The most overlooked revenue channel in modern commerce

Most brands have a blind spot. Returns are treated like a cost center. Excess inventory gets pushed to the sale section or written off. Meanwhile, warehouses are filled with unsold product, operational teams are bogged down by returns, and margin quietly disappears.

But what if that “problem” inventory was actually your most underutilized revenue engine?

That’s the core idea behind Inventory Recovery, a new category we’re building at Treet. 

Inventory Recovery reframes the messy side of commerce as a chance to recover margin from returns and excess stock through resale channels.

It’s not just about cleaning up returns or launching a resale channel, it’s about recovering value across the entire post-purchase lifecycle. Inventory Recovery reframes how brands handle excess stock, B-grade returns, and circular shopping behavior – not as operational headaches, but as margin-enhancing growth levers.

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A New Name for a Neglected Channel

Brands told us their biggest pain points weren’t just generating new sales, they were the returns and excess that eroded margins and created waste. Returns were someone else’s problem, and overstock was marked down, offloaded, or quietly sent to landfill. We see it differently, and built solutions around those challenges.  

With Treet, those challenges don’t sit on your team’s plate. Once integrated, B-grade returns flow automatically into your resale channel through our 3PL partners, listed and fulfilled on your behalf.

Inventory Recovery is a deliberate strategy for maximizing the margin and value of every unit you produce. It sits alongside customer acquisition and retention as a core pillar of growth. And until now, it’s been largely ignored or miscategorized.

This isn’t resale as a one-off initiative. It’s not just a sustainability project. It’s a standalone strategy with its own infrastructure, metrics, and flywheel.

It’s not just recommerce. It’s recovery. 

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The Problem: The Old Funnel Is Broken

Here’s what excess inventory looks like without a recommerce strategy in place:

• Retail and “last call” sections at 50-70% MSRP
• B2B liquidation, off-price, or discount chains at 5–20% MSRP
• And the leftovers? Donation, storage, or landfill—zero value

Meanwhile, your team is chasing spreadsheets, flagging SKUs, and writing off margin loss like it’s an expected cost of doing business.

With recommerce and Inventory Recovery, the flow gets smarter:

• 100% of MSRP at retail
  
• 50–70% of MSRP via your branded resale site
  
• 30–50% of MSRP via curated resale marketplaces
  
• 10–20% of MSRP via liquidation channels as a fallback
  

Instead of flushing value down the chain, you route inventory through a controlled value waterfall; branded resale first, then time-boxed secondary channels, so you recover margin and maintain pricing integrity while giving inventory a second lif

The manual work that you had to do to make this work? It disappears. Inventory is routed directly into the highest-margin resale path, from branded resale to curated marketplaces, without your team having to spin up new workflows.

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The Shift: From Liquidation to Resale-First

For years, the default paths for excess inventory were markdowns, liquidation, or landfill. With Inventory Recovery, resale becomes the starting line, a way to recapture margin and bring new customers into your brand ecosystem.

Brands using Treet list unsold product right alongside peer-to-peer resale, creating a dynamic marketplace that feels native, curated, and deeply brand-aligned. Resale doesn’t cannibalize—it complements. It absorbs returns that can’t be restocked. It gives off-price shoppers a path into your ecosystem without diluting full-price messaging. And it unlocks entirely new margin from inventory that would otherwise go dormant.

This strategy doesn’t live in a silo. It touches merchandising, ops, CX, and loyalty And when implemented with intent, it becomes one of the most efficient revenue drivers in the building.

Proven Growth, Minimal Lift

Let’s be clear, this isn’t a theory. It’s already live across a number of brands. In fact, Pact (will link to case study) uses Inventory Recovery to handle all of their b-grade returns, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue in just a few short months. 

Inventory Recovery with Treet is designed to be fast, flexible, and low lift. Most brands go live in under a month. Our integrations are Shopify-native, with proven compatibility across complex ERP stacks. Our APIs easily integrate with your existing returns processor, or you can route returns to one of our Treet-enabled 3PLs around the world. That means B-grade returns magically appear on your resale site, excess inventory flows into the right channel automatically, and your team simply sees recovered revenue without extra effort.

Your team doesn’t need to overhaul systems or spin up new workflows. We handle listing reviews, payouts, customer support, and platform management, so you can focus on your core business while the resale engine runs in the background.

TL;DR: Inventory Recovery Isn’t Cleanup. It’s Strategy.

Your warehouse isn’t just full of product. It’s full of margin that hasn’t been claimed.

Inventory Recovery is how modern brands:

• Maximize the value of what they’ve already produced
  
• Reframe returns and excess stock as revenue opportunities
  
• And control the secondhand narrative around their brand
  

This is not an add-on. It’s not a patch. It’s a new category of commerce.

Let’s Call This What It Is: Found Revenue

You’ve already paid to manufacture the goods. You’ve already fulfilled the order. You’ve already won the customer’s attention.

Now it’s time to get paid again.

Inventory Recovery gives you a system for unlocking value in places your team has been trained to ignore. It’s margin without excessive markdowns, retention without massive discounts, and sustainability without sacrificing profitability.

If you’re sitting on returns, excess inventory, or a resale market you don’t control, now’s the time to change that.

This is Inventory Recovery. Let’s build it.

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