https://www.aol.com/article/finance/...azon/23266344/

saw this article and it made me think of all the threads on here about poker players with resume holes, those who want some non-poker part-time work, avoiding minimum wage supervised labour (this might be sub-minimum wage for awhile but you'd be your own boss.

from article:

It seems too easy to be true that you could make millions by raiding the clearance aisle at your local Walmart or Target and then selling your haul on Amazon. But that's exactly what 28-year-old Ryan Grant is doing.

OP comment, his revenue is millions per year. and he's clearing i would assume low 6 figures so he's not exactly "making millions". and he's re-investing in his business.

i defintely see things all the time (marshall's, burlington, kohl's etc.) that you could easily sell for more on ebay.com. i hadn't specifically thought of amazon.com. and wouldn't have thought there's enough of the stuff ...... for me the biggest question would be turnover. is this guy patient - capital-intensive - or just offer at price that's guaranteed to be hit?

not sure if he should be advertising this.. although maybe he wants to scale up.

p.s. i used abbreviations in the title so that the thread wouldn't get locked. no idea what the rules are so i played it safe.

The article says his salary peaked at 150k/y and he's now drawing about 60k.
I would be willing to bet though that those numbers are padded for wow factor in order to promote his books / coaching services and exclude a lot of personal costs incurred. I also have a hard time imagining that the people he currently employs will stay loyal to him when they can just take what they've learnt and work independently.

Seems like he's trying to promote his 'coaching' services and books.

I've been reading Ryan's blog for years since it started. Seems like a really nice guy and very smart, but I agree that these days he's looking to make money from coaching rather than doing.

Buying from clearance sections is a regional thing that doesn't scale well so it makes sense.

These "articles" are paid advertisements.

This was a great idea 5 yrs ago. now there are dozens of paid courses, seminars, gurus, and podcasts all selling the same dream. Of course the gurus made some $ for awhile when there was no competition and then they started selling courses as their amazon revenue declined. Similar to much of the poker coaching economy.

This article was written in 2005 poker terms but arbing on Amazon is now 2011 in poker.

It's also a classic example of business that can allow you to kid yourself about profitability. Without more details it's impossible to say in this case but generally:

Buy 1M worth of stock
Sell half for 700k
Value of stock: 500k
Profit 200k

Looks great on paper but it's only profitable in reality if the stock left isn't ageing or lessor to the stuff sold - which is unlikely. Plus you have the overheads, logistics etc to deal with.

This sort of business needs to be high margins. If it's low margin then it needs to be near 100% stock turnover. Otherwise the longer it goes on the more the apparent profits will go up while the hole grows.

Exactly, Amazon loves to eat you alive with aging inventory fees. If you buy some widget at Walmart for $20 you better sell it damn quick (and know your margins) or Amazon will eat your lunch. That article would have been better titled " Million in revenue, 50k net, high risk, low reward, grind it out like it's 25NL".

I assume Amazon is responsible for many of these articles.

Agreed on both accounts.

It's actually not a new story/idea, but as others have stated the fact that the guy is focused on coaching now speaks volumes. Still though, there are hustle activities like this over a short period and if you are part of the first movers you can make a quick buck. trying to make it sustainable though is usually a fruitless (impossible) goal to achieve.

my family owns a distribution/wholesale company and there's about 2M worth of b-stock/samples that someone could buy at a massive discount and make a killing. Situation is similar at just about every big distribution company, especially in electronics or fashion where products have a short life span and are constantly getting discontinued/updated. Would be smarter to go straight to walmarts supplier and negotiating a liquidation deal for b-stock/demo products or any inventory that has been sitting for more than 2 years.
Buying it at the very end of the chain sounds pretty dumb...

Are you looking for someone to liquidate their inventory? I know someone who does that stuff and could make the drive to montreal if it's not too inconvenient of a haul.