Who Am I , Anyway?
Since starting my Amazon arbitrage business in late 2019, I have sold over $7,000,000 worth of products and currently profit between $250,000 - $300,000 per year.
It started with me “calling in sick” to an upcoming family Thanksgiving so that I could be first in line for a Black Friday sale at Kohl’s. The goal? Spend $2,000 on clearance bras and see if this Amazon thing was “real”.
Suffice to say, I quickly learned that it was indeed very real - and I haven’t looked back since.
Fast forward to now, although filling up shopping carts with bras was extremely fun and fulfilling, my main focus has since evolved to investing in toys that I believe will rise in price in the near future. It is a very profitable strategy that eliminates a lot of the modern day challenges of selling on Amazon.
Mastering this strategy has taken years of of trial and error, with my approach to product analysis being unique, thorough, and fine-tuned to minimize risk and maximize profit.
With this newsletter, my goal is share my approach with you. To guide and challenge you with different ways to research potential toy investments, learn about product life cycles, give you general insight into how I run my business, and more.
I really believe that knowing who you are learning from is essential before you decide to absorb their content. It’s important to be aligned with how they operate. For example, if you live in San Francisco, you aren’t going to be able to mimic the business model of someone who is hunting for Walmart clearance in the mid-west. So I want to share with you what’s important to me and why I operate the way I do.
My goals with my business are:
Completely operate out of my own home and a storage unit, with only in-house preppers and no virtual assistants
Never have to commute
Minimal staff (my one employee recently moved onto a new career so right now it’s just me!)
Have the ultimate day to day freedom - to be able to sleep in, vacation when I want, or just spontaneously roll around on the floor with my cat.
Profit $500,000 per year. I’ve reverse engineered this goal and for me, that equates to selling about 60,000 units a year at an average profit of $9.00 per sale. I’m not quite there yet, but the path on how to obtain it is clear.
Minimize retail arbitrage, and maximize sourcing from reputable distributors / suppliers via online arbitrage and wholesale.
To run a VERY clean, legitimate, LOW RISK business. No sourcing from shady suppliers, no abusing loopholes in Amazon’s terms of service, no sourcing products from high risk categories like luxury beauty or supplements, etc. My goal is to be as stress free as possible. I don’t want to go to sleep at night with uncertainty about my account health. Because of this goal, my sourcing criteria is VERY STRICT. I am proud to say that I only experience one or two account infringements per year, all of which are resolved immediately. I minimize bad buys, and would rather end the year with a bunch of “I should’ve bought more” than “I should’ve bought less.”
If some or all of these goals align with yours, you may be interested in what I have to say in the Toys to Retirement newsletter.
A paid subscription will give you full access to the newsletter and all previous articles. Additionally, I’ll follow you back on Twitter (@thetoyinvestor) so that you can easily direct message me with questions. I will do my best to respond to DMs in a timely manner.
For more information on if this newsletter is for you, I recommend checking out my complimentary articles What is Toy Investing? and Before You Subscribe…, as well as browsing my Twitter page (@thetoyinvestor).
