Our Friend Chuck Huckaby wants to share some ideas on where to find local sources of merchandise to resell.
This is a solid model for a small town business: take a local resource into a larger market.
- Find your local sources: landfills, garage sales, auctions, local manufacturers, local retailers, local farmers. Look for their overstocks, scraps, by-products, and trash!
Chuck says, “It can take a lot of hard work identifying these sources, building a relationship, and establishing the source, but it might provide years of regular income. Most people stumble over the work part.”
- Add some value by cleaning, researching, matching, organizing or improving.
Lots of antiques and collectibles gain in value when you do the research and clean up the items. Clothing resale items gain in value when they are cleaned, matched into outfits, and displayed nicely. (I miss my local clothing consignment shop!)
- Transport it to a larger market (like a big town) to add value.
- Sell online to reach the larger markets and hopefully add value.
- Sell at auctions, at flea markets, in your retail store, or on consignment in a larger store.
Right now, an entrepreneur could start relationships with local gardeners, buy their produce during the season, drive the bigger nearby towns, set up and sell the products at the farmers markets. Basics like tomatoes and cucumbers are hot sellers!
What ideas can you come up with?
[Photo: A farmers market, Frankfurt, Germany – entrepreneurs taking a local product to a larger market.]
New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the Guided Tour. Like what you see? Get our updates.
- Downtown is your town’s core: How to make your case - February 22, 2021
- Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
- In an economic crisis, spend your brainpower before your dollars - November 25, 2020
- Video: How to fill empty car dealership buildings for the holidays - November 6, 2020
- How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
- The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
- Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
- Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
- Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
- Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
