One of the most common questions I get from a lot of stranger followers is how do I get my inventory? Usually I’ll avoid answering it because that’s basically asking me for my bank account pin number…honestly that’s exactly that and I can’t find a better analogy. However one thing I CAN tell you is that one of the biggest misconception about re-selling is you have to be able to cook at retail to make money. THAT IS ABSOULTELY WRONG! If you need any better example…look no further..i’m a living example. Almost 99% of the items I have sold was purchased at resell prices. It might not be the most profitable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not profitable at all. Being in the business you just have to have patience and a good eye and a little bit of experience. People often think they need to be able to cop 20 pairs on release date for retail to be able to make money. To a certain degree that is true, but the reality is you can’t guarantee success rate on every single drop. Its easy for competitors to get in line before you and with a lot of releases nowadays being raffle based…the chances of you cooking on a single release is next to none. So how do you remain profitable if you have to pay resell.
One of the basic skills of re-selling is not how much you pay for the item, but rather is how much more can you get for the item you paid for with time being a crucial factor. Everyone wants a quick flip, but I hate to say it…the quick flip is pretty much almost dead in the market we live in today. I’m sure most of you want a bit more than $20 for your time. Relative to a few years ago, the quick flip was pretty much everything…you just need to line up and you’ll guarantee $50 profit the moment you walk out of the store. So how do you make more than $20? In my opinion, how one should play the market nowadays and be profitable is you got to take bets. I see it as investing. You study a release prior time and gauge past history price trends and make your most educated guess at what will appreciate the fastest. How I see it nowadays is almost 100% identical to stock investing. However, being able to pick what would go up the fastest is the million dollar question that only the experienced players would do better than the amateurs. Paying re-sell to sell at higher re-sell it not without risk. There is the risk that you have overpaid for the item and prices could indeed drop. Of course the floor for most somewhat hot release is retail price as it rarely dips below that, but playing the window between retail an resell price you paid is the biggest question and risk. Why re-selling is so hard nowadays is because there are so many releases and guessing which release would go up in value becomes exponentially hard. Not just guessing which pair goes up is hard, but being able to bet right is the next biggest factor. You may have guessed the right shoe, but if you only bought 1 pair your profit is limited. On the flip side if you bought 20 pairs and the price went up $200-$300 then you cooked. This all circles back to the similarities of reselling nowadays to stock investing and we all face the same problem. If you want to win big…not only guessing the right shoe, you also have to wager correctly.
At the end of the day, re-selling successfully today is all about the investing and risk characteristic of the re-seller. If you are risk adverse and don’t believe in dropping so much on shoes, then you can play it safe and play the long term buy and hold. Regardless, the times have changed but it doesn’t mean the art of reselling has. So next time if you get mad about not cooking on retail, then maybe you should consider a being a player in a different aspect of the resell market or stay out of it entirely.
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