Coffin boxes are some of our favorite pieces of inventory here at Nice Find Wholesale. Coffin boxes are pallets of merchandise from Amazon, and are named because of the shape of the boxes found on the pallets. Simply put, they look like coffins! Morbid - yes. Catchy? Also yes. Why are these coffin boxes such a bin store favorite? Find out below.
Coffin Boxes: The Ultimate Combo of Variety & Value
Simply put, we love coffin boxes because they provide immense variety and value - two things that every bin store owner and pallet flipper rely on. Our favorite coffin boxes are LPN loads from Amazon. These contain products from an Amazon return facility - which means you can easily find a wide variety of products at various price points in every box. Coffin boxes are our number one recommendation for bin store owners in need of fresh inventory. You can mix your truckloads with a few pallets of these boxes to provide that perfect combo of variety and value to your community.
Why We Love LPN Loads
There are two kinds of loads we receive from Amazon. FC Coffins and LPN Coffins. What’s the difference?
An FC load comes straight from the “fulfillment center.” These products are leaving the warehouse and coming directly to your business - they have never touched customer hands.
LPN loads come from return facilities. This doesn’t necessarily mean a customer has handled it - all that this means is that the item has left the original fulfillment center. This includes canceled orders, orders lost in shipment, and returns. These products are not considered “brand new” on paper because they have all moved out of the warehouse at some point before reaching you.
You might be wondering why we love LPN loads so much when FC loads contain completely new products. It’s really quite simple. FC loads typically contain overstocked goods - and tons of repeat items. Sure, you may get “brand new” items - but you also are looking at twenty, forty, or fifty of the same item in one shipment.
On the other hand, every single box in an LPN pallet contains massive variety and a higher probability of a high value item. Because these items are either returns or cancellations, they are by nature “one-off” liquidations. Amazon is not going to liquidate high-value items en masse, but they may get rid of one or two as a customer cancels or returns an order. LPN boxes typically contain a wide variety of general items as well as a few high-value items that often pay for the whole load.
For example, in one coffin box we often find some combination of:
Toys
- Baby items
- Camping gear
- Kitchen essentials
- Phone accessories
- Home goods
- Linens
- Dorm essentials
- Gardening tools
- Gadgets & niche tech
- Computer accessories
- Hobby kits & crafts
Among all these everyday items, there’s usually one or two treasures hiding in there. These would be considered our “high ticket” item(s) for that box. In some of our recent boxes, we’ve found a Dyson Airwrap (never opened!), a Drybar Hair Dryer, and a juicer! These are high-ticket items that retain value. It’s easy to take these loads, fill up your shelves with variety, and then use those one or two special products as specialty items or even eBay flips.
Why does this variety matter? Keep reading to find out.
Maximizing Profit in Your Bin Store - The Power of Mixing Products
Bin stores need variety to succeed. This is the best way to get the highest dollar value per item, and ensure that your inventory is moving quickly out of your bins and into customers' hands. The truth is that appeal drives traffic. You want a small amount of every item on your floor - because scarcity makes your customers willing to pay for the items they want.
If you have 200 of one item in your bins at any given time, customers will be less willing to pull the trigger and make the purchase. Why? There’s no urgency! Why buy that item at $7 on a full-price day when they could snag it for a buck on your discount day?
Variety gets you the most sales possible in the least time possible. You want to fill your bins with small quantities of a large variety of product, giving your customers the experience of being on a “treasure hunt” and making it difficult for them to let go of whatever they find.
The best way to get this variety is to mix in different HPC loads - whether they be Amazon returns, liquidated inventory from retailers, or mixed truckloads. Additionally, consider mixing some essentials into your store! Essentials aren’t sexy items, but they certainly fly off the shelves. Consumer behavior around unnecessary expenses depends on the state of the economy, but consumer behavior around essentials remains static over time. People will always need food, health and beauty supplies, and pet care items. Take advantage of that by mixing in some essentials into your store!
The key to maximizing your profit is keeping a wide variety of scarcely stocked items to drive interest and sales.
Maximizing Cash on Cash Return - The Art of Velocity In Business
Variety and scarcity naturally help you achieve velocity - which is critical to your bin store operation. Velocity is the speed at which you can get inventory out of your store and into the hands of your customers. For a deep dive on this topic, check out our article reviewing Travis Vosika’s speech at ASD Market Week this spring.
If you work in the liquidation industry, you must focus on flipping inventory into cash as quickly as possible. Your business runs on cash on cash returns! The goal is always to get the product moving out the door as efficiently as possible. Sometimes this means selling a product for less than you feel the product is worth - but if you’re getting it out of your store, you’re making room for new items, which means you’re making room for better sales.
Bin stores thrive when customers can rely on a constant stream of variety. You must move products quickly to keep your bins from growing stale in the eyes of your customers. This requires proper pricing - but it also requires you to be intentional as you buy your inventory.
That’s where coffin boxes come in. We sell these by the pallet - and each pallet can have up to 6 different boxes on them. Each of these boxes is filled with variety and gives you the best chance to find those treasures that shoppers are looking for. We encourage our customers to custom-build their truckload with a few of these pallets along with some of our other inventory to achieve the perfect combination of variety and value. This keeps your product moving and the cash flowing quickly.
Coffin Box Tips
Coffin boxes aren’t just for bin store owners - they are also great for flea market booths and can contain some items perfect for eBay! If you’re buying for a flea market, simply price out the expensive items according to their value while marking the small stuff up at massive discounts to blow out of it quickly.
If you plan to flip the high-value items on eBay, be careful with personal care items. Since some items in the LPN Coffin Boxes are returns, there is a possibility a customer has tried them out. Nobody wants to receive a product with another person’s DNA on it - so evaluate everything.
Additionally, always source your pallets from someone you can trust. Some wholesale suppliers will open up their shipments and pick through all the good products before you even get the chance to see them. Look out for boxes that have discoloration around the tape lines, or clearly removed and replaced tape. Whether a coffin box is LPN or FC, they should be brand-new. At Nice Find Wholesale, we operate with 100% integrity and invite you to come to our warehouse and see our high-quality inventory before you commit to a sale. Whether you do business with us or another supplier, that’s the kind of honesty you want to see from your vendor.
Conclusion
Amazon LPN Coffin Boxes are one of our favorites at the Nice Find Wholesale warehouse. We love selling these to bin store owners, and we love popping a few open to see what’s inside. If you are looking for inventory for your bin store, send us an email or give us a call to schedule a visit to our location here in Chicago! We’d love to meet you and show you around our warehouse - we’ve always got a good deal here at Nice Find Wholesale!