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Some updates:
– We’ve pushed beyond 2,600 ebay listings, and are likely going to gross around $15k on amazon (combined between Canada/US) this month.
– We’ve secured a home to rent near where we want to buy eventually. Managed to find a month-to-month rental, so if/when we find the right place to buy, we can move quickly. I may have to rent a storage space or small office for my eBay inventory once we get there, as it’s smaller than our existing home. Have to wait and see.
– All ties are officially severed with my employer. Received payment for my equity in the company shares last week. Felt nice to drop an extra five figure deposit into our savings account.
– The tenants in our rental have signed for another two years. We checked the house over a few weeks back, and they’ve done a great job looking after it. They wanted a longer lease, and a long term lease will probably look better for us if/when we need to apply for a mortgage on our new home.
– We bought a new enclosed trailer for the move. Somewhere around the last week of May, we’ll have our household stuff shipped with a moving company. We’ll pack our bed, and all of the eBay inventory into the trailer. The cats will get the back seat of the truck, and we’ll spend four days (40-46hrs) driving back across the country.
I really wish we were going to have a house/land of our own to go to, so we didn’t have to move everything twice, but we keep telling ourselves that once we’re through the next 6-24 months of waiting for the right property, we can coast until old age. So friggin excited to get to that point.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by
Winchester38.
04/15/2019 at 6:08 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 406: Disposable Income, WTF is that? #60223Honestly, on my US inventory, my return is higher than 30% (closer to 50% on average most months). I like to be ultra-conservative in my estimates for now. All lower demand, higher margin, slower selling items that I have little to no competition on.
I’ve currently got 224 units in the US warehouses, spread out over about 60 skus. Retail value somewhere around $5000-6000usd. My total cost on those is probably somewhere around $2000-2500cdn. Yes, most items sell through in a month or so at this point.
As I’ve said before, it’s not the most enjoyable work, but now that I’ve got 50-60 established products that are producing consistent income, and are readily available to me, it’s just a matter of keeping them in stock. It’s honestly probably about 12-15hrs/wk worth of work between buying, labeling, packing, shipping, and maintaining pricing. It’s getting to the point that I’m sending two or three boxes three times a week, just to keep things in stock.
Really helps to have four sales streams (two eBay, two amazon), each selling completely different items in different ways. They seem to balance one another out nicely.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by
Winchester38.
04/15/2019 at 9:24 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 406: Disposable Income, WTF is that? #60182April 7-13, 2019
Store 1
Total Items in Store: 1,690
Items Sold: 20
Gross Sales: $691.84
Cost of Items Sold: $56.00
Highest Price Sold: $160.00
Average Price Sold: $34.59
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $84.08
Number of items listed this week: 46Store 2 (CAD)
Total Items in Store: 918
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $186.84
Cost of Items Sold: $22.25
Highest Price Sold: $23.99 (vintage patch)
Average Price Sold: $18.68
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 27Amazon.ca sales: $636.00 (CAD) (Approx $190.80 net profit)
Amazon.com sales: $2,058.00 (Approx $614.40 net profit)Pretty average week for me. Had to take a day off this week to deal with some pre-moving stuff (buying a new trailer). Really pushing Amazon recently. I’m VERY close to being on pace for cracking $10k in gross sales in the US this month. That’s huge for us personally. It’s about $13k CDN when converted, and at a conservative 30% net ROI, that’s $3,900 worth of pre-tax income for the month, on top of the two ebay accounts, amazon Canada, and my wife’s income.
A big to-do this week for me i to finalize and submit our income taxes for 2018. I’ve got the numbers/etc 99% together, just need to review, and meet with my accountant.
Nice to have you guys back! Missed ya last Monday! Cheers!
You’re definitely not wrong, but the racks I have are much more common and as a result are cheaper.
If/when space becomes a concern, I may look to a more space efficient storage method, but for now, this works well for me.
Each of my racks is 48″ long, with a 12″ extension on each end. One end is extended on each rack currently for a total of 60″. There are five of them, for a combined total of 300 linear inches currently. I just looked, and I’ve got around 600 items on these racks.
Nice progress Inglewood!
I definitely hear you on how you find yourself neglecting other thing to build your business. I have along list of things that need to be done/handled before our upcoming move, and I find myself putting them on the back burner so that I can build my income streams.
It’s a real struggle sometimes.
When we were around the 400 item mark, it took two of us about two hours to label shelves, and to update the listings. One person would call out an items and shelf number, the other would update the listing.
Once we’ve got more space, I’ll continue the same system, but may throw in some more permanent shelves, and a few larger ones for bigger items.
When we moved last, and when we move again in a few months, each shelf gets boxed/numbered separately, and then unpacked in our new location.
Yeah, with 800-1000 clothing items listed, hanging seems to work well for me. We do fold and shelve a few more delicate items, but the bulk get hung. The only clothing items that take any amount of time to find on the racks are black t shirts, just because of how many there are. They probably take 30-60 seconds, where a red t shirt would take 10-15.
We have a few larger items on some of the lower shelves, and a few others stored elsewhere, but the majority aren’t any bigger than 24” in one dimension.
As for desired inventory size, the sky is the limit. Once we move, and are settled into a spot with more space and time, I don’t see stopping or slowing down. 5k items? 10k? No set goal in mind. I’ll probably ease off the gas and spend time on other income streams once our eBay income is above and beyond our actual needs, but until then, I’ll keep growing.
Are you parting out your own washing machine, or have you bought machines to part out?
I wish. Haha
There are five variations of the product. Each one will sell for around $60cad. My net profit on each unit after all fees, shipping, cogs, etc will be around $9cad.
I’ll be bringing in 25 units of each variation (125 units total) to start.
Jay, to answer your questions:
In this case, the manufacturer didn’t pick me, so much as I was the only/first Canadian to contact them. I had dealt with them previously on a different product line, built a relationship, and proved my worth, so when they wanted to move this product into Canada, it fell in my lap.
They’re aware that I’m a one man show, yes. At the end of the day, if I can get their products to a wider market, and increase their sales, they’re willing to give it a shot. As mentioned, their last offering went well, so they’ve got some confidence in my ability now.
There isn’t an official “signed” contract, but via email they’ve agreed to exclusivity terms with me in Canada, and have given me the authority to shoo any other sellers off of the listings, should someone jump on. They’ve confirmed that I’ll be their only wholesale customer in Canada, so no one else should have the ability to undercut me anyway.
We’ve set the current agreement to one year with an open end, unless one party requests out.
No minimum/maximum order amounts, or frequency, no. I’ve agreed to import 25 units of each product to get started ($2,000-2,500usd, plus shipping), and will re-order as needed from there.
Just working on importing/creating the listings in Canada now, then we’ll bring the actual product across the border, send it to the warehouses, and push to gain traction. A total investment of under $3k with so much potential upside is exciting. Even if it doesn’t pan out, I’m not out tens of thousands of dollars or a whole lot of time.
Thanks Troy.
I should end up netting 25-30% after all fees, shipping, cogs, etc. my wholesale cost will be $23usd, sell price will likely be $60cad.
All in, I should profit about $9cad/unit. There are five variations of this product, and each one sells 15-20 units per day on amazon.com currently. If I can even get to 1/3 of that sales volume in Canada, it’ll add $200+ Of daily profit to my bottom line. That would be incredibly significant. It’ll take some time to build brand awareness here, and I’ll have to spend a little bit on amazon promotions for the first little while, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
March 24-30, 2019
Store 1
Total Items in Store: 1,663
Items Sold: 15
Gross Sales: $364.85
Cost of Items Sold: $41.50
Highest Price Sold: $52.99
Average Price Sold: $24.32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $124.21
Number of items listed this week: 43Store 2 (CAD)
Total Items in Store: 882
Items Sold: 22
Gross Sales: $474.78
Cost of Items Sold: $29.00
Highest Price Sold: $57.50 (vintage postcard)
Average Price Sold: $21.58
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 41Amazon.ca sales: $407.52 (CAD) (Approx $122.27 net profit)
Amazon.com sales: $1,016.22 (Approx $304.87 net profit)Sales felt terribly “soft” this week. Numbers reflect it pretty much across the board. THe exception being our second store. Had a few really strong sales there that pulled our numbers up. Across the two stores and the two Amazon platforms, my income for the week was on par with most other recent weeks, so I guess the diversification is helping to level things out from week to week.
Spent a lot of time last week ramping up my Amazon inventory, and restocking heavily on a number of skus. I’ve also just about closed a deal to bring a new-to-Canada product to Amazon.ca. It’s already established on Amazon.com, and is selling well, plus I’ve got an exclusivity agreement with the manufacturer, so if I can get it moving in Canada, it should add some decent value to my bottom line.
Definitely a decorative/reproduction of an old coal iron.
As Jay said, I’ve regretted NOT going all in more times than I’ve regretted a bad buy.
At the end of the day, the answer is different for all of us. Do what will make you sleep easiest at night.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by
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