Hello all!
I just want to say thank you for the wealth of information that I have found in this forum, but thank you also for this specific topic. Recently (about 3 weeks) I started looking into FBA and noticed that most people in FB groups all they talk about is PL. For me I believe plunging 3-4K into a product that already sells by different brands is not feasable, all your doing is adding your logo. I think that if you were to have something unique, then yes, but because of this I think that wholesale is a great option to start.
My question is, is it still worth it in 2018 to start with FBA? I've read tons of people around the web where they are leaving the platform, saying is saturated etc etc.. Also I've noticed that some other programs have come to light to offer something thaat IL offers, such as fetcher (same people from JS) and I was looking to see if some of you can do an updated post with the software that you guys use.
@RFord617 Can you tell us what software/tools are you using to make it efficient?
@hodedofome PriceMaster is very close to where I live, so I could probably save the shipping part. Can you tell me if its still worth purchasing from them? Can they provide you with a spreadsheet with the UPC?? Would their invoice still ungate me to some of the sections if I am starting? Is it possible to make between 20-30% ROI? I will be doing this with a LLC and resale certificates.
Thank you.
I started in March of 2017 with $300 in mostly bad clearance items. A few worked out, a few I still have in my garage waiting to be sold on eBay lol. I didn't know anything about restrictions so I bought Lego, Little Tykes, etc.
I read everything I could, got involved with some facebook groups, scanned like crazy, signed up for Tactical Arbitrage, paid $2k for The Wholesale Formula class which I haven't used yet, worked as much as I could with 3 little kids and a full time job. I eventually invested $12k from my savings and I believe my total profit for 2017 is around $25k. Peak sales I've done for a 30 day period is $28k in the 4th quarter of 2017. Right now my sales are around $12-15k per month, with profit being around $3-5k per month. My sales didn't really ramp up until mid summer/early fall of 2017. Getting ungated in as many categories and brands as possible is essential.
I'd say my sales are about 50% coming from OA. I haven't really used Tactical Arbitrage lately, but I need to get back into it. I found an online brand that had some decent selling already going on at Amazon, but the few sellers who sold the product didn't keep it in stock. They'd buy 3 at a time and sell out quick. I could tell this from the Keepa graphs. So I started with 3, then bought 5, then bought 10, then 25, and finally settled on 50-75 per month from 1 item. This item largely has no competition. Had they just ordered enough to test the market, they would have found it was far deeper than they ever imagined. I buy it for $15, sell it for $35, make $9 on each item for a 60% ROI. It sells 50-75 per month so I'm making about $500 a month just from 1 item. All of the ranks for each variation are over 100k in home & kitchen, and some are over 1 million in rank. You can't always trust the rank, and if you're the only seller it can still be worth it.
Since the fall I decided to list all the different variations of this item, as well as similar items from the same website. So I'm moving away from just selling items that are already listed, to creating my own listings for items that haven't been sold before. Although the other variations don't sell as well, when you combine the other colors and sizes I figure I'm making about $1,500 in profit each month. So I setup the inventory alerts in seller central, and when I get to a 2 week supply I place an order for more. It comes to my house, I prep it and send it off. Replens are awesome. As time allows I'm ordering test buys for other products from this website, and creating new listings.
I found another product, in the beauty category, selling brand new on the shelf at a grocery store for $10. It sells (well) on Amazon for $30-45, depending on the competition. ROI can be anywhere from 70-170%. Rank is 25-40k in beauty. This product is apparently difficult to find these days, but it still sold in some stores and more can be ordered. At first I was clearing the shelf, but then eventually spoke to the manager about buying in bulk. She can order as much as I want. One of the orders accidentally included the invoice from the distributor in the box. I was super excited and called the distributor about opening up an account. They said they weren't interested. I don't know why people don't like taking other people's money sometimes. In any case, even paying retail price this one product is responsible for 20% of my sales and at least 25% of my profits.
So 1 RA replen and 1 OA replen website are bringing in $8k in sales and $2-3k in profit per month. Any clearance items I find are gravy after that. I've got basically a 'floor' of replens I can count on to make at least $2k per month. At this point I'm listing new products from that website, and slowly working on opening up wholesale accounts. Wholesale is going slower than I'd like, but I'm not giving up. There's a guy locally who knew my dad and got me to sell his bbq spices on Amazon. They are starting out slow but I'm running ads on them and trying to get reviews.
From the start I imagined me learning the business doing RA and OA, using the profits from that to get into wholesale, and finally using the profits from wholesale to get into private label. Once you know how to get a product ranked high on Amazon, PL offers the best profit opportunities IMO. Even if there's already competition, if you can figure out the listing, advertising and brand awareness/brand building part, you can get stuff to sell.
I do RA shopping during lunch during the week, prep 2 evenings per week and on Saturday. All in all probably putting in 10-20 hours per week.
In answer to your question, Pricemaster and EE Distribution is still good for getting ungated in grocery and toys. They don't provide an excel spreadsheet. Don't expect to make any money, just hope you can break-even. Consider it an investment so you can make more money from being ungated. Even if you're starting out, if you have a legit invoice and the business info of your seller account matches the business info on the invoice, the invoice will be accepted.