wholesale vs retail value ?


thorsurplus
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10 Jun 13 11:33:46 pm
If I am purchasing a truckload of a .com retailers surplus that has a wholesale value of 62, 000, roughly what number can I assume the retail value of these items are? 80, 000?


fudjj
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10 Jun 13 11:53:10 pm
Knowing the full retail value isn't really worth that much, it's what you can sell the load for, and that will be well under retail.

There are so many factors in play there, without some long term firm data to rely on, there just simply isn't anyway of getting a reliable figure you could bank on in regards to what sort of margin you can anticipate back on your total spend .

When you're talking about surplus, each load can vary in not just products, but in quality. Then you have the market that is up and down, sometimes the products may well sell for more, sometimes for less and so on.

Really, only way to get the kind of numbers you're looking for is having the long term sales data available to draw from. So until you've been flipping a few loads of the same type of products, it's mostly going to be guess work.


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thorsurplus
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11 Jun 13 12:07:27 am
Understood. I have sold loads in the past, usually averaging sales as 50% of retail with some items going for 80-90% and some 20% depending on the item. In the past the trucks I have purchased have given me the retail value of goods sold, and in turn I cut that number in half and subtract what the load cost to see if I can turn a profit. Its just a general rule I follow and seems to work. I am now looking at purchasing from a different distributor and they only give wholesale value of goods and so im trying to find a way to work the numbers into a retail value to see if I can turn a profit. Any ideas?


fudjj
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11 Jun 13 01:01:17 am
Sounds like you've got some good experience behind you and have found an equation that seems to be working, so that's a real bonus. How you would get an idea on retail, that's not an easy one at all. If you're not familiar with the products at all, researching them will be a little difficult. Just in the making sure your measuring apples with apples type of thing.

Some of those past margins you've been hitting have been quite impressive, but you'll know as well as I do. When it comes to truckloads, there is always some gold and always some garbage. You're always just wishing for more gold than not :)

Surplus dealers are usually somewhere in the region of 30-40% on retail, but that's a really rough guide. Depends on the supplier and on the products to a large extent.

To be honest, I'm not really sure I would trust any retail figure provided to me, way too much temptation to inflate that figure to make the load sound way more inviting. Of course that's just the skeptic in me lol, but that's what would be playing on my mind.

Maybe work off a very conservative figure, something like a retail margin of around 30-40% and see how the numbers stack up. If you can turn a margin on those numbers, then you would have to think that you would be in with a solid chance.


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