It was early August – pool season had pretty much died down (everyone who wanted to buy already bought in May/June) and there were no kayaks to buy. Then out of left field, we noticed that rafting tubes were hot. Retail price was $20 for the single tube, but they were going for $50 on Ebay. Doubles were $40 retail and $100 resell. The great thing about the single tubes is that most people would go with their friends and family, so you could sell multiples to the same person.
This was also geographically YMMV – similar to kayaks, the people in the Pacific Northwest love the outdoors and so tubing was very popular and I sold 95% of my inventory locally. There was only one source that you could buy from strangely and it was Dick’s Sporting Goods. The odd thing was that they discounted the rafts by $10 because they assumed the rafting season was over. We learned that they restocked at night around 10-11pm PST. They limited you to 5 rafts per order, but you could place multiple orders. And so that’s what I did in early August.
Then I waited for Sunday the 16th:
You see, the majority of homes in Seattle don’t have air conditioning. We also only have 2-3 days out of the year where the temperature goes above 90 and EVERYONE wanted to go out tubing on that Sunday. I prob met with a dozen people on Friday and I would give quantity discounts. On that Saturday though, I gave NO DISCOUNTS and must have sold about 50 tubes. After that, I got a few more sales, leading up to Labor Day. After Labor Day though, I only had a handful of sales since the weather dropped down to the 70’s.