Yielding Fruit From Seeds Planted
In my July 10th post entitled “Out On The Town” I described my first expedition into my local community to “kabitz” with Store Managers. My intention was to make friends and let them know what it is I’m starting and that if I can ever help them reduce their store’s inventory to give me a call.
What is amazing to me and should be of interest to any one following my ebay adventure, is that I spent a total of three ( 3 ) hours “kabitzing” back on July 10th and have not invested another minute doing what I know to be a profitable use of my time in product acquisition due to my efforts in “The Purchase”.
How do I know? Last week I received a phone call from one of the Store Manager’s of a large Hardware Store. He let me know they were discontinuing a line of “Brand Name” products and asked whether I might be interested in purchasing them. I was delighted to receive the phone call as it confirmed this use of my time as being valuable to my ebay adventure.
Think about it, ( 3 ) hours of my time invested in my first attempt at engaging “experienced” Store Managers on their playing field produced the desired result 30 days later, incredible!
I’m already planning to write three books someday, the titles of which are etched in my mind. The title of one of my books will be “Positional Living”.
As much as the Store Manger’s phone call excited me, it also saddened me as after reviewing the potential purchase against the “big picture” I decided I was not in “position” to make the purchase at the price he was offering them.
Those experienced in liquidation will no doubt scream, ” You never give them what they’re asking for!”. Yea OK, Mr. Expert, easy for you to say. Me, as a fledging Online Entrepreneur, I’m “MORE INTERESTED, in establishing long-term relationships that will yield streams of products for me to sell at a profit. The bottom line for me at this stage in my eBay adventure is I NEED HIM MORE THAN HE NEEDS ME!
The Store Manager, either from experience or honesty did not appear earnest in needing to sell the items he made aware to me and in fact stated he would not drop his price. He simply liked me and wanted to let me know about them before he made them available to his clientele at the discounted rate, which was substantial.
But one thing “The Purchase” has taught me is a substantial discount off the retail price at a “brick & mortar” store may not be substantial enough to make a profit on eBay. So off I went to plug his discount offer into “The Eye of Terapeak”.
Terapeak’s merciless eye revealed I could make a small profit at the offered price. But after throwing in the cost of shipping this product to my customers the discounted offer lost its appeal.
As I stated above my first wish was to purchase the items the Store Manager brought to my attention at the discounted price he originally offered. Establishing an habitual pattern to contact me when he had a “need” to reduce inventory was worth him winning any “Price Dickering War” at this stage in our relationship.
Like everything I do I tortured my brain by running the scenario threw its gray matter a zillion times in an attempt to leverage something to my benefit. As the sweat poured from my beleaguered brain 
I concluded the best I could do was to use the Store Manager’s offer as a “learning experience”. I simply could not pay him what he wanted after expending a large amount of capital in my Radio Shack liquidation purchase.
The Store Manager was offering me ( 31 ) pieces at $19.99 apiece or about $600 bucks worth of product. I wrote him a simple letter thanking him for contacting me and letting him know after reviewing this products sell-through rate and average selling price over the past 30 days on eBay I would pay him $450 for his ( 31 ) pieces. I also let him know that if he would rather deplete as much of his stock at his desired $19.99 to his in store clientele I would purchase any remaining stock at $15.00 per piece.
I’m a pretty good judge of character and do not expect him to budge from his $19.99 per piece price but I wanted to “ACT” and do something. I poo-pooed the idea of responding to him verbally on the grounds he might forget the details of my offer and went with a written offer sheet like I did in the Radio Shack deal. I snail mailed him the letter ( 2 ) business days ago so who knows maybe he’ll accept my offer. If not, at least he knows I’m serious and has the offer sheet continuously in the back of his mind, if the item stinks up his shelves for too long :-).
I can only hope.
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