Make an Offer How to Clear Slow-Moving Inventory Without a Public Sale
Aging inventory is a double cost: cash sitting on shelves, and the damage you do getting rid of it. The standard tool — a public sale — works once, then keeps costing you: customers learn your discount rhythm, wait for it, and screenshot the sale price as the "real" price forever.
Why public discounts are so expensive
- They're indiscriminate. A 20% site-wide sale gives 20% to every buyer — including the ones who were about to pay full price.
- They're permanent in memory. Price anchoring works against you: the sale price becomes the reference price.
- They train waiting. Regular sales convert your most loyal visitors into your most patient ones.
The private alternative: negotiated clearance
A Make an Offer button on selected products inverts every one of those problems:
- Selective: enable it only on the SKUs you want gone. Bestsellers stay at list price with no button at all.
- Invisible: each accepted offer is a private transaction. No banner, no price history, no anchor damage.
- Price-discriminating in your favor: the bargain hunter pays their maximum instead of your minimum. Someone who'd have grabbed a flat -25% might offer -12%.
The playbook
- Pick the stock: flag SKUs by age or sell-through (e.g. anything unsold in 90 days). Enable offers on just those — with the WooCommerce plugin it's a checkbox per product.
- Set your floor before offers arrive: cost + shipping + a minimum margin. Decisions become mechanical: at/above floor → accept; below → counter at floor.
- Always counter, never just decline. A shopper who typed a number is engaged; most accept a reasonable counter, and with card-backed offers the counter's accept button is the payment.
- Watch the offer data. Clustered low offers on a SKU are the market telling you its clearing price — better information than any sale would give you.
What "card-backed" changes for clearance
Clearance buyers are drive-by bargain hunters — the segment most likely to ghost an emailed "we accept your offer!". With authorization holds, the money is reserved the moment they offer: accept and it's captured instantly, decline and it releases automatically. Tire-kickers cost you a click, not a conversation.
Free to install · 2% only on accepted offers · payments go straight to your own Stripe account