Originally Posted by
due ruote
That's impressive.
IME (very limited compared to yours), parting out bikes leads to better profits by a pretty wide margin; it also affords the opportunity to skim a few choice bits.
Originally Posted by
repechage
Only line item left off was the time invested overall, locating, buying, presentation, selling. As one with free time measured in minutes here and there, that would be a reasonable thing to measure and account.
Originally Posted by
bbattle
Nice!! I commend you on your industriousness. No doubt you saved many of these bikes from the landfill.
How many hours went into this?
While I have sold a few bikes, I've never gone hunting for bikes to flip. Just ones for friends. The difficulty in finding those has convinced me it would be very hard to make money flipping bikes around here. Besides, I like to ride on the weekend, the best time to be out garage sailing.
Keep up the good work!
Originally Posted by
dveneman
I find your reports interesting Jim. Thank you for sharing some of the details. It makes sense to target upper end bikes.
Can you share a little about how and where you decide to sell whole bikes? I see you use Ebay quite a bit for parts obviously.
Surprisingly enough most of my high profit bikes over the years have been sold as complete bikes versus parted out bikes. I've found that complete bikes need to have end consistent groups, no mish-mash groups.
How do I decide if a bike is going to be parted out? I look at the completeness of the group and the condition of the bike. Over the years I've found a bike can have 1, maybe 2 parts from a group that don't match and buyers really don't care. Mis-matched seat post? No problem. Mis-matched rear derailleur? No problem. Mis-matched RD and brake lever? Big problem. Buyers shy away from bikes that aren't consistent. My LeMond was going to be sold as a complete bike until I tore it down for rebuild, the front hub cones were bad and can't be sourced, no big deal, I'll swap out the hub. But the BB was bad and the Ergo levers are weak. So that's at least 3 points on this bike so I've decided to part it out.
Where do I sell? Almost exclusively on eBay. Tampa's mid to high end market is very, very weak. I have no choice but to sell on eBay. Looking over my eBay stats it looks like I had about 140 transactions over the 3 months with no negative feed back. I traded 1 bike locally, sold a few frame and forks here on the forum and a bunch of parts here as well. Its just easier for me to sell on eBay. While I'm on eBay I'll mention that I sell Internationally, I've sold to:
Canada
Mexico
Hawaii
Alaska
Puerto Rico
Japan
China
Taiwan
South Korea
Thailand
Malaysia
Russia
Poland
Ukraine
U.K.
France
Italy
Spain
Greece
Germany
Brazil
Uruguay
Portugal
...and a more I cant remember.
My eBay stats tell me about 15% of my sales come from overseas.
Worst country to deal with? Canada.
Best country to deal with? Any country but Canada.
Time. This is important and it's why I've moved up market. More expensive bikes require less rehab time and tend to better taken care of than lower end bikes. I avoid anything with rust, its a death sentence on time. Higher end parts sell much quicker as well. I avoid dents as well...death sentence
#2 behind rust. I'd say I average 4 hours per bike.
Shortest trip to acquire a bike: 0 minutes. 'Shoota' picked it up for me and brought it to my house.
Longest trip to pick up a bike: 5 hours round trip but it was for a 3 bike deal so that works out to be 1:45 per bike.
Avg trip to pick up a bike: Maybe 1 hour round trip. Tampa is a geographic nightmare, its very spread out with a low population density.
I've changed this as well, the last time around I'd drive wherever to buy a bike, Jacksonville (6 hours round trip), South Florida (6-7hours round trip). No more. Unless its a multi bike deal I don't drive more than 1 hour each way. I have better things to do. If I'm out of town I'll check the local CL and drop into some of the older shops. I bought the Basso F&F along with a parts stash while in NY visiting family, the parts were stuffed into my suitcase and ultimately paid for the Basso. On our way home from the Antiques Road Show in Jacksonville we stopped at the B&B where we were married in St. Augustine and I picked up a parts stash there (in St. Augustine not the B&B)
Where do I get them? Sorry, but I need to protect my interests but lets just say its the same places all of you acquire them. At least half were CL bikes. Both of my 3 bike deals started as single bike deals. I noticed other bikes in the background of a pic sent to me and inquired.....it was a Merckx and Paramount in the background. Another 3 bike deal started as a Paramount on CL and I asked if there were others, I went home with a Paramount, 2 LeMonds and about a dozen wheels.
Total time: 75 hours over 3 months. Maybe 5 hours per complete bike for acquisition, repairs/tuning, marketing and delivery. So maybe 5 hours a week? that's probably about right because there were weeks when I did nothing. 5 hours a week? Do I spend 1 hour per day? No. My initial 75 hours is probably about right.
This is spare time, I didn't take off work or infringe upon household responsibilities. Luckily my wife is very understanding of my hobby, I make it a point to do is spend some of my profits on her and the house. She realizes I could be blowing my money on other hobbies that have no return or drinking it away at a bar or making it 'rain' on Dale Mabry.