[aklug] Re: Feasibility of Business Concept

From: JP <jp@jptechnical.com>
Date: Fri Apr 03 2015 - 09:22:11 AKDT

To add to Royce's comments,

Craigslist sales are your best bet depending on how long you want to
warranty these systems. The trouble selling used systems is that either you
put a warranty on it and associate your business name with that warranty,
or you do not put a warranty on it and keep your business name out of it.
The reason I say this is that if you sell 10 desktops for $150 making $50
on each, and you have one come back for warranty you eat up nearly a third
of your profit replacing it, plus your time which may be even more
valuable. In addition, one bad review on Google and you are hurting. If you
sell on CL and make them all as-is/where-is sales, you will make less on
the systems but you will never have to field a warranty claim and at worst
you may need to add variety to your posts if you get some bad boxes.

Remember, computer issues are 90% user issue and 10% hardware as far as we
are concerned, as far as the end user is concerned, it is 80% the
hardware's fault and 80% the sellers fault, and yes, that is 160% blame in
the end.

In the end you will probably find, like many IT service businesses, that
labor is your money maker, and sales it mainly to make sure your client has
something you are willing to support and the markup is secondary.

In 15yrs I have only sold 2 linux boxes to someone just wanting an
internet/email computer, and they only bought from me because they didn't
think they could get it installed on their own.

Best of luck

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907-748-2200JP Technical <http://www.jptechnical.com/>helpdesk@jptechnical.com

On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:45 AM, Royce Williams <royce@tycho.org> wrote:

> 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
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Received on Fri Apr 3 09:23:13 2015

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