A black line across a clothing label is an unpromising place to look for a business story. It has no grandeur, no slogan, and very little room for a presentation. Yet Raymundo Armendariz has explained how that mark can help a store employee recognize merchandise purchased elsewhere. A product sold through a different retailer should not quietly become the original seller’s return problem. The small mark helps carry that distinction all the way to the counter.
Armendariz works in the space between a product’s first commercial plan and its next useful destination. A season changes. An assortment disappoints. A business needs cash tied up in goods. The merchandise remains, along with the question of where it can go. Selling it requires judgment about the relationships it will encounter on the way.
His career has taken him from furniture retail to Hilco Wholesale Solutions and, now, the Americas operating role within Hilco Global’s Capital Solutions business. The interesting thread is the practical one: how to turn a collection of unsold objects into something another business can use.
The label has a job to do
In a conversation with podcast host Steve Katz, Armendariz described identifying a client’s existing retail relationships before taking merchandise to market. Some buyers or geographic areas could be excluded. Third-party logistics partners could mark labels or replace hangtags. Agreed instructions, progress calls and sample photographs helped keep the work on course.
“Trust is a pillar”
Ray Armendariz, discussing client relationships
The phrase becomes easier to understand when attached to a product rather than left floating in a mission statement. A seller has entrusted goods to someone else. It also has relationships worth retaining after those goods have gone. The person finding the next buyer must respect both.
There is an everyday tension here. A bargain hunter sees an attractive price. The original seller may see a neighboring store undermining its own assortment. The warehouse sees cartons that need to leave. Each view makes sense from its own position. An inventory program has to make room for those competing interests before the goods start moving.
Read through that lens, Armendariz’s attention to labels is less surprising. A contract can specify a condition. A warehouse instruction can make it happen. The mark on the garment is where the agreement becomes visible to someone who was never in the negotiating room.
Twelve years on the retail side
Before his executive appointments at Hilco, Armendariz spent more than 12 years with Levitz Furniture. He joined Hilco in 1999. Over time, his responsibilities included heading Steals & Deals and serving as Chief Operational Officer of Fixture Finders. In January 2022, he became permanent CEO of Hilco Wholesale Solutions, following a period as interim CEO and COO.
The appointment put daily management and growth of the wholesale consumer inventory practice in his hands. It also called for close work with the retail team on unusual inventory situations and new revenue streams. The job sat at the intersection of merchandise, operations and commercial opportunity.
That history gives the work a useful scale. More than two decades inside one organization can encompass several different jobs. In Armendariz’s case, the changing titles still circle the physical realities of retail: goods, selling space, fixtures and the decisions that connect them.
His transaction experience extends across the continental United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Apparel, footwear, toys, books, housewares and sporting goods have all figured in his work. These are objects with customers, seasons and destinations. A spreadsheet can record them; somebody still has to decide where they belong.
More stock for a store that is closing
One of the more arresting ideas in Armendariz’s work is that a store preparing to shut its doors may need additional inventory. A closing sale has a deadline, but the shopper still needs a useful assortment. A collection of leftovers can become less appealing as the sale progresses.
Armendariz and Katie Feodoroff have written about augmentation: bringing in suitable merchandise to supplement what a retailer already holds. The goods should fit what shoppers expect from that store. The program can also offer suppliers and other distributors a destination for excess stock.
The idea asks us to look past the closing sign. A store approaching its end still has floor space, customers and a limited period in which to sell. Another business may have merchandise that can make that period more productive. The two situations can fit together, provided the assortment makes sense.
Hilco Wholesale Solutions describes supporting the Toys“R”Us wind-down in 2018 by sourcing merchandise to supplement store inventory. It also reports having monetized more than $2.5 billion in wholesale inventory for clients. Those are team and business figures. Their relevance to Armendariz’s story is the operating environment they describe: merchandise moving at substantial scale, often when an original retail plan is coming to an end.
The spatula problem
Armendariz’s commentary on e-commerce aggregators begins with a difficulty familiar to anyone who has bought something ambitious: ownership arrives before mastery. Acquiring a successful online seller does not automatically resolve its assortment, storage or fulfillment problems.
He illustrated the issue with a hypothetical spatula. A black version sells well. The business expands it to 30 colors. Only five sell, while the others occupy warehouse space. The illustration is comic because the object is so ordinary. The commercial problem is ordinary, too: success in one item can encourage complexity that demand does not support.
“Buying something, it turns out, is much easier than actually operating it.”
Ray Armendariz, on e-commerce acquisitions
In his discussion with Katz, Armendariz explained how inventory spread among logistics providers can accumulate storage and handling expense. He described helping assess assortments, moving goods into other channels and preparing products packaged for online sales for physical retail. Buying merchandise outright could also provide cash to the seller.
A spatula is a particularly good companion for this argument. It cannot benefit from an impressive acquisition announcement. It needs a buyer, a price and a way out of the building. The same practical requirements remain whether the product belongs to a small online business or a growing portfolio.
A buyer with permission to move
Goods cannot find a second audience unless someone is ready to buy them. Armendariz has examined the other side of the inventory equation through off-price retailers, where opportunities can appear briefly and disappear before a conventional buying process finishes.
He described specialized buying groups made up of experienced buyers who understand their categories and customers. Given authority to evaluate and commit quickly, they could pursue suitable branded merchandise without waiting through the usual sequence of category decisions. Their knowledge made that freedom useful.
In a podcast with Feodoroff, he explained that purchases could draw against the relevant existing category budget. Speed, in this account, still belonged within a business framework. Experienced people had room to act because they understood both the opportunity and the organization that would receive the goods.
His written analysis also examined what happens when brands retain more merchandise for their own stores and fewer recognizable goods reach off-price operators. The buyer’s problem can be scarcity while the seller’s problem, elsewhere, is surplus. The market contains both conditions at once.
This is where a broad network becomes practical. Knowing a seller is only half the task. Knowing which buyer can use a particular assortment, and can make a decision in time, gives the inventory a plausible route. There is little romance in the route. There can be considerable relief at its destination.
From a carton to the balance sheet
The range of Armendariz’s work was visible in September 2024, when Hilco Wholesale Solutions was retained as exclusive disposition agent for Andersen & Sons Shelling. The Vina, California, assignment covered raw, work-in-progress and finished inventory, including almonds, walnuts, macadamias, pecans and cashews. The merchandise was far removed from a rack of out-of-season jackets, but the task still involved preparation, marketing and disposition.
In March 2025, writing with Madalyn Launer, Armendariz examined the inventory left behind by store closures and the opportunities for retailers creating clearance sections, temporary installations and bargain-hunting assortments. The pair treated surplus as something that could reach another audience when the placement and timing worked.
Their February 2026 perspective broadened the discussion to inventory’s place in liquidity, restructuring and business value. It argued for careful decisions about where and when goods are sold, especially where existing channels and brand relationships remain important. That publication identified Armendariz in his Americas Capital Solutions operating role.
The distance from a label to a balance sheet is shorter than it first appears. The label helps govern the product’s next encounter. The assortment determines whether a buyer can use it. The destination determines whether stock can become cash. Armendariz’s career follows those connections through changes in titles, categories and markets.
Unsold goods can look like the end of a story. His work takes up the next question. Somewhere beyond the original plan, there may be a customer with a different use, a different budget or a different shelf to fill. Finding that fit is a business of details. Sometimes the detail is small enough to draw with a pen.
Continue the conversation
Career milestones, published commentary and conversations with the wholesale team.