First business attempt

[betty41]

Hello fellow posters,

This is my first attempt at starting a business and I want to gather as much information as possible. I'm attempting to start my own self-employed business of selling video games. First, I'll be selling on ebay building up capital. Then, when I'm ready, starting up a web-based business selling video games. I'm more worried about starting up first, so I'll focus there. I live in NJ and have a starting capital of 3-5k. I need to know what permits I need to resell purchased goods on ebay, tax permits, etc. I know I need to contact manufactuer's and inquire into contact information for their distributors, but how do you contact the manufacturer? All they need to do is tell them I'm a small business looking for local distribution. Finding distributors that put in the most buy in is what I look for, right? What do I do when I contact the distributor? How can I set up direct shipping for ebay? I get confused after contacting a manufacturer. Any advice on helping me set up a foundation would help. Thanks in advance.

p.s. I remember there being a post here before about it, but I can't find it.

Robert

[geofrey]

Hey,

I am in the same exact boat except in canada. I have spent days talking on the phone. It is somewhat hard to make up a story and go by it until you reach the distributor but I have never really done calling random numbers to find distributors. Once I do get into the sales department of a company, I either explain to them that I am looking for a local distributor to set up with and sell their products or they ask me a bunch of questions about location and store setup which I have no idea how to bs through. Some manufacturers only sell to store front businesses.

After I finally get to a distributor, I have a list of questions that I go through from how to pay them. Sometimes you will need to setup a business bank account associated with your business entity so that they can invoice you on every sale and other times, you pay by cash or cert. check. I am in the process of rounding up all these numbers and trying to fill out the application to the distributor as well as i can. Each distributor will ask you to sign up fully and then give you a way to order products.

Right now, I have 2 major distributors lined up that I will start buying from hopefully soon. The first one is going to drop ship the products for me and is asking for a small fee if the total amount is under a $100. To this one, I asked him how the products would be shipped. I specifically had to ask which method of shipment they use, if they can provide tracking within 48 hours and if they have an email account for slight instructions instead of waiting on the phone for hours and having misunderstandings.

The second distributor, I asked him if he could ship it directly to clients to which he said no. After this, I asked if I could personally pick up the product. Since I am willing to handle shipping in this case, I also asked him if I could pay on sight with the products in hand just like in a store. He said that they had a cash window and also accepted cert checks. This is great. They are located near and I dont need a credit application or anything, just the right dealer numbers.

Hope this helps, also if anyone has any tips or advice to add from phone communication to specific questions to ask a manufacturer or distributor, please let me know. I am just learning as I go along and some advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Peter T

[CNM]

Good luck guys!

One thing to keep in mind, video games offer extremely small margins for the end sale man, they are generally in the range of 1 - 3.5% --- So for a $50 video game, be prepaired to only earn yourselve a buck or two.

I wish you both luck finding a distributer, here are a couple;

http://www.royalelec.com/
http://www.regalgames.com/

You might want to check out this forum; http://www.wholesale411.com/bbs/

Mike