Inside Swiss Link: A Dealer Interview with Surplus Today

From a Swiss Connection to an Industry Mainstay

Swiss Link was founded in the early 1990s by Maurice Huffman through a contact in Switzerland — the source of the company name. When the Swiss military downsized after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a wave of high-quality surplus hit the market, and Mo's Swiss partner had access to it.

Early imports defined the brand: the iconic salt-and-pepper backpacks and the original Swiss wool blankets that customers still ask for by name. Swiss Link sold them into sporting goods retailers and steadily built a wholesale distribution network from there.

"Swisslink.com is actually one of the oldest running e-commerce websites, if you can believe it. We've had that domain since the '90s." — Miles Huffman

Miles grew up in the warehouse as a teenager but spent his early career doing freelance graphic design — typography in particular. He joined the business full-time after the 2018 fire and has been running operations "full speed" ever since.

"A Tremendous, Seemingly Unending Supply"

Swiss Link's surplus catalog is almost entirely European. Sourcing leans on the original Swiss pipeline plus other European militaries, and ranges from rare items that "can't even be replaced" to current core SKUs that keep the loading docks busy.

Sorting & Grading Discipline

Surplus is sorted and graded in-house. Miles is direct about what condition labels mean: if Swiss Link calls something a "number two," it's still going to be functional — it's just stuff the team wouldn't want to grade as a one. Truly unusable pieces are donated or, when necessary, thrown out, never repackaged as resale.

Inside the Chico Building

After the fire, Swiss Link operated for about 18 months out of a corner of a 100,000 sq ft walnut hulling facility (a maggot infestation and roughly 50 people sharing one toilet, Miles recalls). In 2020, mid-COVID and with warehouse space scarce, the team took over an older Chico building that used to house Mad Dog Surplus two decades ago — walk-ins still occasionally ask for it.

• Pick & ship area — front of warehouse; FedEx and UPS pallets staged daily.
• Sorting & grading zone — every inbound European piece inspected by hand.
• StormBag production — in-house fill machines, burlap stock kept nearby.
• Photo studio — run by Jake, producing product photography and short-form video.
• Offices & sales floor — built inside the warehouse shell after the lease started.
• Upstairs apartment — for Mo's overnight stays; adjoining break room and kitchen (an explicit response to the walnut-facility days).
• Five bathrooms — Miles admits he over-corrected after the one-toilet warehouse.

"We have this liquidation sale because we're out of space — and I'm never able to stop the sale, because we're always out." — Miles Huffman

Wholesale-First, but the Door Is Open to Retail

Swiss Link's primary channel is wholesale distribution, supported by direct retail at swisslink.com and a reseller signup at swisslinkwholesale.com. The website also carries select brands Miles picks up from peer vendors at the A&E trade show — a community he describes as collaborative, not adversarial.

A physical retail store is on Miles' wish list — Chico is "lacking" for surplus retail — but the current building has no room. For now, the entire customer-facing operation lives online.

"Surplus is one of those industries where you can actually buy something and resell it and make a living doing that. It's not toilet paper or water bottles — everything you find is going to be unique, and somebody wants it." — Miles Huffman

An Industry That's Changing, Not Slowing

Miles closes the interview with a recruiting pitch to anyone watching: the surplus business looks niche from the outside, but it's one of the few categories where new resellers — online sellers, brick-and-mortar shops, live-selling operators — can still walk in and build something real. The quality is high, the prices are right, and the supply keeps moving.