The Wholesale Forums

[MEP]

I am sort of digging for some success stories. Wanted to hear about forum members starting small, sourcing products, and eventualy owning a warehouse. Im pretty sure ive seen greedyboy post about his warehouse before. I finaly found legit products with good profit margins, and a reliable distributor, and my dream is to one day bump up to that distributor spot and own a warehouse. Any success stories or stories in the making are welcome...How long did you sell to you got a warehouse, how big is the warehouse, do you sell wholesale/dropship, etc? Cheers

[Saajan]

Hey,
I don't own a warehouse myself nor am I a successful eBay businessman but just like to point out a few advantages and disadvantages about owning a warehouse:

Advantages:

• You can hold large amount of stock depending on the size of the warehouse
• Warehouses are easy to maintain for example, you select the product that wants to be shipped out, package it and hand it over to the courier

Disadvantages

• Rent is probably at a high number
• Insurance will probably cost you alot aswell
• Theft often happens in warehouses (depending on the security level)

[greedyboy]

We also have a small cheap rural workshop/warehouse for managing customer returns/exchanges/repairs plus our main warehouse which houses stock and processes container deliveries.

The beauty of mail order it does not matter where your warehouse is! You can use that to your advantage in terms of costs and how many you have.

However that is only half of it. You still have to kit it out, fill it up and staff it which is the expensive part. Only this week I had to fork out (no pun intended) 9K plus VAT for a another S/H Fork Lift.

[FiveStarWholesale]

We run from a small warehouse which has it's benifits and drawbacks.

Before we moved into it we used self storage. This is when a large warehouse is broken down into smaller storage units. Rent per Square ft is higher but there are no utilities, Insurance, Business Tax etc to pay.

It's a great way to grow as you can continue to 'trade up' to bigger units which means that you don't have to make such a big jump.

[BillyA]

I'll give you the story of a friend of mine that I've mentioned before:

My friend started out part-time (mainly at night) selling refurbished Palm Pilots on Ebay. He found someone selling them on Ebay, contacted him through Ebay and asked if he would sell him large lots. This person agreed and then shipped him a case of 50 as-is Palm Pilots.

He would then test them, and if they did not work properly, refurbish them and then resell them on Ebay. He typically tripled his money.

He then started up his own website and sold the same Palm Pilots because he could charge more on his site for them. From there he expanded to importing web cams from China. He found a unique design and bought 1000 of them for about $3 each. He resold them for about $20 each by listing a few on Ebay and driving traffic to his site.

From there he decided to sell laptop batteries that he found in China. Dell laptops at that time were all beginning to wear out their batteries and replacement batteries were all the rage on Ebay selling for about $80 each. He imported them and sold them for about $50 each and made a killing.

From there he went to refurbished cell phones and the rest was history. He is now one of the biggest used cell phone distributors on the internet and owns his own warehouse and a hi-lo. He employs about 7 or 8 people as well.

So if you don't think Ebay can turn into something huge - think again!

[MEP]

thank you for all the great comments. By the way BillyA that story is truly motivational to me as your friend did exactly what I want to do and would like to be doing in the future. Thanks guys

[Beneddie1112]

Any one else have any success stories like Billy's?

[studio1one]

Originally Posted by Beneddie1112

Any one else have any success stories like Billy's?

come back in 12 months

[JoelUSA]

Hi,
Ebay is truly a great marketplace, but you need to treat it like any other business. I started selling out of my home using dropshippers. Lots of sales but slim profits. I highly recommend using a liquidator. We purchase as is Xbox 360s then refurbish them and sell them on EBAY/Amazon and our website. We just hit platinum Powerseller status! We are looking for a warehouse/shop now so we can do larger purchases and wholesale or refurbish for other sellers in the US.

[richardtov]

warehouse is a big step.

I've my own lil warehouse 7x7, it was an hangar for helicopter only $17.000+fixing things total: $23.000. thats a lot of cash in vzla.

If you have enough money and if you really need it, then buy it.

Better is a shop with a big stock!