SOWPub Small Business Forums - I didn't know this about...

Quote:

Originally Posted by sandalwood (Post 29904)

Office Depot. I was roaming the Internet and came across this statement:

"I don't mean 20% off, or even 50% off. I'm talking about 75%–90% off. The store is Office Depot, and it's a terrific source of resalable items."

I forgot where I found this statement but does it really matter if it is true? I have an Office Depot about 2 blocks from my house and will freely admit I only went in for what I needed and never looked around. Tomorrow or Saturday I will pop in and ask the mgr if they have regular sales of brand items for the above mentioned discounts.

One of the items supposedly found was two Olympus Voice Recorders for less than $4 each (they retail at $35). Again if this is true, about it being 4 bux that is, then golly wolly talk about a great find especially if the product is still in the box.

I would suspect a guy could sell this stuff on ebay or CL w/o a problem. Or, maybe even to a local biz. Don't know that but it seems possible. My understanding is OD puts stuff on sale about once a week. Again, if true, this puts a lot of chattel into the commercesphere.

If someone has more experience w/OD than yours truly please spill the beans. I'm hoping this is true.

Hi Tom,

I don't have experience with OD - but I have in the past bought new items on sale, and resold them for a profit.

I was doing it here in Australia. There is a chain of stores called "JB Hi-Fi" which often discounts some of their new DVDs.

I haven't done this for a while, but at one time I would check out discounted DVD "box sets" - and then (before buying) I would see what that specific new DVD box set was selling for on eBay. If the difference was significant, I'd buy here, sell there. It was pretty "easy money."

I adapted what I did from what Gordon teaches in the Chattel Report: 12 Weeks to Freedom (note that I profit from sales of this product...).

(I'd do it only with the box sets, since the profit per sale was bigger, as of course box sets have a higher retail value than individual DVDs.)

I found a lot of my sales went to people living in small towns and country areas - where they didn't have a "JB Hi-Fi" store in their locality, so they didn't have direct access to these discounts. At the time, I could still sell well below retail, and make a profit.

The market for DVDs may have changed now, so I'm not sure how well it would work (I haven't done it for a few years). However, the principle should work for other generally desirable items, if you can get it at a low enough price!

The "secret" is that you "make money when you buy"... As long as you buy at a low enough price, a profit is almost guaranteed when you sell.

By the way, I heard an extension of this, for much bigger bucks.

When the iPad first came out, I talked to someone at an Apple store. He told me that many Chinese customers were coming into the store, and buying as many iPads as they could get their hands on.

What was happening was they were buying the iPads - then shipping them to China, and reselling them there at a huge markup - since iPads only became available in China much later on.

I think many people who did this ended up making tens of thousands of dollars, probably in the space of a few weeks (depending on how many iPads they could get their hands on, as they had no problems selling them).

Because Apple did not initially sell their iPads to China (until later), while it was not available, it created a "temporary scarcity" which drove the price up in China, and enabled many others to profitably satisfy the huge demand.

(Of course, this basic principle has been at work for millenia... It's how the old "spice trade" worked - buying or growing spice in some countries for pennies, then selling them at huge prices in Europe, where spices were scarce... Or the "silk route" - getting silk from China for a low price, transporting it over land to Europe, then selling it there at a huge markup, where there were no silk worms to make silk...)

Best wishes,

Dien