.