Idea Starting My Own Used Mac Store

[doucy2]

Ok well I'm only 16 so this is not happening tomorrow or anything (probally in a year or so)
I want to start my own used mac store in my small town.

i already am a great business person, have much mac knowledge, and have a place to put the store front

Storefront: Small house my dad will let me use (I woulnd one have to pay utilities) location only 1 block from downtown.

Technical Skills: I can fix mac fairly well and solve most problems, setup troubleshoot almost anything)

Where the Macs Come From: this is the hard part is I have to find a place that can wholesale used ones to me cheap (I have one place, but the are not consistant on their inventory)

There are no places in town to buy a mac, and the closest place to buy one is 45 minutes away.
Do you fellow members think this could work out for me.
What do you think?
Any sugestions would be great.

 

[macmanmatty]

Ok well I'm only 16 so this is not happening tomorrow or anything (probally in a year or so)
I want to start my own used mac store in my small town.

i already am a great business person, have much mac knowledge, and have a place to put the store front

Storefront: Small hose my dad will let me use (I woulnd one have to pay utilities) location only 1 block from downtown.

Technical Skills: I can fix mac fairly well and solve most problems, setup troubleshoot almost anything)

Where the Macs Come From: this is the hard part is I have to find a place that can wholesale used ones to me cheap (I have one place, but the are not consistant on their inventory)

There are no places in town to buy a mac, and the closest place to buy one is 45 minutes away.
Do you fellow members think this could work out for me.
What do you think?
Any sugestions would be great.

Selling macs out of a hose would be hard due all of that water and stuff. But other than that your idea is well thought out. There is alot more to running a business than just selling computers out of house. You need get goverment tax ids, licenses to sell your stuff, if you have workers you need a payroll and social security, competition from pc sellers, and your only 16 still need to find a sales place and have school and can't always be there. But if once you get past all of that it sounds like a dream job owning a mac store.

 

[G5Unit]

Great Idea. But work on your spelling (I don't think you want to have an apple store in a hose)

Just make sure you have a plan on where you're going to get those macs.

 

[dmw007]

Sounds like an awesome idea doucy2!

I myself have tinkered around with the idea of starting up my own Mac store...aww, how wonderfull it would be.

 

[doucy2]

I'm working on the spelling
I can edit my paragraphs 6 or 7 times and still finds mistakes.
Next yea I will be a senior in high schooll and only going to school part time hs, part time college.
I will have plenty of time to set thing up and get thing running.
I will have me dad help me with the legalities since he has started many of his own businesses

 

[Kwyjibo]

its interesting, I don't know if you've really considered all the details persay ... you'd have to more or less quit the marketplace too. I'm not sure your business will be profitable and I would also consider a facet of buy, improve slightly flip on ebay.

 

[virus1]

zoning?

you need a ton of cash to get a few macs to start with.

apple certified reseller? - dont know exactly what it is, but i have seen the certification badge.

 

[GorillaPaws]

What you should really do is sit down and make a very basic business plan. Figure out the numbers. At the very least, try to estimate your monthly expenses. Then, figure out roughly what % markup you could charge on the machines (ebay may be a good tool for this). Take this number and calculate the total dollars in sales you would need to sell to produce your % markup that would cover your expenses. (e.g. expenses = $1000/month then if your markup is 10% you would need to sell $10,000 worth of macs just to break even. Now since you're planning on selling used Macs, you'll have to sell more of them to make up the fact that they're cheaper. So lets say you have to sell roughly 15 Macs/month. Now do you think that your town has enough demand for used Macs for you to profit (remember this number would be just to break even, you're still working for free at this point). If the answer is yes, then you can start worrying about all the other stuff, but if it's no, then maybe you don't have a large enough market to profit from this. I'm not trying to crush your dreams or anything, just pointing out some things that you'll have to figure out before you get started.

Of course there's the service end of things to help out too, but again you're going to have to decide if the market is large enough to profit in the long run. Best of luck, and it's good to see that you're so entrepreneurial already.

 

[joecool85]

To get old macs:

Here on MR marketplace
eBay
News Paper
geeks.com carries some older ones, right now they have b&w g3 towers for a little over $100

Also, don't forget that schools will frequently get rid of "older" computers. I've picked up several beige g3s for free. They don't care what you do with them because they normally put them in storage, then throw them in the dumpster later...or straight to the dumpster.

 

[mkrishnan]

It sounds like a basic idea that's worth thinking about more.

Perhaps you should also consider whether it would be more effective if you made selling computers online a big part of your business? E.G. pick up old ones in the ways discussed above, do repair / refurbishing, sell them on eBay or on other sites, and perhaps eventually start a store using eBay as a back-end or sell directly from your own website.

That'll open up a bigger market, but more importantly, subsidize your interest in selling locally. What I mean is that you can use the internet selling to pay for the costs of operating a local store, if that's your real dream, and it lightens your burden of making the local business profitable (which will probably be really, really hard to do).

Also, you may be able to sort of do a business-out-of-the-home, where you don't really have a store per se, but you advertise, and schedule people appointments to come in and get service or computer usage help and so on, and also to come in and see computers that you're selling, perhaps even in your own living room. I'm not sure exactly how the law works, but I am pretty sure this is quite legal up to some revenue cap that you are unlikely to hit anyway.

 

[joecool85]

I'm not sure exactly how the law works, but I am pretty sure this is quite legal up to some revenue cap that you are unlikely to hit anyway.

Pretty sure it changes state to state. You'd have to check your local laws on that one.

 

[dmw007]

Perhaps you should also consider whether it would be more effective if you made selling computers online a big part of your business? E.G. pick up old ones in the ways discussed above, do repair / refurbishing, sell them on eBay or on other sites, and perhaps eventually start a store using eBay as a back-end or sell directly from your own website.

That'll open up a bigger market, but more importantly, subsidize your interest in selling locally. What I mean is that you can use the internet selling to pay for the costs of operating a local store, if that's your real dream, and it lightens your burden of making the local business profitable (which will probably be really, really hard to do).

Also, you may be able to sort of do a business-out-of-the-home, where you don't really have a store per se, but you advertise, and schedule people appointments to come in and get service or computer usage help and so on, and also to come in and see computers that you're selling, perhaps even in your own living room. I'm not sure exactly how the law works, but I am pretty sure this is quite legal up to some revenue cap that you are unlikely to hit anyway.

Some very good advice from mkrishnan.