Economics of surplus trading

Aug 22, 2012 75 Replies

Yes. People could read it but they would have to register to post to it, to keep out trolls and troublemakers. Nothing but lists of tools, parts & machines. A firm, one strike policy to keep the place free of two legged swarf. :)

I would need help creating the software, since I haven't written a database program in over 25 years. It would have to be a server side based system. I'll look around and see if I can find some existing software that would work.

How many locations do they have?

If their numbers are correct they have about 200. They are part of Best Buy.

Just about 2000 sites less than Home Depot.

That's still not an honest comparison with 50 cent OEM, is it? What markup do they have on 8P8C connectors, cables and such?

I stopped dealing with Best Buy several years ago. I bought a sealed box with a 1 TB Seagate hard drive from them. I couldn't register it with Seagate because they said the serial number was an OEM product sold in bulk to builders. It failed in under a year, and I was screwed.

OSHA-compliant != safe. Never forget that.

And was originally owned by Kettering, where he made the first electric starters. It's a BIG building!

It was a major plumbing supplier when they bought that building. I remember them on Linden Avenue in a building that looked like an old railroad terminal with really bad wood floors.

Like the "Surplus Record"?

I saw this recently in a Source Forge newsletter:

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=== Features:

-General ads or specialized through modules -Easy classifieds installation compatible with private/dedicated or shared hosting -Lots of customization options (languages, themes, plugins) -Search engine friendly: sitemap.xml generation, robots.txt, nice urls -Integrated search engine with full text support -Unlimited number of categories and sub-categories TYPO3, Drupal, Symfony, free site creator ===

Only gave it a cursory glance, but thought it might be worth a look...

It will not work well, will be spammed.

Future Shop is part of Best Buy, a company that is currently circling the drain. If they don't have a REALLY good run up to Christmas this year I would expect them to be gone by Feb./Mar. They just posted a 90% drop in income for the 2nd quarter. Cut over 2,500 jobs and have swapped the CEO 3 times in the last year.

In total they run just over 1500 stores, That is CinemaNow,Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, Pacific, Best Buy and Future Shops combined.

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Home Depot on the other hand currently has 2,252 stores open across the world. They just posted another gain in sales (almost 2% over first 1/4) and they keep adding stores and staff.

What a slow site! Ten seconds or longer, on a broad band connection. I searched for a half dozen things and only got one hit, and that was a RFQ.

What I'm talking about is small scale, free and easy to maintain.

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Thanks. I know a little about that one, and will take a better look. So far I'm just looking ar reviews of various software, and eliminating the obvious duds.

I prefer to shop at Lowes. The prices are a few percent higher, but the local store give Veterans a 10% discount, year round. That wipes out the higher cost, and the sales tax. It's the same discount they give contractors. I have only bought one thing at HD in the last three years. I needed a flush mount 100 A breaker box, and Lowes was out of stock, and backordered. I went across the street, and paid a couple dollars more for it.,

As far as future shop and Best Buy are concerned they can keep circling.Selling big ticket items at cost hoping to make up the profit by overcharging for the little crap is a lousy buisiness plan. They mak mabee 20 bucks on a mid-range laptop, and about the same on the cable they sell you to connect it to your HTMI TV that they made another 20 bucks on.. So the smart buyer buys the laptop and the TV from Future Shop or Best Buy and orders the cable off Ebay for $6 including shipping from China.

Or someone in Miami who buys by the container load and sells them for $5, including shipping.

Years ago there was a well known "computer importer" who brought in container loads of computers and components from mainland China on 180 day terms. He sold the first half of the load for 5% over cost, and the rest at 5% under cost, on average - emptying the container within a week. He put the money on the "short term market" on the streets of New York and Toronto (loanshark) and aften doubled his money before the invoice came due. Pretty well killed the computer component market for a while untill he dissapeared into the night..

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