One of the biggest problems people face when it comes to selling items is having the inventory and more specifically where to find that inventory to resell. What I try to do when I'm selling things at a yard sale or garage sale is always, always have some brand new fresh from the shelf items to resell. These items I try to get are things that people need because I know these items will sell. My item that I sell the most volume of that falls into this category is actually toilet paper. Yes. You read that right. Toilet Paper. Read on.....
The place to get these items is at salvage stores. These stores are found throughout the United States, but they kind of fly under the radar of most people. Mainly because of two things. 1 - The people that shop at these stores don't want their secret out there in fear of more people coming to the stores and buying up the inventory. 2 - A lot of these stores don't advertise at all. There's not even a sign out front of the really, really good stores.
Typically, rural Amish communities are a pickers paradise for these stores as you will literally find them scattered every few miles throughout an Amish community. Now don't get these salvage stores confused either with the salvage stores that advertise and really push the fact that you can get items for cheap there. Yes - you can get items cheaper there, but from what I've seen at these stores is that the markdown prices really aren't marked down all that much considering how much the store originally pays for their items on the secondary market.
Let me touch on the secondary market. A high percentage of the salvage stores purchase their inventory on the secondary market. The secondary market operates like this...and I'll use my highest volume mover toilet paper as an example. Say a brand new skid of Charmin toilet paper arrives on the docks of Walmart. While they are unloading the truck they discover that 2 skids had been damaged in the process of shipping. Say a towmotor fork stuck the side of the skids and stabbed a few packages of Charmin. Walmart will deny the entire skid due to those couple packages being damaged. Rather than pay the shipping to return the damaged skids to the manufacturer or distributor and take even more of a loss, these skids stay in the local area and are sold by the manufacter or distributor to secondary buyers on the secondary market at huge discounted prices. Say there is 40 12 packs of Charmin on a skid and only 2 packages were damaged. That leaves a full 38 packs of brand new sealed packages of Charmin. The packages I get normally cost anywhere from $6.99 to $7.99 in the Walmart stores in my area and the prices are just about the same everywhere else. I pay $1.99 for them at the salvage stores and then I put them out for $4 at the yard sale. I do this because you can get a similiar sized package at Family Dollar for $5. I'm still able to maintain my profit margin and I'm still able to give my customer a 20 percent cheaper price than they would normally have paid.
Now that's only a 2 dollar profit per package and I am doubling my money. What I do is I buy in bulk and I combine my shopping trip to include various other stops a long the way so I'm not wasting gas and cutting into my profit margin. I keep track of all my costs right down to the last cent so I can properly keep an eye on my profit margin. I suggest everyone do this with all your income generating endeavors.
Some other items I pick up there are pop (soda, cola, or tonic depending on what part of the country you're in! lol ), dish and laundry soap, diapers (which has the distinction of having my highest profit margin from the salvage stores), and various other household items people need. I get Pepsi and Coke for .15 a can and resell them individually for .40 a can. I'll keep them on ice and sell during yard sales. Some friends of mine will buy the 24 packs at the store and sell them for .50 a piece and still make a profit. That's a small tip for something you can do when you have your own yard sale.
Let me take a second and mention too that you can also get both perishable and non-perishable food items at these stores for heavily discounted rates. Say a box of cereal at a grocery store normally costs $4 or $5 - the same box at the salvage store will run you anywhere from .75 to $1. A little tip though is to watch the expiration dates on them. Some boxes you will find will still be a year out while others may be really close to expiring. So make sure you check those dates. As for reselling food, other than canned pop I don't mess around with selling food because quite honestly I don't know if it's legal to do that at a yard sale and I wouldn't want to deal with the negative effects if say someone was to get sick or something from food you sold them. You might be asking for trouble should you try to resell the food. But, for personal shopping and personal consumption the food values there are incredible to say the least.
So, how do you find these stores? First, you can look online and see what you find. Almost 100 percent of the time you will find the salvage stores that are the ones I would consider to be the "commercial" salvage stores. They tend to sell for a little more than the other salavage stores and they really market the fact that they are a salvage store. BUT, for personal shopping you are still getting a better deal than at Walmart). Getting in good and finding the good salvage stores can prove tricky because like I said above.....people tend to keep these stores close to their belt and don't like to share in fear of losing out their own personal little goldmine. However, you will find some people who know about these stores. Ask others online in your particular area. If you happen to live near an Amish community, don't be afraid to pull up, roll down your window and ask one of the Amish where the local salvage stores are. You'll be greeted with a chuckle and 9 times out of 10 they are more than happy to point you in the right direction. That's how I originally found out about these stores about 15 years ago. Networking is key to any business you're in. I happened to know someone who drove around Amish for a living and they told me about them and a few Amish guys I worked with back then told me about them. When I originally set out looking for them, I couldn't find them because like I said....there was no signs! I ended up asking the Amish I came across on the road where the nearest stores were.
The networking paid off when I found the good salvage stores and then it paid off 10 fold when I was shown where to buy my products on the secondary market from the same place where the salvage stores purchase their inventory. In my upcoming book, I will go a step further and share with you how and where to find the "secondary market" stores so you too can obtain your products for huge substantial savings.
Thanks to all those Amish now I know where all the stores are located and I have a regular route where I hit all the stores and complete one giant circle. Hopefully, this tip will be of use to others out there. Good luck and report back if you happen to go out on a salvage store adventure.
Be sure to check out the following for more money making and money saving topics - always adding new things.....
The Dapper Scrapper Index to Making Money Online and Offline for Sustained Self Employment Income
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