I spent all day yesterday scanning products at my Dad’s store. Even with a whole store of stuff to go through I found it pretty hard to find really profitable products that Amazon themselves weren’t selling.
On the flip side, my Dad got super into sending in stuff he was sick of looking at, so I ended up with three carts and a total of 76 products that are waiting to be labeled and shipped.
See below.
So out of my 76 items they can be categorized into two sections 1) Liquidation and 2)Money Makers.
The Liquidation Items
The liquidation items are simply some of the items my Dad hasn’t been able to unload in the past few years. Even marked at store cost.
He’s sick of looking at them and pretty much just wants to get something back out of them. But there were way to many one off items to make it worth my time. Instead I just started scanning the clearance tables. I picked items that Amazon wasn’t selling themselves, that there were multiples of, and that I could at least get a small profit out of.
I went against my rules and a lot of the liquidation items aren’t super lightweight and are not over $20, although several are.
I don’t expect for these items to sell fast and either does my Dad. However, they should still sell faster than what they would at his store. So we’re prepared to sit on most of these items for several months.
The Money Makers
Now comes the fun part – the money makers.
Originally I had thought the sporting good section would be my money maker. After all, deer season is right around the corner. Hunting products will be HUGE. Unfortunately, Amazon had figured this out too. They were selling almost every single hunting item I scanned.
I also didn’t find anything too profitable in the hardware or housewares section.
Next came the toys. The jackpot.
My money makers are all toys and I just cannot believe how big the markup is. It’s freaking ridiculous.
For instance, many of the board games selling on Amazon that I scanned were ranked under 30k and were selling for four times the price of wholesale.
Here are a couple of examples.
Jenga Game
- Wholesale cost $10
- Amazon Lowest Price $40
Disney Trivial Pursuit
- Whole Sale Cost – $11
- Amazon Lowest Price $38.99
Thomas the Train Wooden Tracks
- Wholesale Cost $20
- Amazon Low Price $69.99
ALL of my moneymakers are toys. The bad news is, that like I said, the toy section in my Dad’s store is super small. I’ve already taken all of the profitable toys. So if they end up selling right away we’ll be placing a new order!
Stuff Left to Do
I have to go back and do all of the labeling and shipping either tomorrow or Friday. I have some freelance work that needs done tomorrow so shipping day will probably be Friday.
I’m also going to go ahead and get at least 24 more items so that I can hit 100 items sent in to Amazon for the week.
I underestimated how long it would take to find good items so I’m probably underestimating how long it will take me to get them shipped out too. We’ll see how it goes.
That’s all for now. Just wanted to get the update in for the day 🙂 I’ll have a deeper explanation of the process in the next week or so.
Not sure if you answered this question but what does FBA stand for? also if your shipping out items does that mean you already sold some items and already have them in your online store? I have to say this is a very interesting project i like it and im looking forward to the results
FBA stands for fulfilled by Amazon. What you do is send all of your inventory to Amazon and they store it at their warehouses. Then when you sell an item they pick it, ship it, and handle customer service for you. So no I haven’t sold anything I’m sending it all to Amazon and then they’ll ship individual orders when they sell.
Also, if you use the FBA system instead of shipping individual items yourself, your inventory qualifies for Amazon Prime or the $35 or more free two day shipping.
But they do charge a fee for doing all the customer service and shipping work for you.
Very cool! I always love this type of stuff! My little brothers was into Thomas, and I knew the stuff was expensive, but that’s some crazy mark up! Way to go!
Hey Alexa!
Can you sell clothes through FBA? People on EBay are always selling clothes, new with tags, that they purchase during seasonal clearance sales.
I wonder are there any added advantages with FBA if you live in a town with an Amazon distribution center, like me.
Hi @selfiepreneur, I can’t help but chime in here. You can sell clothes on Amazon as an FBA seller, but you have to go through the approval process first. I for one do not want to deal with clothes. First, you have to take photos and create a listing for each item if it doesn’t exist on Amazon already. Creating listings takes time. Second, while I don’t have any experience selling clothes, I would think that the return rate would be higher. Things like this creep into my mind “What if the person wore the item then returned it?”
Amazon is very forgiving on returns so that could be a concern. As for being close to a warehouse, I live within driving distance to one myself. I’ve shipped to that location. But what I find is that the warehouses closest to me (Ontario, CA, and Phoenix, AZ) take the longest to process shipments.
They have something like 72 hours to check in your shipment once it has been delivered. I find that it can be as much as a week from the day I ship until I see my inventory online. Hope that helped!
Thanks for the feedback. I made a pivot and I am trying something new. I am an Independent Stylist for Henkaa. Henkaa is a company that markets convertible dresses. Excited about this new venture!
https://www.henkaa.com/styledbymeme
Good luck with this project! I’m very interested to see how it goes.
Very interesting and informative. I’m not that familiar with Amazon as a buyer even, so this helps to educate me. 😀
Great job Alexa! I have lots of things that I like on Amazon especially the gadgets, I will wait for your update if you have already reached 100 items sent in to Amazon!
Sounds like your making great progress! Good luck on selling your first 100 products!
I’m shocked you were able to find products in your dad’s store that amazon DOESN’T sell 🙂
Toys sound like a great niche to break into. I’ve bought a few games or action figures for my kids on eBay (found a great set of plastic Oswald the Octopus characters when they were into that cartoon) and if you can find the right stuff after stores have dropped it you might just hit a jackpot.
I’m just finding out about FBA and am curious, what happens if the item doesn’t sell? I realize you’re paying Amazon fees for everything from shipment to customer service – as well as storage – but I’m confused about what happens with items that might sit on the shelf (forever).
Hi Denise,
I’ll stick my nose in here and answer your question. You pay storage fees as long as the item sits in Amazon’s warehouse. If you find a product isn’t selling, you have three options: 1) lower your price until it does sell, 2) have Amazon send it back to you or 3) request that Amazon destroy the items. Of course, #s 2 and 3 have fees associated with them!
I’m curious how well the liquidation side of this will go, since Amazon charges fee for storing unsold merchandise, right? That’s nice that you have some games to sell – I found some Monopoly card games on clearance at Wal-Mart recently that I sold for a $5 or so profit each using Amazon Merchant Fulfilled (aka not FBA) selling. Wish I could find more of them!
Alexa,
I’m glad I stumbled across your blog. It’s good to read about someone else’s success with Amazon FBA.
I don’t dabble too much in toys, but your post actually intrigued me. Toys very well may be something that I look into as I get closer to October/November. The wholesale prices that you referenced actually seem similar to those that I might find with toys on clearance in a retail store. Wholesale may be something for me to consider in the future.
I definitely look forward to reading more about your adventures with FBA.
Hi Alexa,
Great post. I recently created free chrome extension that can help sellers find good products to sell on Amazon.
Hope it will help someone:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amz-seller-browser/klgpelgeohjghmccooegimcfhanlnngc
Hi, I was just wondering how this project ended up going for you? Were you able to sell any of the items that you listed? Thanks,
Yes 🙂 I sold almost everything that I listed and pretty quickly, too.
Curious, do you look at how many other FBA offers there are? How much weight does that have in your decision to buy or pass?
I have been looking for items to sell since I found out this existed a week ago! I am mainly into arts & crafts and I realized the small items I want to sell will not be profitable. Forums and the net have so much info to dig through.