New Business Idea

[RyanMacRocks]

31 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

the trick is to see if you got family that would loan you a few thousand to get started. hell I can go to my local e recycler and pick up sandy and ivy bridge i5s with 4-8gb of ram for 50-60$.

hey where in calli are you?

Sacramento, know of any good recycling places around here? I do visit the Bay area from time to time so that's an option too.

[mariushm]

Also worth noting, sometimes the computers are leased and in inventory and they're on "the books" as yearly costs.

So they have to give the to some company that can give them a certificate or something that would make it possible to remove the monthly expense from budgets

Or, company like Dell makes a deal like 10-15% off if you return hardware  (and they put it in containers and ship to India or other countries, lightly refurbished and resold)

 

What pisses me off is when some people decide to buy new lab equipment because it would cost too much to send the unit for new precision/calibration

certification so they decide to buy new stuff and trash the old stuff but their rules are that product must be not operational to be taken off inventory... so they cut cable cord if you're lucky or they use a hammer on knobs or display in worse cases. 

[dizmo]

Interesting idea, however it's widely done. Not quite what you're doing, but very similar. I also know people that buy overstock computer parts from companies to resell. Unfortunately, if your starting budget is $1,000, you're not going to be able to do much. For example, I bought an external hard drive off of a fellow who bought a pallet of them at auction. He paid $10,000 for the pallet. It was unused stock from some company. You're in an incredibly populated state, I'm sure they have many auctions that are similar if you spend enough time on Google.

There are loads of things you need to consider.

• How much is a business license? How much does it cost to incorporate?
• How much tax are you going to have to pay?
• How much is building insurance?
• Are you going to accept credit card and debit card payments, and how?
• Where will you have your brick and mortar location? Easily accessible? High foot traffic?
• How will you pay for your brick and mortar location? Desirable retail rental space is not cheap, especially if you want space to show everything.
• You'll need to buy bulk hard drives, as well as Windows keys. Reddit copies won't cut it if you're selling things to a consumer. You need to factor these costs in as well.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's always good to brainstorm, but I think you're a little out of your league. If you have $1,000, buy a skid or two of BestBuy returns, go through them, sell what's still good, and slowly build up from there. Opening a store is a very, very expensive endeavor.

 

Are you handy at all? You can buy skids of BestBuy return merchandise for pennies on the dollar. Might be worth looking into, at last as a jumping off point.

 

 

1 hour ago, RyanMacRocks said:

That's a fair point, my only worry is that the shipping prices might begin to get kind of absurd relative to the cost of the computer.

And the cost of renting retail space isn't?

[leodaniel]

I would not say this idea is bad, but in my experience it is hard to sell already used stuff to customers. I don't really know how much you would pay for a used system (~3-4 years old), even if it was a good one. With the added cost of a GPU and (like I read) maybe some other Upgrades, the price will be hard to justify. Customers will tend to spend a little bit more and buy a new system. 

My second point is, there are already businesses buying used hardware from companies, at least here in Switzerland. I don't know what they pay (or maybe get) for these systems. In my experience (I worked in IT parttime) the prebuilt systems are sometimes hard to upgrade, with custom motherboards and stuff... know what you buy!

 

You will need more budget to open a store, no way that will work with $1000! It's hard work to get a reputation! Also I think your idea is more for a 'niche' group of people...

Also you have a lot of costs to consider which will shrink your margins! Rent, Your TIME, taxes, marketing (you need to sell quite a lot to make it profitable, because you will need to buy in bulk for better prices! Even more important if you sell online... you need to be found??), tax, payment commissions (~3%) for cc and debit (high risk on invoice, do not accept it under any circumstance, Pay in advance is way better), shipping, webshop development, hosting price monthly... and the list goes on

 

Also one last thought: maybe legal support for GTC, I think it's important for reselling and customer rights, I have no idea of them in the US.

 

I don't want to discourage you in any way, just make sure you know what you are beginning!

 

[GDRRiley]

9 hours ago, RyanMacRocks said:

Do you know where I could find information about the auctions? Is there like a big auction event or is it separately per business and I just have to get lucky to find out about it?

some college do this also 

[GDRRiley]

8 hours ago, RyanMacRocks said:

Sacramento, know of any good recycling places around here? I do visit the Bay area from time to time so that's an option too.

in oakland there is one that I know of that sells sandy or ivy bridge i5s desktops for 60$ but if you bought a lot you could get it down.

[divito]

Many e-waste places re-sell stuff that they get donated. There are a couple local to me that run a website with refurbished monitors, donated PCs, and other stuff people have gotten rid of.

There's also a bigger company that sells off-lease PCs, laptops, tablets, etc... But really, there are plenty of companies that do this; I've gotten ads through LinkedIn from a lot of companies selling lots of 1000 PCs etc... from other companies upgrading their infrastructure. 

[yathis]

15 hours ago, RyanMacRocks said:

So yesterday I found a fully working i5 2400 PC sitting in an e-waste pile and I started thinking about all of the perfectly working PC's that go to recycling centers where they are often just sent overseas or trashed, all because large companies upgrade their PCs every 3-4 years. Anyways, I started thinking, what if someone were to buy those computers off of companies that would gladly get rid of them (for around $10-50 per PC depending on the specs) and bulk order a ton of GTX 1050s/RX 460s and sell budget gaming PCs for console prices at a trustworthy store with a warranty for those that don't want to build a PC themselves or don't want to take the risk or buying used from Craigslist.

 

Not saying its entirely original, and I know there are stores like Free Geek, but what is your take on this? I see it as a win-win-win:
Profitable for companies, profitable for the middleman who fixes up the PCs (reinstalling Windows and installing new graphics card/cleaning out dust, etc.), and cheap gaming PCs for the buyer (much cheaper than Alienware and other prebuilts).

Companies already do that, there is a recycler in town that does that.

Rather deal with that recycler company then you, just because there is assurances with a national chain like the recycler.

There are also assurances from the company getting rid of their pc's to the recycler about secure data removal.

The only downside when the public is buying from a recycler is they take out the HDD's and SDD's so they dont have stupid fucks bothering them about O/S's or other software or asking for help. They are even on ebay, with an amazing 100% approval rating for 100k+ sales. I find it cool I can browse their inventory on ebay, and pick it up at their distribution center. I have purchased so many fucking cheap items from them, like 20 Dell PSU's for servers, laptop adapters etc. They tend to start their prices high then near the end of the 30 day sale cycle they start decreasing the price dramatically. Like $500 down to $2 so there has been times I've been interested in buying an item but it was $500 then I wait 3 weeks but I forget I wanted that item and then its like $20 but I dont remember, so a week later its probably $2 and they get zero cash. Thats the only downside to that pricing scheme. They do some wonky funky stuff on their ebay site. One day their item total is 5000 items, then the next day its 250 items, a day later is 325, a day later its 400, 650, 800, 1500, 4000

 

 

I like whats been commented on about barrier to entry, you have to have money to make money and $1000 is fuck all. Its best to add fuel to the fire, meaning adding $10,000 to the fire is gunna net you a shit ton more then $1000. You can start a biz for $50 if you wanted to, so instead of Incorperating for a few hundred and being confused on the paper work or the # of shares or types of shares you can do a Sole Proprietorship for $50. There are tax reasons for both, also liability reasons for both.