If you live in a big city.. $$$ Idea

[tallguy1337]

If one were to live in or near a big city, in which the city has many clothing stores that don't have online stores or retailers.. I wonder if:

you could take photos like crazy of the stores and thier clothes and run home, post the pictures on your website or on the forum, and take requests like crazy. Run back frequently shopping for the requests, then sending them to customers who just cant go to the stores (I live in Nowhere, Earth.). You could charge shipping (duh) and a fee for the work. It would even work better if you got a job at a store that doesnt retail online... Think of it.. you go there daily anyway...


Ideas?

 

[Max]

Sounds like a lot of work for not that much money unless you live in one of the major retail districts.

 

[wEstSidE]

This happens often, but most people already know what they want from reading it on Hypebeast, SuFu, or here. Given the slight fetish quality of some items (e.g. "limited edition" sneakers and Japanese denim), a lot of people will pay someone to buy an item for them. xcoldricex used to do this when he was in Japan.

 

[denimdestroyedmylife]

i do believe darkanimal on sufu is doing a NYC buying service

he does uniqlo and h & m pickups, though i'm sure he can get anything you want...

it is a lot of work.

 

[ghostdeini]

Originally Posted by tallguy1337

If one were to live in or near a big city, in which the city has many clothing stores that don't have online stores or retailers.. I wonder if:

you could take photos like crazy of the stores and thier clothes and run home, post the pictures on your website or on the forum, and take requests like crazy. Run back frequently shopping for the requests, then sending them to customers who just cant go to the stores (I live in Nowhere, Earth.). You could charge shipping (duh) and a fee for the work. It would even work better if you got a job at a store that doesnt retail online... Think of it.. you go there daily anyway...


Ideas?
wellllllllllll I can see that you aren't going to be a business major...

 

[Jared]

Originally Posted by ghostdeini

wellllllllllll I can see that you aren't going to be a business major...
Well, this particular scheme might not have a good balance sheet, but this is generally a case of spatial arbitrage - always worth keeping an eye out for such business plans.

 

[2000dB]

Originally Posted by ghostdeini

wellllllllllll I can see that you aren't going to be a business major...
You'd be surprised... I'm doing a service like that from Tokyo, you can view the details in the link in my signature.

 

[Joffrey]

I believe its called being a personal shopper.

People send you requests of what they want (exact brand and model or an idea of what they want with picture from a magazine or decent description) you go out pick them up from the particular store they request or one you believe will have it and you send it to them for a 10-25% fee (% of total, with $150 minimum purchase. Bigger fee for smaller purchase) including shipping fee too. Perhaps before shipping you send them pictures or descriptions of what you got with a scanned receipt, then they can make final approval.

It's not a bad idea. It will be alot of work, but one would be doing pickups for multiple people at a time and it certainly could be a full time or near full time venture. It would actually be a pretty good one for a [college] student with interests in fashion/shopping/style and in need of spending money (plus all their expenses in the process would be tax deductible)

 

[Bandwagonesque]

There are still a lot of bad traders out there... you never know what customer will rip you off, or hurt your reputation by claiming that the goods were never received. The risk increases as you have to ship farther across the globe.

 

[mack11211]

Large cities, or NYC, anyway, have numerous 'concierge' services that will do many tasks for you, including these, I believe.