Buxbaum Group Continues Focus & Growth
in the Manufacturing & Wholesale Sectors

The amazing continued growth of consumer debt coupled with a one-two punch of deflation and manufacturing over-capacity have caused Buxbaum Group to maintain
its focus and growth in the manufacturing & wholesale business sectors. “Retail sales will continue to decline and hold over the next three to four years before recovery is realized,” states David Ellis, the Group’s president. “The manufacturing & wholesale distribution sectors cannot respond or consolidate as quickly as the retail sector, resulting in an extreme backlog of product and over-capacity. This activity has caused a shift in our growth in this arena over the past several years.”

Due to a glut of product in the marketplace, over the past year alone Buxbaum has acquired or managed the disposition of hundreds of millions of dollars of wholesale inventories encompassing a broad range of categories, including food & tobacco products, gasoline, apparel & footwear, hardware, liquor, electronics, toys & books, piece goods, domestics, furniture, metals, and numerous others. Arnold Rubenstein, who heads the Group’s closeout division, relates: “Creativity is a must in optimizing value and finding customers these days. For example, we outright purchased over a million units of Black & Decker padlocks. To add value, we uniquely repackaged the items for a number of major discount retailers.”

Buxbaum’s advisory services subsidiary, Pathway Strategic Partners, is presently re-structuring the manufacturing process and IT systems of a well-known, international junior women’s apparel manufacturer & wholesaler. Ken Leddon, Pathway’s managing partner, explains: “Manufacturers today must source and maintain relationships with multiple vendors that can provide on-time delivery. One cannot afford to carry excessive raw material or finished goods inventory due to high cancellation rates from the retail sector and the glut of goods in the closeout markets. As a result, the manufacturing process – and the IT systems supporting that process, must be real-time and accurate to avoid being suffocated by useless inventory.”

Buxbaum’s appraisal division has also experienced significant growth in manufacturing & wholesale inventories, along with machinery & equipment and other fixed assets. Over the past five years Buxbaum has seen its appraisal business shift from being heavily concentrated in the retail sector to a 50/50 balance between retail and manufacturing/wholesale.

“In all industries one must be constantly in the fray to understand both upside and downside value,” says the Group’s chairman, Paul Buxbaum. “We actively participate
in the manufacturing/wholesale sector everyday, which allows us to understand the intricate relationship between realizable value and value variables such as chargeback
contras, sales order dilution, down-market opportunities, and value-added criteria.”

Buxbaum Group, which originated as a retail liquidator over 30 years ago, presently generates over half of its liquidation, appraisal and advisory activity in the manufacturing & wholesale distribution sectors.