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Hey everybody!
I’m the NikeGuy and I’m from California. I’m 31 and I was the kid in school selling candy and snacks. When I was in college I would buy and find things super undervalued and would flip them on eBay for small profits. Never scaled and would just take the low hanging fruit.
After college I had 120k in debt and had a hard time finding a good job. I eventually found a management position that paid decent for my area and my wife was working part time and times were good. I was browsing Facebook and there was a group where people were selling their cell phone they got “for free” a year or two ago at a deep discount. I was able to buy one that I could flip for double. In 2014 I ended up reselling over 1000 cell phones and tablets on the side mainly through eBay Amazon and swappa all sourced locally. I think I was early at least in my area for this trend and eventually my average profit per item dropped from ~80 to mid 20s. I decided to take a couple month break and just let my inventory sell through.
I jumped back in selling not just small electronics sourced on Facebook and OfferUp but started visiting thrift stores in my areas and constantly added items to inventory. I would price fairly aggressive and turn over was pretty high. With the help of a friend built a store to about 500 items and used the profits to start private labeling on amazon. It was wildly successful but became boring quickly and while still makes some money it’s nothing compared to what it was. I used the profits to bankroll card counting as there are lots of beatable blackjack games in SoCal.
I sold my eBay account and inventory in 2018. I was burnt out on longer tail items and testing/cleaning/storing etc.
I quickly missed it and in 2019 started selling shoes (I’ve always been a sneaker head and am constantly selling shoes but decided to commit to it). I buy most of my merchandise at Nike, Adidas, and Vans outlets. It’s great because the items are new, store and ship easily, there is nothing to test, and demand is high. It varies by brand but my average profit per shoe is 38 dollars and I’ve built up to an inventory of about 500 pairs. I currently sell 8.6 pairs a day and hoping to scale to 20 per day by the end of the year. This will require 2 extra days of sourcing every month. I sell on Goat StockX and eBay. I source one day a week and still work a full time job.
I listened to scavenger life up until Jay and Ryanne started their first Airbnb. I currently restarted listening and have been listening in reverse order to all the episodes that I have missed. I long to find these 25 cent items I always hear about but sort of found my own way.
Sell Nikes; Be Free
NikeGuy -
Welcome. You’re definitely in a different category from us selling cell phones, tablets, electronics. Then private label items on Amazon (not sure what you sell). Then you also gamble by counting cards. Now you sell new shoes you buy at outlets.
We buy boxes of junk at auction (where 25-cent itms come from). It’s usually old, vintage, antique stuff that takes a long time to sell but has high margins. Low risk. High reward if we’re patient.
Sounds like you spend a lot of money up front, but you also sell items quick for good profit. If you sell a pair of new shoes for a $38 profit, how much did you need to pay for those shoes?
When you go to the store, how much cash do you outlay for inventory? Or do you float on credit cards?
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NikeGuy’s post (forum has some glitches and posts sometimes disappear):
Hi Jay!
I like to think we are similar in the fact that we buy undervalued stuff that we can sell for at it’s true value. I tried your way for a couple of years but found it hard to scale and some of the storage/testing/etc was rough. It also seems like our sources are very different. In my area auctions and estate sales are so crowded that thing a sell for crazy high prices. It’s possible I never found the great ones and while I could still make something work at each one it didn’t seem like a great use of time.
At one time I had 30 successful private labels but they have almost all died off one at a time and it’s such spiritless work that I didn’t put in the effort to continue finding new products.
Cigs for outlet shoes vary wildly by brand. Most nikes I buy are somewhere between 25-60 and vans and adidas are 10-22.50. The margins are the same % usually but obviously higher dollar on the Nike’s. I need to buy about 60 shoes a week but am aiming for 100 every time I go out. I live about 30 minutes away from 2 outlet malls and within an hour and a half is about 5. It grows exponentially if I’m willing to make a day of it.
No credit card float. While my inventory is different my lifestyle looks similar to yours. We live simply and have saved most all of the income we have made. It’s very easy to just reinvest profits as my wife and I both have full time jobs that already provide more than we need.
Also small correction on the blackjack. It’s really not gambling. Blackjack is a beatable game when using a count. It’s as easy as plus one and minus one then dividing by the remaining decks. The skill part of counting blackjack is being able to get your money on the table. This may make me sound like I’m a kook but I promise I’m not.
You did hit on my personality though. It’s hard for me to do one thing for too long. Once I get bored and it feels like work it’s hard for me to continue.
I enjoy creating profit and really enjoy selling shoes for the streamlined process. I find it fun to source. I can list the shoes on goat and StockX (two apps for selling shoes) by just entering their sku and size and hitting confirm, no pictures needed. I also list on eBay but goat and StockX take smaller fees for shoes under 100. (Fee structure is similar but they give you a prepaid label so you essentially ship for free and they are the middle man so you never have to worry about returns or customer interactions. All for their 9.5% fee) eBay currently doesn’t charge fees for shoes over 100 and is better at selling commodity vans so I still use them but it’s definitely more work listing and shipping.
I can replace my income at 10 shoes per day sold but want to go to 20 in order to cover extra costs and what I expect to be a reduced average profit as the vans are easier to scale but lower profit generally. I have thought about leaving my job for the last 3-4 years and think this might be the year. There is also the risk of being banned by the retailers which sometimes happens but I stay within purchase limits so I’m not overly concerned at this time.
NikeGuy
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Totally agree that the equation changes for ecah scavenger depending on where they live. Im in the rural East Coast where there’s old money + lost of people dying with a lot of stuff! But there’s no good outlets near me to flip new items (that I know of).
In San Diego, I’d imagine there’s less accumulated old junk and lots of cool new items like you’re finding.
I also think it is about personality. I like really low risk which is why we spend so little on inventory. It’s almost no lose for us if we’re patient. We’re not getting rich off eBay, but it’s paying our bills and buying our time. Wake up without alarm clocks.
You seem very good at (possibly) high risk, high reward endeavors. High risk if you get stuck with a lot of unsold inventory since it’s not cheap. But you make educated guesses as to what will likely sell.
Great thing is that both ways work.
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Thanks for sharing your interesting story.
Your selling snacks in school beginning, made me smile at a memory of one of my sons going through granola bars like crazy when packing his lunch. Found out that he was selling them to classmates. His entrepreneurship started with a “crayon repair” business in first grade. He was a freshman in high school when the first iPhone came out. He and a friend put an ad on craigslist offering to wait in line at the mall Apple store in exchange for cash. When all was said and done, he pocketed $450 in cash that day.
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That’s so cool!
I have two young kids and really hope they show an interest in some sort of entrepreneurial pursuit as they get older. My five year old cooks up ideas to sell all time but we are still working on it with the two year old. I think eBay is the perfect job for a high schooler with a fresh license.
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When you call what I do “high risk” it reminds me of your episode where the real estate guy called your approach risky. Maybe it is but because of my expertise in the area it doesn’t seem risky at all. I sometimes have the “why did I just spend a thousand dollars sure hope this sells feeling” but it always does. It’s extremely rare to lose money on any of these shoes that I buy as long as I’m disciplined in doing my research on comps. Most shoes are sort of a commodity where a new nike free rn flyknit sells for 80-90 every time so while I have to spend 30 to get it. The demand is so high for new Nike’s that I know I can see a profit quickly.
From a life ethos POV I wish I could buy more antique items and find them new homes. Each thing I’ve done has sort of just naturally led to the next. I have more than a passing interest in shoes so it’s exciting to be able to sell something I really enjoy.
I love your show and the path you’ve steered your life! I love how open you guys are about everything. It was such an encouragement while being super informative especially when I first started. I wish you both well!
NikeGuy
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NikeGuy,
That is interesting that you are slowly moving away from ebay. Looks like ebay is losing ground to other sites in shoes also.
You seem to be selling a lot of shoes, do you cross list on all 3 sites, or do you only list a pair of shoes on one site? If you cross list, do you have a hard time taking the listings down from the other sites when the shoes sell?
Mark
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Most only go on goat and eBay. Right after I sell something I remove it from its counterpart listing.
eBay definitely has a counterfeit issue. Depending on the model there will be more fakes posted then genuine shoes. Both goat and StockX have you ship the shoes to them where they verify them for authenticity and accuracy. To compete eBay has cut seller fees to zero on shoes over 100 which is definitely bringing sellers back but I still personally prefer when a shoe sells on goat vs eBay.
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