Many don't employ bulk purchasing in the traditional sense. RueLaLa for example is actually run by GSI Commerce, the largest end to end ecommerce provider. The

Many don't employ bulk purchasing in the traditional sense. RueLaLa for example is actually run by GSI Commerce, the largest end to end ecommerce provider. They have existing distribution contracts with hundreds of companies. When a product reaches its end of life period, GSI Commerce either buys it from the retailer and adds it to RueLaLa or the product goes into "overflow" where it is moved to RueLaLa but GSICommerce now takes a more significant percentage of the income. The reason it is so profitable is because no additional infrastructure nor purchases are needed. GSICommerce keeps the old inventory in the same warehouse, reclassifies it as RueLaLa material, and removes it from the client website.