Legalities with selling new/old stock

bpk101

Hi,

My father wants to set up a small online business selling rare vintage eyeware to earn a bit of extra cash in his retirement (and keep him sane!).

He's been a dispensing optician for the last 50 years and has access to a lot of old stock, especially rare, now sought after frames from the 70s, 80s and 90s. These are boxed as new, unworn frames.

I'm going to help him with the website but i did wonder what the legalities are of selling new/old branded goods on your own website.

All the stock have and will come from official suppliers or distributors of the brands, it's just most of them are retired now and have lots of old stock that didn't sell at the time.

Thanks

Comms69

Well the legalities are probably complex, however to keep it simple.


Does he own the stock, or is he selling on behalf of other people?

bpk101

He owns the stock.

He's basically bought (and will be buying more) stock from old friends of his in the business who have accumulated these frames over the years. Again, stock they didn't manage to shift back in the day and have just gathered in private collections.

I'm not sure he bothered with receipts when he bought them recently but the transaction was definitely made. He's currently got about 30 frames that he bought as a job lot from one friend. He wanted to test the water with these.

Thoughts?

antrobus

bpk101 wrote: »

...

Thoughts?

Is he still a dispensing optician? Was he self-employed?

Comms69

bpk101 wrote: »

He owns the stock.

He's basically bought (and will be buying more) stock from old friends of his in the business who have accumulated these frames over the years. Again, stock they didn't manage to shift back in the day and have just gathered in private collections.

I'm not sure he bothered with receipts when he bought them recently but the transaction was definitely made. He's currently got about 30 frames that he bought as a job lot from one friend. He wanted to test the water with these.

Thoughts?

Aside from any obligations as an optician (no idea of the regulations), the only important factor is - he is a sole trader and needs to keep records in order to pay any relevant taxes.

bpk101

He still is a dispensing optician and owns his own practice. It's a partnership with 3 x others but the shop is in his name.

However he very much wants this new website shop to be completely separate from his main business. More of a hobby for him, selling rare and unusual spectacles and something he can carry on with in his retirement.

ps; good call on the taxes, we'll make sure he sets up for that.

lincroft1710

It is not clear from your posts whether these frames are being sold to be used with the buyer's prescription lenses or would be collector's items for display only.

bpk101

To be used with the buyer's prescription lenses.

00ec25

bpk101 wrote: »

To be used with the buyer's prescription lenses.

your father will be perfectly well aware of the legalities around him offering a framing service given he is a registered dispensing optician.

he will already know about product liability issues in respect of spectacles and those are no different when selling NOS frames. The frames are not "used" / "secondhand", they are unused and "new" and so should be of "merchantable quality"

his major unique problem with this new business line will be the apparent lack of any evidence of his original purchase price. Therefore he will struggle to declare anything other than a 100% profit margin when he sells them as he cannot deduct his unevidenced purchase price to arrive at his true profit as he has no receipts for his purchases. Given the average mark up on frames is 70 - 80% anyway the few£ he "loses" by not being able to support his purchase cost won't make much difference if this is just a "hobby" anyway.

his other issue will be whether he is selling as part of the existing practice or as a wholly separate trading activity. His VAT status if he does it separately is a matter upon which he should get professional advice from his current accountant given the potential for using the optician's VAT scheme

the rest of it is no different to what he already does as a dispensing optician.

Has he asked you for specific questions or are you just vaguely asking yourself, as I would have thought he would already know how to operate such a business given he already runs a practice.

bpk101

00ec25 wrote: »

Has he asked you for specific questions or are you just vaguely asking yourself, as I would have thought he would already know how to operate such a business given he already runs a practice.

Unfortunately my father's not that clued up on the business side of things (i know he should be, but he just isn't and at 70 this isn't going to change!). He leaves all the admin side of it to one of his partners. This is a small practice in a quiet village, they've been going for 20+years without any hiccups.

That said it was just something that crossed my mind as i didn't want him to get into any trouble with the big brands selling new old stock later down the line.

I'll make sure he starts getting receipts for the stock he buys. To be honest some of the stock he's getting for peanuts and finding out they're going for a tidy sum (hence his interest in the project) so yes, working out the true profit might not make such a huge difference.

00ec25

bpk101 wrote: »

I'll make sure he starts getting receipts for the stock he buys. To be honest some of the stock he's getting for peanuts and finding out they're going for a tidy sum (hence his interest in the project) so yes, working out the true profit might not make such a huge difference.

LOL. I have an optician as a client, the issue with opticians is not the extremely large profit margin they make on everything they sell, it is more simply having enough patients to sell to in the first place

it is unlikely that frames he acquires, even from such varied sources as you list, would be subject to their original supplier having any concern over who sells them on to consumers. What do you think you mean by

bpk101 wrote: »

That said it was just something that crossed my mind as i didn't want him to get into any trouble with the big brands selling new old stock later down the line..

?
if the frames were on sale or return then the people he buys them from would have returned them long ago. Thus is it improbable that he cannot sell them as no "big brand" frame supplier has limits on who can and cannot sell them

seems to me that if your father is looking for a side line during semi retirement then you and he should be focusing on his exit terms from the partnership and how you can maintain relations with the partner who is "business savvy" so you can keep them sweet as a source of help and advice for your father from someone who does know how to run an opticians and won't see your father as a threat to their own business.

read from the perspective of the consumer:
https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act

read from the perspective of the seller:
https://www.businesscompanion.info/en/quick-guides/goods/the-sale-and-supply-of-goods

will he be supplying the lenses in accordance with the prescription submitted by the customer or will he only be fitting lenses sent to him by the customer for fitting? He'll have to maintain some form of professional indemnity and registration to do so.

His website will need extremely clear terms and conditions over refunds and what happens if lenses & frames are lost/damaged in transit.

He will need to be very clear on how fitting adjustments will be made and who pays what given the patient is not physically present for a personal fitting measurement.