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I have been selling 1 year part time in the Midwest.
Where do you source for inventory? Estate Sales, Thrift Stores.
–Do you specialize in any categories? Started in clothing/shoes and moving into smaller hard goods/old books/decor/nostalgia. I love picking up espresso machines and espresso parts, too 🙂
–How much do you pay for inventory? Average $2-$10 per item depending on returns. I pay up on items due to what’s available near me/time.
–How many items do you have in your store? 350 and climbing with $10,000 total inventory listed.
–How much do you sell a month? 30-40 items per month/$1,000-2,000 average.Favorite Sale Ever: Of course, 90s Ralph Lauren was my fist “hit” of reseller addiction. My favorites lately are sought after collectibles/small outsider or folk art pieces.
Worst Sale Ever: Beginner’s mistakes ending in donations (cheap clothes, broken items).
Currently learning: jewelry, the amazon gaps (rare books and weird media), boutique fashion from EU, and sourcing on other platforms like Poshmark. -
Sounds like you’ve created a great business. Making 1-2k a month after just a year of part time work is amazing.
So back to your original question about feeling like you can’t afford to keep growing your store. Obviously you dont have to if you dont think the numbers work out. You may have found that perfect level of work to make the money you make.
Are you feeling like you don’t sell enough?
Do you feel like items are too expensive to keep buying are inventory?
Do you have a goal for how large you want to grow your inventory? -
bcfol440: I saw your original post about the cost of growing your inventory, and yes, that is definitely a concern. Every small business has this problem, and why there are Venture Capitalists out there feeding cash to Start-Ups: Growing companies need cash!
The best thing you can do is to grow into it. Don’t take out a loan, don’t go into debt. Just cash flow your way into this. It looks like from what you said earlier that you buy at $2-$10 and sell at around $30-$50 (I took your sell of 30-40 items and divided by your $1000-2000).
So, let’s take the high end, buy at $10, sell at $50, for a 5X return. Appears reasonable, as that is similar to our model (though we are buy at $5, sell at $25). If you are selling $2000 a month, your COGS was $400, leaving $1600. I’ll assume about 23% for shipping cost (our average) for $460, leaving $1140 left over. I’ll guess $140 for misc costs (shipping supplies, etc.) for about $1000 profit for the month. You can use another $400 to replenish your inventory (I would do this at a minimum to keep consistent), or you can try to buy more inventory to grow faster, but leaving you with less for yourself.
Your model is sound, it just takes time to build up enough momentum to keep growing and throwing off more cash. I would tell you to keep doing what you are doing, and soon you will be seeing results.
For comparison purposes, when we went full time in 2015, we averaged $1,200/month in Inventory Purchases. In 2017, we averaged $2000. In that time, we still made the mortgage, still got kids fed and off to college, etc. We increased our Inventory spending by 67%, but still made it work.
So take heart. Your model is there, it will just take time.
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T-Statt – Thank you for your thoughtful reply and guidance.
This is exactly what I am wondering and your sound approach makes sense re: the $400 re-investment based on my model.
Capping at $400 is doable as some weeks are higher. Keeping the growing nest egg in my account makes me happy, too, and keeps me motivated.
I have no storage problems (big basement).Jay – thank you for your questions. I would like to get to 500 items by August this year (so 6 months).That is 150 more than where I am now! So, an average of 20 new items per month. Totally doable.
My problem /anxiety really stems from feeling like some weeks I am wondering if I was robbing Peter to pay Paul. I realize it’s the way it goes. I think February was just the worst I have had in 1 year since I started, I was like “uh oh, better stop sourcing.” -
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