Why Liquidation Is a Station on the Circularity Train, Not the End of the Line
On All Things Circular, Damian Polak explains why liquidation isn’t a dead end but a key stop in a product’s journey to its next life.
Damian Polak closed out season one of the All Things Circular podcast → as an official co-host, joining Rich Bulger and Victoria D'Arcy for a conversation that reframed how liquidation fits into the bigger picture of the circular economy, not as a last resort, but as a necessary stop on a product's second life. Watch the full episode →
THE FRAMING
Liquidation Isn't the End of the Line, It's a Station
Early in the episode, the hosts pushed back on a common misconception, that liquidation is a linear dead end where products go to disappear. Damian's take was the opposite. He described the sales cycle as a train running through multiple stations, and liquidation is one of them, not the last stop before a landfill, but a necessary point that keeps a product's life cycle moving. Every item follows a loop shaped more like an infinity symbol than a straight line: forward logistics carries it to the customer, and when it's no longer needed, reverse logistics carries it back through asset recovery, refurbishment, and eventually a second sale to a new customer.
THE ORIGIN
From Bin Store Owner to Value Generation
Damian traced his own path into this thinking back to his bin store days. What started as a way to make a profit, buying pallets and truckloads cheap and running them through a discount model, gradually became something he understood differently once he learned how reverse logistics and circularity actually worked. He stopped seeing liquidation as just a way to flip cheap goods and started seeing it as a value generation tool, one where brands, manufacturers, and 3PLs recover real cash from inventory that would otherwise sit as a loss on their books.
THE EXAMPLES
Party Supplies, Gaylords, and Finding Value Where No One Else Looks
The conversation got specific fast. Damian described buying 200,000 units of unmanifested party supplies from a 3PL that had gone bankrupt, no idea what was actually in the load beyond thousands of balloons and decorations. Rather than trying to resell everything as retail party product, his team noticed a large batch of plain gift boxes and repositioned them entirely as shipping supplies, selling them at a price that beat what buyers were already paying online. Everyone in that chain came out ahead.
His favorite example, though, was smaller: watermelon Gaylords. Grocery stores treat the big cardboard bins their produce ships in as pure cost, something an employee has to break down and pay to have hauled away. Damian started picking them up for a dollar each and reselling them to liquidators who needed sturdy Gaylords for sorting product, at a fraction of the fifteen-dollar retail price for new ones. The grocery store saved money, Damian made a couple dollars a unit, and the buyer got a Gaylord for less than they'd pay anywhere else. Three winners, one bin that used to just be trash.
THE EXPERTISE
Why the Same Product Sells Differently Everywhere
One theme the hosts kept returning to was that liquidation isn't one skill, it's dozens of them stacked together. A mattress that no longer fits a retailer's new model lineup sells differently depending on the channel, and pricing that works at one outlet won't work at another. Seasonality plays into it too. Damian pointed out that flip-flops move faster in Florida in December than they would in Minnesota, and what's out of season in one part of the world is often in season somewhere else. Knowing which channel, which region, and which buyer actually wants a given product is the real expertise behind recovering maximum value, not just moving volume.
THE BUSINESS CASE
Every Situation on the Shelf Is a Sales and Marketing Failure
The hosts framed excess inventory bluntly: its presence on a shelf or in a warehouse almost always traces back to a forecasting miss, an overstock order, a canceled promotion, or a product line that got discontinued. Businesses have two options once that happens, write the loss off completely or find a way to extract value from it. Liquidation exists to be the second option, and Damian's argument was that too many businesses still default to the first simply because they don't know a better path exists.
THE TAKEAWAY
Less Misinformation, More Education
Asked to bust a common industry myth, Damian didn't hesitate. Liquidation deals often happen quietly, behind closed doors, and people tend to assume that's about favoritism or insider deals. His experience says otherwise. Deals stay private because the fastest way to kill value is to blast a load out to ten thousand buyers who can't actually execute on it, instead of working with the handful of people who reliably can. Part of why he joined All Things Circular full time was to put more real information out into an industry that, in his words, still doesn't have enough of it.
