[aklug] Feasibility of Business Concept

I know that there a lot of Alaska business people on this list. I'm
currently working as a sales associate in retail electronics, to make
ends meet, as they say. Working in that environment has stimulated my
thinking, and made me wonder if it wouldn't be possible to make some
money selling cheap refurbished consumer IT equipment over the
Internet, running free software. But I was hoping for a second opinion
from business-savvy people on the list, especially on whether or not
it would be feasible to do that from Alaska. (I'm currently living in
Fairbanks, and would rather not move).

Basic concept:

1. Do lots of careful shopping to find dirt cheap refurbished (or
used?) equipment. Target items would be old laptops, tablets, phones,
smaller netgear, and maybe a few other oddities (game consoles?). Ship
them here as cheaply as possible. Could do a small amount of assembly
if necessary (e.g., replace the hard drives).

2. Install appropriate free software, plus as many apps as possible to
make them as usable out-of-the box as I could. The hard work here would
be figuring out what to install, and working through driver and
installation issues.

3. Sell them from my own Web site (not yet constructed) with a
*modest* markup. Target market would be people wanting free software
devices, as well as those just wanting cheap equipment that works.

So, the immediate questions that come to mind:

A) Would there be enough of a market to keep a small operation going?

B) Would that be feasible from Alaska, with all the extra shipping
costs?

C) How far would you want to go, as far as refund policies,
warranties, or replacement plans are concerned?

D) Would you definitely want to set up your own site with shopping
cart, etc., or would it be better to work through Ebay or Amazon
infrastructure? (I don't know much about either one, to be honest).

I would appreciate any thoughts or scathing reproaches.

--
Christopher Howard
Biblical creationism: http://tinyurl.com/qfyeg4a
Software freedom: http://tinyurl.com/qjnpnsm
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