Why I had to stop Retail Arbitrage (rant)

I’ve done RA for most of the past year, and I had to stop, it’s hard to actually make money in a reasonable period of time because you’re competing against morons who will lose money just to keep the buy box, so the only way to actually sell items is to hold them for 3-6 months until the idiots sell out, but by that time, they’ve frequently ruined the listing in some way by either altering data or uploading low quality pictures, or they’ve drawn the ire of the brand owner be ruining the perceived value of their product with sub-MAP prices or by selling banged up boxes they got at the bottom of a gaylord at an auction or out of a dumpster as “new,” so by the time you go to list your items, the listing is either restricted or you get a C&D from the brand owner.

It’s even worse if you’re among the first people doing RA to list at a few dollars below MSRP, you get sales, then the jackasses come in selling $150 items that cost them $75 for $80, so you end up with a bunch of returns and/or adjustments because customers want to save even more money.

Another thing I got tired of is having to constantly scheme to figure out how to get ungated for certain brands, I eventually figured out a foolproof method, but it felt like I was risking my account, so I decided to transition over to wholesale and running an actual business instead of a virtual flea market stand.

I enjoyed the feeling of going into stores and finding super deeply discounted items, it was a rush, but there’s too much stress when Amazon’s payment schedule always has you 2 weeks behind and you’re competing against dumpster divers and people with zero business sense so your inventory takes even longer than normal to turn over unless you just decide to lose money and match the buy box price