Now that you’ve decided what to sell, where can you find your inventory?
First, look around your house. You probably have stuff you’ve been wanting to get rid of, but didn’t want to just give it away. My mom had a bunch of great pottery that she was willing to let me practice with. (By the way, I still haven’t been brave enough to list it. I have a healthy fear of shipping breakable items and will discuss that in a future post.) Talk to your friends and family and let them know you’re starting a reselling business. Almost everyone has something they’d like to get rid of, and they may entrust it to you. My brothers have been super supportive and have given me tons of inventory. Friends may want you to list something and then you can get a cut of the profit. You’ll be surprised how giving and supportive people will be.
Something that will affect your “sourcing” (acquiring inventory) is your location. I’m very lucky to live in a city where I have lots of thrift stores available to me all the time. But if you happen to live in a more rural area, you may have to get your items from seasonal garage sales and estate sales. Nothing wrong with that! Actually, I just went to my first community garage sale of the season last weekend and it was amazing! I found a bunch of good clothes and a pair of shoes. I found a stack of men’s Ralph Lauren Polo t-shirts for 50 cents each! I was so excited I practically skipped home! And I’ve already sold two of them. Totally made my day!
NextDoor and Facebook Marketplace are great sources of inventory. You can find local stuff for cheap and sometimes free. For example, I just checked Marketplace and you can currently get the following items for free: a snowblower, a complete bedroom set, and depression glass. Mercari has a free section and you can currently get the following in my area: a storage shed, a wingback chair with ottoman, and an Ikea Pax black wardrobe. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s astonishing what people will give away. Always be on the lookout.
We recently had a Black Fridays store move into the neighborhood so I checked it out. It has tables and tables of Amazon return items, and each day is a different fixed price for everything. Friday is $16.99 per item, Saturday is $9.99, and it eventually gets down to $1.29 on Wednesdays. It requires a lot of digging, patience, and knowledge of good items. I went on Wednesday (the cheapest day) so it had all been really picked over. Talk about random! No rhyme or reason to anything there. A turtleneck would be on top of jumper cables and next to ginger candy. I think it might be easier to go on one of the first (more expensive) days because there would be better stuff and maybe it would all be better organized. It was a lot of digging. If you want to go that route, I’d recommend going onto YouTube and watching some videos to see what items are currently selling well. One of my favorites is Jen at Desert Sellers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRuGdz-bIS0). She attaches BOLO (Be on the Lookout) lists in her descriptions so that you know the good stuff to pick up.
Some people buy from thrift store “bins” but I haven’t tried that yet (a goal for the future). Apparently you fill up a bag and they sell it by the weight. This kind of shopping requires a lot of patience and knowledge of items, but can be really lucrative if you are up for it.
I’ve also heard of people buying pallets or boxes of items sight unseen. You can buy “Rescue Boxes” from places like ThredUp. (For example, go to https://www.thredup.com/rescues and you can choose from a variety of boxes.) If you don’t have thrift stores close by, this might be a good alternative to carry you through the garage sale off‑season.
So think about all the resources you have nearby. Go take advantage of those garage sales while it’s summer. Am I missing good sourcing opportunities? Let me know in the comments!