Every business venture has its risks. With these risks, sometimes opportunities for great wealth can also occur. I always frown upon entering into businesses that deal with inventories for the simple fact that these inventories can become financial liabilities if they are not properly handled — the usual headaches of having to have the money up front* to acquire the inventories and the need for a place to store them and of course have a good service for it from the uk Landlord insurance cover for properties and liability protection.. And that’s on top of insurance, transporation, competition… etc.
But the “wealth” part of the business I just can’t ignore… Case in point: An old friend approached me a couple of weeks ago asking me to acquire some parts for the company he’s working at. Even though there were only around 300 parts I had to acquire for him, the markups were exceptionally good given his fixed budget I had to work with. Within two days of Googling and a few phone calls for prices, I was able to net enough money for two whole month’s worth of rent + all expenses! And that’s just ONE small deal! I can only enviously imagine how much BIG deals would bring for people who do it for a living… All of a sudden, I understood why virtually all of my and my parents’ import/export friends are sitting pretty with their huge flat screen TVs and huge houses.
On the other hand, my inventories had somewhere to go immediately upon me receiving them. It’d be a different story if I had to find places to offload them or worry about everything I mentioned above.
*If you have good enough credit, you don’t always have to pay up front. You can apply for “Net 30” or even “Net 60” payment terms. That is, you get to pay your supplier after 30 or 60 days after you’ve purchased the inventories. Then again, your bigger buyers are going to demand the same thing from you… In conclusion, you need enough money to burn when inventories are waiting to be “turned over”.