Introduction
My wife loves Trader Joe’s. She doesn’t love everything in the store. She just loves their cucumbers and tomatos. That’s basically it. I keep telling her the time and gas spent going there for 2 items just isn’t worth it, but you know how it goes. Anyway, I tagged along with her one day and found out that Trader Joe’s took Apple Pay. That got me very excited about Trader Joe’s too!
What to buy?
When I got home, I checked eBay sold listings for “Trader Joe” and found a handful of items like tshirts, bags, some kind of pills called ubiquinol, some coconut oil, etc. I made a list of the 5 most common sold items on eBay as well as their price. I then went back there the following week (you know, for our cucumber and tomato run, which btw reminds me of how much I love Greek salads.) Some items I couldn’t find like the tshirts and bags, and the ubiquinol was more expensive in store than on eBay, which I found odd. Anyway, I settled on the shampoo and conditioner above. Price – $3.99 each, so a total of $8.74 with tax.
Ebay
It seems the people on eBay are smart enough to collude and have all agreed to price the set for $18.99. It took me nearly 2 weeks to sell a set since I had to start back over with eBay. Paypal and eBay fees were $2.50. Shipping in a legal flat rate envelope was $5.25. Thus, my net was $2.44, a margin of 13%, NOT COUNTING the Apple Pay discount. Now who would buy this from eBay? Maybe it’s from someone who doesn’t have a Trader Joe’s near their house.
Conclusion
Do I plan on ramping up? No way. While 13% margins aren’t bad, the actual profit is just too low for my time and effort. Now, if I did like this guy, then it might be worth it. The point of this post is – you can resell everywhere and anything. Don’t just look at your usual suspects.