I am starting a new venture selling various products that are being liquidated for whatever reason. I have come accross a lot of inventory of various giftware items in Canada and would like to know if anyone knows a good place to advertise these types of items for wholesale purchasing.

If anyone can help me out I would appreciate it!

You could give Ebay a whirl.

I actually used to work as a web developer for a guy who used to auction off liquidated office equipment.

What I did was set up his own company website for him that included an auction module similar to ebay's.

The auction module I used was from auctionanything.com but shop around. If this sounds interesting, try "auction module" as a google search and see what you can find. The guy I worked for said this worked much better than ebay for him because there was no competition.

The only catch though is that unlike with ebay, where people from all over the world already know about that site, you will have to advertise like crazy, especially in your local area, to bring in the bidders. If you don't advertise enough and only bring in 1 or 2 bidders per item, you won't make much at all.

Your best bet actually, may be to experiment a little. Try ebay first, since it's the quickest and easiest. If you don't find that you're making enough money that way, try the way I suggested.

If you do decide to go through with an auction on your own company site and you need help, email me at ryan@yottasoftwaresolutions.com and I'll be happy to help.

good luck.

I'm currently a wholesaler of gaming supplies (poker chips mainly) but I'm looking to expand in the not so distant future. I'd be interested in hearing more.

Sorry it took so long to reply Bizzy.
The auction site I used to work on was www.keyseller.com. They've redone the site since I was there (looks a lot worse now.) but the auction module is still in place.
Basically, the way this guy's business works is he re-sells real estate that was foreclosed on the owners by their banks. When the banks foreclose however, they also aquire all of the furniture & equipment left inside these buildings. They then go to someone such as the owner of this website and say "Listen, we'll let you re-sell this foreclosed building but first, you need to sell all of this liquidated office equipment that was left inside of it." So basically, he makes his money on the real estate, not these liquidated pieces of furniture but the bank won't give him any new real estate to sell unless he can get rid of the furniture & equipment. So that's this company's story and that's why they have the auction module set up on their site.

He chooses not to do it through ebay because when it's being auctioned off on his own personal site, there's no competition from other sellers. Then, when he's ready to begin another auction, he advertises in the local area and can usually bring in a few hundred bidders.

Another site that had this system was www.sportsauction.com. Check them out if you want and let me know if that sounds like something you may be interested in. If so I can help you set it up.