Re-Selling 101 – Work and Play SMART – Find your Niche

A lot of times I get a lot DMs and messages from strangers asking for advice on how to start their own consignment shops and reselling business. Honestly, I don’t have a sure win combo formula that will put you on top. When I first started I did not have a plan what I wanted Netmag to be, but I only said one thing as a joke to my family…and that was I wanted to be the “Shoe King” of Toronto. Looking back at the joke… I guess it helped me greatly in building Netmag over the years because what seemed like a stupid joke helped me stayed focus of what the end goal should be.

I didn’t start selling with the goal of being the next Flight Club. There wasn’t GOAT and there wasn’t StockX, all I knew was there was no consistent place people can go to find older SBs and Jordans. eBay was definitely the spot at the time, but with the 10% fee rape it was hard to justify selling there because most of the time that was a big chunk of my margin. Often times, I was able to lure buyers to transact via paypal invoice to avoid the fees but it wasn’t efficient enough because it took too much time negotiating and avoiding being caught by eBay for transactions outside to avoid the fees. I’m sure we all remember the – “send me an email at netmagnetism A(T) G.m.ai.l. c/.o.m”. LOL I mean at the time with only a few pairs of shoes to sell, it was feasible but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it at a larger scale. Moreover, I was wasting too much time with fk boys that said they would buy the shoes and once the paypal invoice was set up, they disappear. Hence, I created a website with paypal checkout to close that loop to avoid wasting time. The whole point was first come first serve, no more paypal invoices…if you got the cash, you buy. It was honestly the best decision I made in my life. No more 10% fees and no more wasted time of “I’m a interested buyer” garbage. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t smooth in the beginning as the hardest part was directing people to your website, but that’s the best part. Business is about solving one problem, but solving many other problems that come with it afterwards. Ultimately, running a successful business is about solving thousands of problems and solving EVEN MORE problems as you go. The more problems you can solve, the more successful your business will be.

The point I’m trying to get across today is not to copy what’s existing out there already, but rather create something slightly different to fulfill a niche and untapped markets with demand. The odds of you succeeding and outplaying Flight Club are very very very slim. If you’re hoping to simply replicate other people’s business model you probably won’t see forever success. Competition is cut throat…if you’re willing to make $50 on a pair of shoes, there is always someone out there more desperate than you and happy with just making $20. This type of competition wouldn’t last long because there won’t be much profit left to share. My niche in the beginning was hard to find SBs and Jordan’s. For those that followed me from the early days, I declined ALL new releases because there wasn’t a niche there for me and hence I focused on pairs where most people can’t find at fair prices. So when ppl thought about Og Jordans or Nike SBs from 2002, they think of Netmagnetism. Time is a precious commodity. So my advice to you is play smart and know your competition around you and do what others haven’t done to date.