Small business part time for selling?

Xeorix

At the moment, we're buying lots of stuff for our house, mainly our kitchen at the moment such as cabinet inards, bins etc.
I've been buying all of this from various online sellers, however every single item has come direct from the same distributor.

If I wanted to get into this, is it possible to do it as a sole trader? If so, can I sign up with distributors as the company name as myself and then register with HMRC only if I sell anything?

What would then happen if say I was registered as "Xeorix" and wanted to sell as "Creative Solutions" for example?

Surely there's a catch or something i'm missing. It seems too simple to get started.

custardy

buy stuff,sell for profit,pay the tax.

Mistral001

Distributors will usually not sell to just anybody who wants to buy from them even for cash. You will probably have to show that you are an established business before they will sell to you. You can be a sole trader or Ltd company it does not usually matter. However some distributors like working with Ltd companies especially if the firms that they are supplying are unknown to them and not local as they can check up publically available records such as addresses of directors and financial records held by Companies House. On the other hand some companies do not like dealing with Ltd companies because of the Limited liability they have with regard to paying debts should they go bust.


Note sole trader does not always mean small some quite large firms with dozens of employees operate as sole traders, while there are many single person Ltd Companies.

Xeorix

The stuff in looking at is really specific items that the trade would deal with.

As we're remodelling our house, lots of people are asking where we get x and yy fromfrom because they think you can only get then as part of units from bigger shops.

I'm not talking ipads, clothes and food

Mistral001

I see now. When you said distributor I thought you meant firms which did not sell to the general public, but since they are selling through ebay they are selling to the general public and thus are retailers themselves (they might have both a retail and distributor wing to the their business). Selling these products that you buy on ebay and making a profit could work out as long as they are not products that usually have warranties. In other words products that although are fine when you sell them, could develop faults afterwards. However why would people buy them from you at higher prices than they would get on ebay?

Xeorix

No no sorry.

The distributor is trade only, however other people are selling them on eBay and getting them dropshipped directly to the sellers.

What I meant is that these aren't generic distributors, they're quite niche to a certain set of products

Mistral001

I am surprised that they are selling using dropshipping on ebay. As far as I know dropshipping is not banned on ebay but various rule changes that ebay have made over the years has made dropshipping on ebay a difficult way to trade these days.