Selling Gifts

Selling Gifts

Gift Selling Secret:
The Mark-Up is Great, But the Market Usually Isn’t!
One of the first opportunities I got involved with years ago was a wholesale gift opportunity that’s still around today. For a fee, you have the ability to resell their line of 1,000’s of gift items. You can buy catalogs from the company, give them away, mail them-- whatever, and whenever you make a sale, you pocket a profit from each item ordered. Then, you simply forward the order to the company and they drop ship it to your customers under your label. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, I discovered what so many other people discover. The market for gift items is packed with competitors. Many of the products I tried to sell were figurines, lamps, and items you might see in any of a dozen local gift stores. There were a lot of great items, but nothing so unique that you couldn’t find the exact same item or something similar just down the street.

The real lure behind these types of opportunities is the idea that it’s an easy, fun business that anyone can do. After all, everyone buys gifts, right? Whether it’s for the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, or weddings, the gift market is huge. Plus, the profit margins are decent and you never have to stock and ship any of the products yourself. Simply hand out a few catalogs to “friends and family” or your co-workers take orders, and pocket big profits. 

Rarely does that happen. Your friends, family, and co-workers buy their gifts at major retailers. Often, you may have a few people take pity on you and purchase something from your catalog. Maybe someone might even find a few things they really want. But you can’t run an entire business on a handful of customers. Very quickly, you realize that to make a decent income, you need a lot of orders on a consistent basis. Buying and mailing out catalogs to mailing lists is a very, very expensive proposition, and you’re competing with thousands of mail order companies also selling gifts (not to mention the 1,000’s of other distributors of the same wholesale catalog to which you have the rights). Or, like some, you may decide to set up your own gift shop. Fantastic! Now you have overhead like rent, water, electricity, and employees. Plus, if you want to open your own shop, you can no longer rely on the drop ship method of getting products to your customers. You now have to invest thousands of dollars in

INVENTORY!
Ugh! I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Are there people who scrape and struggle and work like crazy and make money with these types of opportunities? You bet. But I’m convinced from my own experience that most people who join these type of “gift reselling” opportunities never make back what they’ve invested.