Selling ex catalogue stock

NewLifeAhead_2

Hi, ive been thinking of doing the above. Ive found a few wholesalers websites, 1 in particular selling for between 10-25% of rrp. Whilst a lot of them are littlewoods, and i know their retail prices are ridiculous, a lot of them are argos or tesco. The best pallets seem to be the toy pallets but they are mostly returns rather than end of line, so it does state it will be a mixture of perfect,faulty or missing parts etc. So, a few points Id like to ask ;
1, Are there companies/people you can hire to legitimitely refurbish and safety test toys?
2, Would it be better to just scrap whats broken (with obviously no guarantees to still make a profit on that pallet)
3, Any tips tricks and warnings on this as a whole (not just above mentioned)?
I am mainly thinking toys/baby items at the moment with the christmas season coming up, with the possibiltity of moving into electricals and homeware.
Many thanks.

paddyrg

The opportunities to be sued for patching up kids stuff are huge, so you need to be well insured. If the margins were good, I suspect the pallets of duds would change hands at more than they currently do, so either nobody else has had the idea, or it isn't the easy win people thought it was - bear this in mind. Also, if you find it is a good deal and profitable, I imagine any kind of demand for the pallets will drive up their price, so factor this into your calcs. Just a few initial thoughts

NewLifeAhead_2

Hi and thanks. No I definately didnt mean "patching up", I mean properly officially refurbishing and safety testing. I imagine it would be better and cheaper to just cut my losses on the bad stuff. I guess i'll only know when i order a pallet.
I wouldnt say no-one else has had the idea, i often see littlewoods and argos stuff on sale in cheap shops, markets etc. I dont think its a get rich quick scheme obviously, just wanting to make a couple hundred quid for christmas mainly and see where it goes from there.
The cheapest pallets are around £350 inc vat and delivery with an apparent £1200 rrp (again I do know this doesnt mean thats what itll all sell for) so even if i could sell it all for £500 id be happy.
Thanks for posting

InsideInsurance

There is no such thing as a free lunch, if it were easy to do then everyone would be doing it and so you have to imagine that their pricing is at the upper end and thus you need a slick operation to make a profit.

For own brand/ unbranded stuff my employer used to sell in the 90s the wholesale price was often only around 5% of the retail price charged. Were it not for the fact we only paid 20p for a parcel to be collected (nothing for a failed attempt) then 90% of it would have been written off rather than collected when a customer wanted to return it - for large furniture in NI or other more distant areas it was always cheaper to write off than collect it.

Kids stuff is very high risk, broken stuff potentially could be repaired and resold but your opening yourself up to high cost litigation if injury occurs. Likewise you could sell for parts but again its a high risk strategy unless it literally is just playing tokens from a board game etc

paulwf

The first place to start would be to establish what normal wholesale margins (i.e. for new goods) would be. If you are paying £350 and you think the real rrp is less than the quoted £1200 that doesn't seem like a particularly good deal.

As to employing a company to fix the goods for you that sounds like a non starter, surely the money is to be made by you adding the value yourself i.e. being able to spend the time tinkering? You are probably going to end up with dozens of different products so I don't think anybody else will be interested in sorting them out at a sensible price.

Lastly - and this is the big one - aren't you too late for Christmas season? It is already in full swing and any business would have got in their stock, got their sales and delivery channels refined and generally would have ironed out any glitches months ago. By the time you get in your stock, work out how to fix it, how to sell it and how to deliver it you'll have missed most of the season.

terra_ferma

personally I find ex-catalogue items not worth getting into, unless you have a source that is not well-known you'll be competing against a lot of people who buy from the same company (or similar selling the same stuff), and some at ridiculous prices.
Wholesalers are also at it, and can be your main competitors, hard to bit.
Imagine how many would-be entrepreneur are scouring the internet looking for wholesalers as we speak, many of whom will not have a clue how to price the items and end up selling at a loss, particularly on ebay/amazon... hard to beat.

NewLifeAhead_2

Thanks for all the replies. As i said, Im not looking for a get rich quick scheme or a free lunch. Just to make a bit extra - im on maternity leave which is losing me £20 a week that I could do without losing.
So am i under the impression that any wholesale sites are not worth it?
What about https://www.argosclearance.co.uk they seem to have A grade stock would this be a better option? (cutting out the wonder of how much of the pallet is going to be useless?)
Thanks

terra_ferma

NewLifeAhead wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. As i said, Im not looking for a get rich quick scheme or a free lunch. Just to make a bit extra - im on maternity leave which is losing me £20 a week that I could do without losing.
So am i under the impression that any wholesale sites are not worth it?
What about www.argosclearance.co.uk they seem to have A grade stock would this be a better option? (cutting out the wonder of how much of the pallet is going to be useless?)
Thanks

..maybe it was before you published the link on an open forum read by thousands of people.

paulwf

NewLifeAhead wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. As i said, Im not looking for a get rich quick scheme or a free lunch. Just to make a bit extra - im on maternity leave which is losing me £20 a week that I could do without losing.
So am i under the impression that any wholesale sites are not worth it?
What about https://www.argosclearance.co.uk they seem to have A grade stock would this be a better option? (cutting out the wonder of how much of the pallet is going to be useless?)
Thanks

I checked a few sample listings and it mentioned collecting from their depot with a 7.5 tonne lorry and another required a 40ft trailer. I think you could be jumping in at the deep end, personally it looks a bit OTT if you are just looking for a £20 a week top up.

I haven't done this sort of thing so might be on the wrong track but I'd imagine it is all about being able to sell the items in vast bulk. You need a van to collect, a warehouse where you can strip down the pallet...pass it on to a bay where they have spares and testing equipment and can either do a quick repair or bin it. Then pass it on to the computer person who can knock out an ebay listing in 5 mins then pass it on to the packing station where they have all the packaging and label printer and a bulk deal with a courier.

soolin

For the sort of money you are looking for I think pallets is far too risky a venture and you stand to lose a great deal.

You quote a suggested figure of buying at £350 and being happy to get £500, so £150 out of which you have all your transport costs to collect the goods, your insurance (including public liability). You will also need to be paying tax and National Insurance. What about storage costs- have you are secure and dry unloading and storage area or will you need to hire one? Your figure also suggests that you want around 40% of the RRP back, which allowing for faulty goods is probably pushing it a lot. Almost certainly better to buy one off items in the sale, before it ends up on pallets and sell one off items.

Pallets often get mentione don the ebay forum and the margins are incredibly small but the work load and costs are enormous.

making £20 a week is not actually terribly hard if you do some research, it isn't always immediate but if you watch trends and spend time browsing places like ebay or even Amazon you might just spot something.

paddyrg

Or £20/week is 3 hours working in a pub. Sounds like the pallet idea would take more than 3h/week...