Reselling Staples Purchases Part 1
Reselling Staples Purchases Part 2
Reselling Staples Purchases Part 3
Reselling
My first thought was to put the items on Craigslist. I received zero interest; I am guessing these are a bit more of a niche product than the average Craigslist-er.
My friend had good luck with selling on Amazon, so that was my next step. I decided I would give FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) a shot for the larger items. How FBA works (in short) is you send your items to an Amazon warehouse. It then is listed on Amazon and when it sells, Amazon ships it to the customer. Basically once you send it in, you don’t have to worry about the product. I figured this would be easier for me.
The problem I ran in to is when you are setting up your items to sell through FBA, they may have you ship your items to different warehouses (Lesson #4: Even with Amazon’s lower UPS rates, it still costs a lot to ship the items unless you do a bunch of items together. You pay the cost to ship the item to Amazon up front).
I printed out the shipping labels and headed to the UPS store. (Lesson #5: I didn’t repackage the items. I sent the items to Amazon in the boxes they came from that you see in the photos above. What I should have done is rebox them but that adds another cost and more time. A buyer could potential return the item if the box was damaged).
It took over a week for my items to arrive at the Amazon FBA warehouse. I chose to price my items at the lowest “New” rate on Amazon as I wanted the items to sell quickly. This would undercut my profit, but also allow me a quicker turn around and assured money.
Let’s take a look at one of the items.
The first item to arrive at the warehouse was one of the laminators. As soon as Amazon entered it into their system it sold for the price I listed of $80.99 (it was the lowest price, so not too surprising). Amazon charged $20.73 on this sale, plus the $5.07 cost for me to ship the item to the warehouse. In the end I brought in $55.19 on the sale. I had to sell the laminator for at least $16.55 to break even, so even though it was a lot of work; I was able to turn a profit of $38.64 on the item. It also took care of $120 of my minimum spend towards my new credit card.
Another example:
Here is a picture of the Keurig on sale at Amazon right after being received by Amazon. I was able to change the price I was selling for once Amazon put it in their inventory to better match current prices. I am the lowest priced seller so I am showcased on the product’s page. Note: I removed my seller name, but it would be listed after “Sold by…”
It ended up selling for $115.11. Final payout after Amazon fees ($31.70)/shipping ($11.57) was $71.84 for something I purchased for $62.19 after rebate and $32.19 after Staples Rewards. Profit of $39.65 plus $82 of my minimum spend on my credit card.