The buying and selling of goods has gone on since the beginning of time. With the Internet, it is now even easier to trade products across the city, country and even the world. But, as always, the goal is to buy low and sell high. How to do that in today’s fast paced world is one of the goals of people who practice Retail Arbitrage. In our article today, we are going to look at how you can take advantage of it and make it your own.
We will give you a few examples of how it works and pass on to you some resources that can make it easier for you.
When you are finished reading this you will know how to use it in a way that can provide you with a second career, additional income, or a way to build up your retirement revenue stream for after you plan to retire. Retail arbitrage provides the opportunity to acquire goods at wholesale and below wholesale pricing direct from retail stores and outlets.
What you need to do even before you have a product to sell
The whole secret to this type of income opportunity is to have a supply chain that can provide you with a product or products that people like, want, or need. This could be in the form of a service as well. The key to this is that your purchase price is below your sale price and that is equal or below that of similar items found in a store or mega-mart.
The next step is to create a catalog of these items, assign a price, a product number, and a quantity that may be used to build an inventory of products or services. This has been done successively using notebooks, spreadsheets, or software such as Quickbooks pro.
Creation of a catalog is simple with only SmartPhone you can take a picture, write up a small description of an item or service along with price, part number for ordering, and inventory control.
Anything can be cataloged, given a number, and priced. The “Age of Discovery” in the 15th through the 18th centuries was a time when men went forth and attempted to catalog everything on the earth. Today new plants and animals are still being discovered almost daily. The same is true of products and services.
You need a platform to sell on like Amazon or eBay
Once you have your catalog and supply chain. You need to create a platform to display your wares to potential buyers. In the days before the Internet, this meant renting a storefront. In China, it is often about the size of a one-car garage with a roll down door that locks to protect the seller’s inventory. U-Store-It Storage facilities all over America use these same types of doors. However now with the Internet you can create a virtual storefront for almost next to nothing.
Websites like Amazon, EBay, and Alibaba are the world’s largest online stores in America that not only sell their own goods. But they have sufficient data resources and IT hardware to provide virtual storefronts to people to sell anything imaginable. Jets, Cars, and in one case a submarine all have been sold online. Learning how to sell online is important before jumping head first into any business opportunity.
You need only open a vendor account with the before mentioned online giants and you can then set up a storefront where your products and services can take center stage. You want to make sure you use content that is 100% unique and original to help rank higher within the marketplace and google.
Other online possibilities are WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter can act as a storefront for your business or service. These venues are already increasing sales and the growth of the retail sector will continue at a more rapid pace now, with the release of the new Smartphones that permit iBeacon ads as well as ePayment options using NCF chips.
A wise Entrepreneur can blanket an area with iBeacons to saturate an area with advertising and a URL to order from. iBeacons use Bluetooth, which all iPhones now utilize as well as most of the other Smartphones on the market.
For Those who want their own dedicated Host or VPS
Cloud and Data hosting providers give you a place to host a website and a virtual storefront. A package like Magneto from EBay provides you with a “Business Solution” in a Box. These and other solutions, some free and others depending on your scope and vision may run into serious cash outlay.
You see there are almost unlimited possibilities for the use of Retail Arbitrage today. Finding a supply chain is as simple as looking at Craigslist, or some of the Import export companies on the Internet. In fact, most large cities have a Chinatown, where many wholesale outlets may be found. Chicago is the home of a branch of the OCA (Organization of Chinese Americans) can provide you will valuable sources of contacts to obtain goods to use in your supply chain.
You can now see with a little savvy gleaned from this article you can use Retail Arbitrage to your advantage and create a business of your own. In many cases, all you have to do is create a catalog without buying and having products on hand any products in it until you actually receive an order for them. Overnight Delivery makes this a viable option. You place a suborder to your supplier and it can be sent to you or directly to the customer using your labels and logo also known as white labeled.
JIT (Just In Time) delivery works for most large manufacturing and retail firms and drop shipping is another option for you to consider as well for your business.
These methods keep the amount of products you need to warehouse, store, and inventory to a minimum and keeps your bottom line costs down.
Retail is a business that has been around for thousands of years, now you can do it from the comfort of your kitchen or living room at home.