[aklug] Re: Feasibility of Business Concept

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Christopher Howard <ch.howard@zoho.com> wrote:
> 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.

Heh. I'll only use my non-scathing reproaches, then. :-)

Kidding aside - interesting! My first thoughts:

- Source the refurbishing locally to avoid shipping. Find a way to
get into that discard chain - Total Reclaim, etc.

- This would also let you operate locally in general. Local web site,
plus you could colocate with someone in a related market (like fixing
laptops ;-) ).

- Think Craigslist. Your market may be just such people: looking to
recycle/reuse/conserve.

- Even if sourced locally, it may be tricky to break even. Compare
your projected asking price with the price of the most obvious
substitute good: new equipment. Also consider the difference in
electricity cost to the end user.

- Unless you can tap into the "people who just want something to read
email" market, your market may be too small. Many of them are not on
Craigslist, and see computers as commoditized. Reach them, and you
might have a market.

- This list could help you - not only to evangelize, but to supply.
When I do geek work on the side, I often receive (for free!) a retired
computer in return that is perfectly fine for Linux. There are only
so many stray cats that I can adopt, though, and many of them end up
being Totally Reclaimed. :-) Your fellow geeks can be part of your
raw-material supply chain. :-)

Royce
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Fri Apr 3 07:46:02 2015