EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: romhunter on March 24, 2018, 04:06:32 pm
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Recently I've been getting into building my own laboratory, and I realize that a lot of equipment on ebay is listed as "for part". Really strike a nerve when I need to buy some stuff that need to be working. And I live near an area which have a lot of laboratory and they change their equipment on regular basis...
So.... I've been pretty successful in building my own lab, so I think that I should sell gears on ebay. I aim to sell gears that guarantee to work, with current known state (for example missing knob, working perfectly, ripple for PSU, etc...), reasonable price, and seller's support on some occasion (I'm nowhere as good as you guys up here tbh, but I'll try)
What would you think I should be selling? I have a very wide selection of gears, ranging from oscilloscope (digital and analog), spectrum analyzer, bench DMM, waveform generator, soldering station, voltage standard, etc.... but I'm shipping from vietnam!! That's the only downside because shipping fee to anywhere is expensive. I'll try to cut it down as much as I could though.
Now, with all that, all I'm asking is should I do that or not. The only thing keeping me from selling to you guys right now is shipping fee. Imagine 35$ to ship 2 DAQ cards...
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It's called "market research". What can you buy it for? What can you sell it for? If you plan on selling on sleazebay just look up closed auctions and see what the selling prices were. Your problem with shipping is that most people selling stuff know about sleazebay already and set their prices accordingly. You have to find sellers that just don't want to bother because their time is more valuable than going that route. Good luck to you.
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In addition to the cost for the initial shipment, I am afraid your location may also cause concerns among your potential customers regarding returns and warranty claims. If "guaranteed to work" is one of your major sales claims, how will you back up that claim? If somebody buys equipment from you and finds a problem with it (or thinks that there is a problem), will you accepts returns? Will you pay the postage for the returns?
Besides the objective shipping costs, there may also be subjective concerns: For most of your potential customers, Vietnam is far away, and enforcing any claims would be difficult for them. So they may be worried about buying any higher price items from you, wondering whether you would really honor your guarantee if anything should go wrong.
Selling test equipment with any kind of guarantee may involve higher support effort, as well as higher cost for returned goods, than you might think. And being in a location which is distant from your major customer markets makes that cost even higher, and makes it more difficult to gain your customer's trust.
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Don't quit your day job. I doubt the volume of sales will ever support you. It can optimize your lab by getting rid of gear you don't need and bringing in some money to buy stuff you need but don't have.
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Don't quit your day job. I doubt the volume of sales will ever support you. It can optimize your lab by getting rid of gear you don't need and bringing in some money to buy stuff you need but don't have.
I won't quit my day job anyway. It seems more like a hobby. However, it has to make some profit too (I can't survive only with oxygen you know)
Shipping cost is a big, big PITA...
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A big problem with becoming any kind of retailer is your competition, and the market. I know this sound obvious but hear me out.
I am in a market here where either the absolute cheapest crap is preferred, on the absolute perceived best. Mostly yh cheapest crap gets purchased here. ignorantly I tried to promote something that was arguably a better value than the perceived best brand in the market but was usually 4 times more expensive than the cheapest crap people normally buy. This was for most of South America. It flopped. People only wanted the flagship brand or pay for shit and hope it lasts long enough for one use. Quality and service are unknown here so anything other than bragging rights on the lowest price or "I have the recognized best" was a no sale. Know what people want.
Also understand that the internet will cut your throat as will your supplier. If they can sell more to your competitor at the expense of limiting your small success, they will. If someone sees something3000km away with now service but cost $1 less than you, guess where they buy.
IMHO, give it a try but be prepared to dump stock at cost or lower just to recover some of your costs when it doesn't work. If it does work, be prepared to work 80 hours a week just o keep it going.
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I am in a market here where either the absolute cheapest crap is preferred, on the absolute perceived best
That's how it work over here too
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Shipping cost is a big, big PITA...
Don't forget the cost of packaging and the time it takes you to create good packages for test gear. Most buyers of this type of stuff are unforgiving of poor packaging, but unwilling to pay extra for good packaging.
Based on my experiences I would expect you to be able to make a modest profit, but only because as a hobby you can operate on margins that a "real" business cannot survive. If you buy ten meters, and sell nine to cover the cost you may well be happy. You have a "free" meter. The person operating a business purely to make money will probably need to cover costs with sales of only half of the meters.
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Buy ten meters at £100 each at auction.
Sell them at £300 each, so gross margin is a total of £2000.
Auction fees from buying will be £150.
Ebay and paypal will want 14% of the £3000 total selling price, so that's another £420.
It will cost about £10 to package each one. Skimp on the packaging and you'll be issuing refunds for damge and then there's shipping on top, call it £15 each, so that's another £250.
Sales tax will total £500. If you're just selling a few then you can avoid that in the UK, but you'd be paying it to the auction house when you buy.
So total costs, before any of your time, and travel costs to collect goods will be £1320, so you've made £680 profit. If three meters can't be repaired you're not making as much, if four are duff you've lost money.
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I'd try to stay mostly local. You won't sell that much, but if you sell something, you can keep all money for yourself, ie put listings on local, free websites/boards, pickup only, payment in cash.
Ebay is usually nice for buying or if you need to get rid of something asap, but rather bad for making money.
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Ebay and paypal will want 14% of the £3000 total selling price, so that's another £420.
Note that eBay and PayPal charge you their commission/fee on everything: the £3000 total selling price plus shipping, tax and anything else you charge the customer for the transaction.