As a student at Winona State University, Ryan Grant used to scour Walmart, Target and local stores to find books on discount, and then list them on Amazon for a higher price. He used to ship the books to customers around the US and make some money to pay for his college expenses. A few years late, Grant got into a grueling accounting job which he didn’t like. After a few years of hanging in there, Grant struck an idea: what about reviving his old business model of flipping sales on Amazon by buying cheaper items from brick-and-mortar stores. Grant resigned from his job and started working. But this time, his items list was spanning every category.
Grant’s business model is simple: walk in Walmart or Target, pick up items and scan their barcodes through apps to find their prices on Amazon. Calculate the price difference and if Amazon prices are higher, buy all the items from the physical stores and list them on Amazon for reselling.
But why would people buy items from Amazon when they could save money by spending less on the items they want from the brick-and-mortar stores? Once word: convenience. People no longer want to go out of their homes to buy stuff. Hence, the ecommerce boom in the world. Grant knew that people who mind spending some extra bucks it they could get the items at their doorstep.
In his college days, Grant used to use Amazon Seller app. The app used to help in see all the prices and calculate how much profit he’ll be able to make. He then started using Fulfillment by Amazon, which allowed him to ship items through UPS to Amazon warehouses when his customers would pick up by themselves.
Grant was running out of space due to the burgeoning amount of boxes destined to be shipped to his customers. Therefore, he decided to rent a small warehouse. He also bought a Mazda and used to run back and forth to bring boxes and packages from Target, Toys R Us and Walmart to his warehouse.
This was becoming too much for Grant. He used to spend over 30 hours in stores and then 15 hours packaging and shipping the products. That’s when he decided to hire his first employee. The job of this employee was to search and scour the local stores for products that could bring profit on reselling.
Ryan Grant is getting closer to becoming a millionaire. The total sales of his business are expected to come in at $8 million this year. Most of the profits are reinvested in the business. However, the 28-year old still takes home a salary of $150,000.
You can check out more about ecommerce, online selling direct from the horse’s mouth on Ryan Grant’s website, Online Selling Experiment.
Images taken from: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/02/28-year-olds-company-makes-millions-selling-walmart-buys-on-amazon.html
