I 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

I 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.