Ever Since I got the boot from Staples I have been in a bit of a reselling funk. I am still very much a beginner at this reselling thing. Consequently, when I had a profitable thing going (iPads) I relied on it pretty heavily. Looking back on it I didn’t do too bad. I spent $11,000 and earned $1,375 in profit. That is an average ROI of 11.5%. I don’t have the experience to judge but I feel like that is a pretty good average ROI. That probably explains why I relied so heavily on iPads.
The downside of focussing on iPads is that when the supply dried up I had nothing to fall back on. I will say however, that the ban did come at a pretty good time. For the most part the market on iPads is pretty bad right now. Since the release of the new line of iPad Pros the price on other iPads has dropped. To the point where they are not profitable. So even if I wasn’t banned chances are I would not be buying iPads anyway. Still, the events have left me looking for other reliable options.
I was looking at external hard drives but when I see something that is profitable and I look at FBA I am competing against Amazon as a seller. That is a nonstarter. So I continue to look at Staples for other products but I’m not super encouraged by what I see.
Bottom line the time has not come to branch out. Here are a few options that I have been considering.
- Microsoft Surface Pro 4 – I would love if Staples sold this at a price point that was profitable. Most likely I will be looking at good deals on eBay.
- Apple Laptops – Again this will probably source from eBay.
- Sporting Goods – uPromise offers 5% at Cabelas and Dicks.
- Other products at Staples – Thus far I have been looking at hard drives and other electronics. Haven’t found anything super promising.
- Something weird that I probably won’t do – I won’t say too much on this other than to say it is related to the mint and I think it can be a good source for minimum spend but would not be profitable, best would be break even or a 1% loss, in line with MS. So not really sure it is worth the trouble.
I certainly can see why reselling can be a full time job. I don’t have the time to go into a store and start scanning stuff but an hour a day online looking for product certainly isn’t much more time spent than MSing. Especially given how dried up the MS environment is these days.