[brotherbrian]

A local flea market vendor is looking to get out of the business. Wife and daughter are ill (he's an older gent). This is a smaller town that does big business from Oct. to April in "snowbird" traffic. Anyway, its a lot of designer clothes and pseudo-turquoise jewelry mostly, he makes the jewelry himself. All the fixtures, wall panels, displays, racks, mannequins, all inventory, etc, asking $6k, negotiable.

What y'all think? It would be closed for the summer, but still have to pay a reduced storage rate until September, when full booth rent kicks back in. He is paying for more spaces than he needs, he is not making good use of the current space, so we would first maximize the space to reduce # of booth spaces he's using.

EDIT: I should have noted that we would have to get a small loan in order to do this, so we would have booth rent on top of a loan payment.

 

[leftcoastrebel]

I did it a long time ago but I, and my partners, were making all of the products (craft) ourselves and it was an outlet for what we were already doing.

From a business point of view I would say you are assuming a debt in order to buy last year's merchandise, that didn't sell, and some used display material. On top of that you are taking on a booth payment.

To me at least, it sounds like a good deal for the seller and the landlord but not so much for the buyer. If you get to see any "books" on the business try and separate the net profit on the purchased inventory from the net on the jewelry. He would have a significantly higher profit margin on the jewelry. This could skew the books to cover up poor sales in the purchased inventory. Fine if you can make the jewelry yourself I guess but.....

 

[dcc]

What do you plan to sell?

 

[brotherbrian]

It is mostly jewelry and fashion clothing. A lot of chains, stone beads (looks like turquoise, but isn't). Wife is now thinking about doing it, but starting off with our own direction and inventory. Which means startup capital anyway. This guy has thousands upon thousands of items, approx 15-20k items. I figured, even if we sold every item for $1, we would still double the investment. She says older, retired people love the kind of stuff he is selling, but they wont be back until Sept-Oct.