3 ms·
This strikes me as wildly unsustainable and something that just can't last, with a big caveat: I thought the exact same thing when people were doing this 20 yea
by michaelbuckbee 8y ago
This strikes me as wildly unsustainable and something that just can't last, with a big caveat: I thought the exact same thing when people were doing this 20 years ago buying vacuum cleaners at Kmart and flipping them on eBay.
My understanding is that people (like this guy) who are good at this pretty rapidly graduate to doing drop shipping and more online speciality work.
- Consultant32452 8y agoIn my limited experience with (3) people who do this, they never really scale/graduate. They just seem to have some different kind of hustle going on, often this is seasonal. When watermelons are in season they'll drive to the next state and buy a truck load of watermelons wholesale from a farmer. Then they sell the watermelons on the side of the road. Same thing with pumpkins near Halloween. Same thing with flowers near Valetine's. Sometimes they'll buy a couple cars and flip them. I think they just enjoy constantly doing something a little different.
- giarc 8y agoI somewhat follow this field (listening to startup podcasts, this has become pretty common theme) and they always seem to graduate to online courses etc. Very few can get away from basically nickel and dimming their way to profitability. It becomes a high labour business with shoppers, packers, shippers etc. As you said, they either need to graduate to drop shipping which is less hands on but perhaps more saturated with more issues, or do course etc. The guys that make a living in retail arbitrage usually end up buying direct from manufacturer in large quantities. At that point, they still call themselves a retail arbitrage startup because "distributor" is much less sexy.