> She became friendly with the customer service repos at the stroller manufacturers and could usually get replacement parts for free [...] The real secret sauce to her side-hustle was the relationship she had with the lady who managed the warehouse where she bought the baby stuff.
I think both of these could be OK. Such as if it was within the manager's/rep's authority to do this, and it was aligned with the business.
(For example, the appropriate level of decision-making might have decided that the business gets better rates, or has lower headaches, from letting certain good buyers cherry-pick. And a quality brand of baby stroller might prefer not to see the brand associated with "broken" strollers on the used market, and has an interest in someone repairing them, even if that cannibalized some new sales.)
> and I think she sold the warehouse lady a house.
Where I'd guess this might be a problem is if some question came up over whether the warehouse manager was supposed to be letting cherry-picking happen, and then there's this big-ticket transaction, in which the manager, hypothetically, could've gotten a quid pro quo deal (e.g., preferential access, or a discount on fees, or even discounted pricing).
If you want pallets of baby strollers, or even a specific model/type of stroller, for refurbishing or whatever - the retailers want you to go direct to them. They'll happily sell direct to you, but you need to buy a truckload or more at a time.
So much for right of First Sale I suppose. Or has licensing so pervasively invaded our economic system that there isn't even the pretense of an equitable position in mercantile activity anymore?
Honestly, the further I dig into modern colloquial business practice, the more and more it appears everything is predicated on bad faith from the supply side from the start.
If pallets normally bring say $100 each but by letting the stroller lady consolidate the strollers into one pallet that she'll pay $250 for, everybody won.
All of the other places are cherry picking and reorganizing pallets to elicit higher bids and tend to run their own parallel retail / resale operations. It's probably necessary though because the guy selling directly off the truck went out of business last year.
I’ve looked at many founders I considered successful, and they all had some card to play that others either: no longer could because the law changed, a relationship nobody else had, or was outright illegal but didn’t matter
I would say that there are no rules, only consequences. Or, the consequences are the rule.
I've been chewing on this idea for a long time and I have not been able to describe it so well, in so few words as this.
Well done, and thanks
One problem with applying it is that could violate social contracts. When most people are playing by the rules, but one person gains advantage by cheating. Suddenly, it's more a freeloader/jerk move, than anything else.
Admittedly, things get more complicated when many people believe that the social contracts have already been violated, so there's no longer a contract (or "less" of a contract), so they might as well get the advantage, too. Before it got to that point, it started with early cheaters.
The real world isn't like that.
How the causality works there, I don't have good guesses.
But the supposed phenomenon could reduce to simply differing conceptions of what the real world is.
The point is that rules don't matter without consequences for breaking them, and a rule is only as effective as the severity of the consequences.
When you're rewarded for breaking them, you can't even really consider it a rule anymore.
FTX had consequences, but people had a very hard time predicting them for some reason.
You’re projecting your insecurities on to me without imagining more benign possibilities
That doesn't make this any more or less "free" market. Negotiating deals are common in every type of economy.
Remember, if you don't spend at least a thousand on a brand new pushchair, you're a terrible, negligent parent.
I'm also unaware of any possible criminal liability — this seems even more farfetched than the notion of a civil lawsuit.
I'd generally think the average Joe realizes a private sale/giveaway is an "as is, where is" though.
She’s selling on Craigslist/FB marketplace. People aren’t expecting perfection.
Turns out some of the volunteers were marking down items - which may be within their authority to do - and then buying these marked down items for themselves ... before they even hit the store shelves. Oops.
Since the shop is staffed by unpaid volunteers they get first bite at anything coming in. I gather they pay normal rates for whatever they take.
I have no problem with this at all. This seems like the very least perk they could be offered. Frankly, if I was running the place each volunteer would get their stuff for free (up to some value per month.)
Now that I think about it, this may even be against some IRS regulation governing non-profits.
> I gather they pay normal rates for whatever they take.
Well, what's "normal" is the question. At the store I frequent, the volunteers themselves set the rates.
Of course this approach is open to abuse. But I suspect pricing was usually on the "low end of normal". There are multiple volunteers, all donating their time so the charity gets some income. I don't think there's much risk of there being excessive abuse.
I'm pretty sure the IRS isn't interested. If the store wanted to give stuff away they could.
If, over time, a thrift store gets a reputation of never having great stuff or great deals (because the volunteers take the best for themselves), over time that store will lose customer and donor interest and momentum.
This is also why these stores don't like people shopping with price-comparison scanners.
The donors want to get a tax break, and I suspect lack even token concern about what happens to the goods as long as they get that tax break.
The store and charity want money in exchange for those donated goods. They don't care who is paying nor why, they just want the money.
If the volunteers are picking up all of the items worth anything, that's likely fine with all of the involved parties other than other customers. The donors are still getting tax breaks, the charity is still getting their money. The stuff left over wasn't going to sell anyways (otherwise customers would still come in to buy that stuff).
The volunteers are still customers, they're just also unpaid employees.
> This is also why these stores don't like people shopping with price-comparison scanners.
Anecdata, but the ones I've been to don't care. There's about a 50/50 split in my area between stores that pay employees to pick out anything obviously valuable before selling the rest, and stores that have presumably decided it's better/easier to just leave everything intact and sell as is.
I still go sometimes, because there's a wide range of items that either their employees don't know to pick or just aren't worth trying to resell. Eg they almost always pass over 3D printer filament (maybe because of shipping costs), so I buy it up for ~$5/kg. There's really quite a few niches that they either don't think are worth reselling or just lack the knowledge to know to resell.
That may be true for some donors (apparently you?), but definitely not all.
Many people don't care about the tax break.
Nowadays MANY people donate because reusing is better for the environment.
And of course people have a choice where to donate, and an org has to "do a good job" to get those donations.
It's not like the volunteers are carting of say "the best books". They just get to see the books first, and there might be something they like. Ditto clothes. Ditto kitchen, dvds, and whatever else was coming in.
Clearly though context matters. This in a jurisdiction that doesn't offer tax incentives for donations, doesn't have $1000 items, and wouldn't know what 3D filliment is, much less anyone to sell it to.
You're not in the US?
Did she bribe the warehouse manager explicitly or just implicitly via some quid pro quos?
Yes.
I would bet the same principle works here. The whole idea of the auction is to get rid of unwanted items and get paid for it, and that’s exactly what’s happening here as well.
If her company knew she was doing this I’m sure they’d oppose it and likely fire her.
It would only work if the person running the warehouse was an owner. But if they were an employee, like you suggested, then my take would be very obviously flawed.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the owner felt good about doing this.
And you can feed all your unused stuff into it as well.
Those groups are fewer, and less active, than they are in less affluent areas.
Target electronics returns - auction ends tomorrow, current bid $200. The stuff in there I'd be semi interested in: $500? Total value: ~$9000 @ 300 pounds in a box in Kentucky.
Okay. Lets say this auction ends around $1000. You then pay an 11% premium, $1110. Shipping 300 pounds from Kentucky to Pennsylvania? $500, maybe?
$1600 later, you get a whole slew of sellable good that you got at nearly 17 cents to the dollar.
Sell most of it off and you've got yourself a years worth of free legos.
(My wife and I have a reselling business side hustle)
Sometimes the best of deals.
Go one step further and raise you hand for "sight unseen", woo hoo !
Caution: when you acquire electronics by the pound, you need to figure out what to do with all the tonnage ;)
It is almost like the legalistic, rule oriented mindset of techies plus the isolated in-the-spotlight story here invites a sort of dog pile of finger wagging. Does anyone have any idea how much random preferential treatment is involved in commerce overall ? Some mid-level after-market warehouse manager just has to get busted for this benevolent side hustle with a person of their choice, over baby supplies? Sure strictness has some virtues but overall with this story, give the people a break and find something actually significant and monetarily weighty to pick on..
The real secret sauce to her side-hustle was the relationship she had with the lady who managed the warehouse where she bought the baby stuff. The warehouses usually have auctions on large lots or pallets of stuff; you bid on whatever's on the pallet, you've got no choice. The lady used to let my sister come to the warehouse periodically (usually just before a big auction) and cherrypick what she wanted, which was always the baby strollers and swing sets. The side-hustle wouldn't have worked without that. (My sister (and her husband) used to flip houses, too, and I think she sold the warehouse lady a house.)