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28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

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Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#191

Post by philliphaydon »

philliphaydon wrote: post #138
LilBytes wrote: post #90

My friend does exactly this between IKEA and Ebay. Here in Australia, IKEA does not ship (not sure if they do else where) so she buys a heap of items at the Ikea stores and flips them online. She's been doing it for years and does pretty well at it. Here in Australia, IKEA stores are few and far between so her arbitrage is a huge value add for a lot of her customers since IKEA cannot (won't?) ship and traveling X KM'…

Ikea here in singapore just started doing delivery 2 months ago.

Sorry I should have being more specific. Delivery via the website.

If you purchase in store hey do delivery, but the queues can be an hour on the weekends.

They have services like GoGoVan to get some bulky items home cheaper.

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#192

Post by notyourday »

wpietri wrote: post #8

Good for him, but I really wish for a better class of business journalism. He's been doing this 4 years, and never made more than $150k/year. So he definitely isn't somebody who "makes millions".

The level of hate towards someone who is successfully working for himself, making $150k a year, no being beholden to meetings, stand-ups, managers that don't understand how special the posters are while shaking as a leafs in November being afraid that they won't be able to afford the next rent increase in Silly Valley or that as they turn forty is just amazing.

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#193

Post by collinmanderson »

sytelus wrote: post #170

He is doing $200K/mo. Assuming average sell price is $50, that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days. Just think about someone needs to stroll around Walmart and find all these 4000 items each month chosen meticulously, buy them, store them, package them and ship them. Then there is a classic and dreaded inventory problem. The items you bought from Wal…

He has a team of 11 doing it. It's not just him. It's a small business.

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#194

Post by noetic_techy »

sytelus wrote: post #170

He is doing $200K/mo. Assuming average sell price is $50, that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days. Just think about someone needs to stroll around Walmart and find all these 4000 items each month chosen meticulously, buy them, store them, package them and ship them. Then there is a classic and dreaded inventory problem. The items you bought from Wal…

He takes the same item Walmart would discount in a localized area and makes it globally available. Someone browsing online doesn't know said item is on clearance in Backwater, Flyover State. Sure he has probably made some mistakes and bad purchases, but anyone worth their salt doesn't do it again. Take small risks and see if it sells. When you find a seasonal item or hot seller, you replicate it. This can wipe away any mistakes you made. This plus amazon fulfillment handling the inventory problem, might work well.

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#196

Post by [deleted] »

noetic_techy wrote: post #194
sytelus wrote: post #170

He is doing $200K/mo. Assuming average sell price is $50, that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days. Just think about someone needs to stroll around Walmart and find all these 4000 items each month chosen meticulously, buy them, store them, package them and ship them. Then there is a classic and dreaded inventory problem. The items you bought from Wal…

He takes the same item Walmart would discount in a localized area and makes it globally available. Someone browsing online doesn't know said item is on clearance in Backwater, Flyover State. Sure he has probably made some mistakes and bad purchases, but anyone worth their salt doesn't do it again. Take small risks and see if it sells. When you find a seasonal item or hot seller, you replicate it. This can wipe away a…

[deleted]

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#197

Post by [deleted] »

owens99 wrote: post #177
sytelus wrote: post #170

He is doing $200K/mo. Assuming average sell price is $50, that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days. Just think about someone needs to stroll around Walmart and find all these 4000 items each month chosen meticulously, buy them, store them, package them and ship them. Then there is a classic and dreaded inventory problem. The items you bought from Wal…

> that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days He uses Fulfillment by Amazon, meaning after he buys the products he just ships them all to Amazon and Amazon will ship them to the customers when the orders go through. That saves 90% of the time required to operate a business like this. All he has to do is find and buy products where he can make a margin s…

[deleted]

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#198

Post by ataturk »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #188
sytelus wrote: post #170

He is doing $200K/mo. Assuming average sell price is $50, that would require shipping one item every 12 minutes assuming he never sleeps and works all of the 365 days. Just think about someone needs to stroll around Walmart and find all these 4000 items each month chosen meticulously, buy them, store them, package them and ship them. Then there is a classic and dreaded inventory problem. The items you bought from Wal…

>Remember that massive sales and trend data available to Walmart is not available to this guy [...] True, but this guy and WalMart are not solving the same optimization problem. Supermarkets are dropping prices on particular items to lure customers into their stores expecting them to buy other stuff as well. They try to maximize the profits they make on all of their existing and potential customers, now and in the fu…

But he's buying clearance items, is he not? Clearance is "this didn't sell so we're blowing it out to get rid of it."

I guess he's exploiting a geographic arbitrage where an item in one location doesn't sell but that doesn't mean it is worthless to all everywhere?

There's a similar phenomenon with cars from the south brought up north because they don't have rust (hurricane damage notwithstanding).

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#199

Post by icedchai »

notyourday wrote: post #192
wpietri wrote: post #8

Good for him, but I really wish for a better class of business journalism. He's been doing this 4 years, and never made more than $150k/year. So he definitely isn't somebody who "makes millions".

The level of hate towards someone who is successfully working for himself, making $150k a year, no being beholden to meetings, stand-ups, managers that don't understand how special the posters are while shaking as a leafs in November being afraid that they won't be able to afford the next rent increase in Silly Valley or that as they turn forty is just amazing.

Amazing, right? This guy is living the dream.

Re: 28-year-old makes millions buying from Walmart, selling on Amazon

#200

Post by wpietri »

notyourday wrote: post #192
wpietri wrote: post #8

Good for him, but I really wish for a better class of business journalism. He's been doing this 4 years, and never made more than $150k/year. So he definitely isn't somebody who "makes millions".

The level of hate towards someone who is successfully working for himself, making $150k a year, no being beholden to meetings, stand-ups, managers that don't understand how special the posters are while shaking as a leafs in November being afraid that they won't be able to afford the next rent increase in Silly Valley or that as they turn forty is just amazing.

Huh. Not sure who you're talking to, but I opened with "good for him", and I meant it.
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