I am so happy to see that you "pre-pack" the shoes in the USPS boxes. Keeps them clean, boxes are stackable and you can spot the item immediately from the custom SKU you created. I have been doing this for years and have had people comment negatively towards it. Makes things so much easier in my opinion...
Great video and good seller with a nice set up. I would say one thing he can upgrade is putting shelves in the room he has his totes in. It’s cheaper and easier to get shelves and boxes than totes. He could probably fit 3 times the inventory in that room. Also he could use some of the methods I describe below to measure out a diagram his warehouse to make it easier to do layout improvements. I have experience as a eBay seller, but also as a manager at a target fulfillment site and an Amazon fulfillment site. And I also have experience working as an industrial engineer designing buildings and doing retrofits with Amazon. I actually used pictures and stories from my old eBay buisness in the interview to get promoted out of ops into engineering. I am just getting back into ebay full time. But I have a lot of experience being one of the few people to do reselling as a full time job and work designing e-commerce buildings. So here are my main to points below. Now for that room he can get to that times 3 storage utilization and still gain the benefit of using the boxes. He already bought the totes he could go double deep on the racks he puts next to the wall. So he could get even more storage capacity when he upgrades to shelves. He can have one aisle next to the wall and one flush to that on front with boxes. The aisle in front would be narrower or could be longer and go out to two feet or so. He just needs to be able to safely reach in or have it where any future short female employees could reach in and grab the Handel of the tote in the back. So when he picks he would just need to remove the box in front then he could grab the tote behind it. Like I would have a little roller pick cart where I can put my picks on the bottom level of the car, but set the front boxes on the top section of the cart while picking from the tote. Those plastic totes slide on plastic shelves very easily. But they should on other surfaces as well. He could probably do narrow aisles because he would not normally need to remove a tote. And if he did he could just remove the other front box in the same shelf level in that bay of the racks. Then he could pull it out at an angle. Now he would have to measure it out because depending on the selves he uses he might not gain any capacity by doing two back to back shelves against the wall. But my first guess is that he could have two doubles up aisles in the end and possibly one in the center. It depends on whether he goes north to south east to west. And whether he uses 1 foot, 1.5 foot, or 2 foot deep shelving. The cheap plastic ones usually come in 1.5 or 2 feet depth. But I think he can easily fit 3 times storage cube in that room. And doing this would allow him to use the totes he already has spent money on strategically to gain extra cube when he upgrades to shelves. Now he could use a very long heavy duty storage rack, but with him about to move and growing his business putting two smaller racks back to back is the more flexible option to be reused in a different set up later. I would at a minimum measure the totes dimensions, measure the racks. And then use some graph paper to cut out little shapes for the racks. Like 6 inches a square is usually accurate enough for a home ebay set up. Then draw out the room using the same scale on another piece of graph paper. Then you can play around with placement of racks to see how you can fit the most in there while leaving access to the doors. And more easily decide with your racks need to go north to south and which ones need to go east to west to maximize the amount of storage that can fit. For projects that require more precision you can diagram your a warehouse out in excel using squares to represent 1 foot per cell. You put 1’s if you’re using feet in the squares and drag it across and down the page a few hundred squares. Then you make all those 1’s white to match the background. Then you highlight different colors the outlines of the objects such as storage racks. After you diagram everything out you can measure distances between things by highlighting the cells in between them as the distance is shown in the bottom corner. That number is where the invisible ones matching the background are being summed show up when you highlight those cells. And you want to make sure that the cells are the same size north to south as south to west to ensure the layout is visually correct which makes it easier to find ways to improve the layout. For precisions but to keep it easy to use I would go with 3 inches squares. But for most cases 6 inches would work. I would just double check the final excel layout makes since by measuring the items more pricing before buying anything you won’t be able to actually fit by a couple inches. Most other eBay equipment and easy assemble shelving are divides me by 6 inch’s. But I like 3 as it is a good balance between detail and crashing my computer. It doesn’t take much for 1 square to 1 inch to crash your computer if your trying to do all the rooms in a house that way. You can also use power point as long as you size the black square for the room and the icons you make for the shelves are proportional. You can make those in excel and then copy and paste them to PowerPoint. It is easier to move things around in power point. In power point I would add a scale at the bottom. That way you can verify that the scale is not stretched north to south or east to west as that happened sometimes when copying from excel. Then I would make the room out line make the room layout the background so you don’t have to worry. You can also use blueprints of your house and make them the background. You can cut and paste a room and cut and paste the scale that might be in the other side of the blue prints. Then you can shrink them both down or make them bigger to fit the power point slide. That will make sure the scale is proportioned to match the room even if there from two separate cuts of the same picture. Then you can make the racking icons by using that scale as a measuring tool and then copy and paste a bunch of them. Just don’t resize any of them, rotate and move only. If there are words and crap on the drawing put a white square over the notes so you can just see the outlines of the room or rooms. Then control select the white square or squares and the picture of the layout. With them all highlighted cut and paste special as a picture. Now you will have a diagram with just the shale of the rooms that still matches the size of the scale you already copy and pasted. If I was measuring out one room to maximize capacity or to make a more efficient space I would do the hand paper method. In this scenario he could potentially fit another 500 to 1000 items of storage in his warehouse by taking an hour to look up some different 1 foot to 2 foot deep racks and by cutting some pieces of paper to move around before buying storage racks and boxes. If I was doing an initial layout of a house size to full wear house I would use power point method. You can make multiple slides with different layout options rapidly almost as fast as moving paper around or faster in some cases. But it is way better that trial and error especially when your going to move and you already have access to the layout of the place your moving into. But if I already had a draft layout by hand or in power point and needed to get precise measurements I would use excel. I don’t have cad on my computer, and you can get an accurate enough design for a small start up warehouse with 3 inch squares. So prior to moving a bunch of stuff or buying expensive equipment I would then diagram it out in excel using 3 inch squares. I would put 3’s in the squares to ensure I can get a accurate number in inches at the bottom right hand corner when in need to highlight squares to get a measurement. A specific example of where you would want to measure it out in excel would be to see if you can shift a bunch of racks a few inches and go with slightly narrower aisles can you fit an additional row of storage racking. Basically once you have an established design but need to make a precise business decision where you don’t have more than a foot of tolerance and your only going to move a few things. But most of the time power point works. I even made example diagrams when considering different design options for building layouts when I worked as a design engineer at Amazon. I would do 50 layouts in power point using screen shots of a draft cad design. Then as long as everything is sized proportionally you can drag everything around and look at new designs super fast. You just copy and paste the entire section of the layout you’re designing with all the equipping and stuff that needs to get moved around. Then if you need to resize anything you just need to make sure to highlight every picture and cropped item and resize them together. You use black or white squares to cover the old layout then copy the squares and the main diagram together. Then paste as a picture to get a new diagram. One I had a thought idea I would then do it up in cad as a more flushed out draft once I had a good concept worked out.
Interview with Dustin: th-cam.com/users/live0xl-bq0ttHE?si=7bHfJ4jZQNUFsesl Since everyone’s been asking what Dustin uses, these are the links he sent me where he gets his totes and shelves! Hat Storage totes: amzn.to/45gBzUq Metal shelves: ebay.us/salplH
One question I have is when you list an item and are determining the shipping cost, how do you list your items shipping wise if you aren't packaging ahead of time. Currently I take photos, package, measure and weigh and post listing with calculated shipping. The downside is it makes it more difficult to find items inside their packaging. I do have printed labels with numbers that I put on the packaging and put that number by the item in my excel spreadsheet where I track all my items COG and net profit.
I'm not sure why your doing it that way. Your only making it more difficult. Simply weight the products with the box, polymailer or whatever packaging you use 'without' taping the box or sealing the polymailers. After that's done simply take the products out of the packaging and organize them using whatever inventory system you use. Once you get an order simply grab the same packaging, seal it and slap the label on it.
Once you've shipped a couple hundred items you start to get an idea of what different boxes or packaging weighs. I know I need to add 2-3oz for most padded mailers, or so many ounces for certain box sizes. You'll also get to know what most shipping options will cost by how much they weigh. And like Adam says, always use the furthest zip code from you as a worse case scenario to calculate that shipping and you should be set. There are still items every now and then that I miscalculate but its just one of those things you learn as you go.
He does online arbitrage too where he can do more volume. I’ll have him dive into the percentages of his current business RA and OA on the podcast next Thursz
Realized I don't think we covered this, But I do Most of my Sourcing Via RA (Retail Arbitrage) I Might do 15-20% via OA (Online Arbitrage). Online you can get a lot more of one particular item, however some times in-store you can also especially if you have several of the same stores near you.
Thanks Adam for the Opportunity to Share my Warehouse! Hope I was able to share an idea or two to help some others out with there Reselling Business!
I am so happy to see that you "pre-pack" the shoes in the USPS boxes. Keeps them clean, boxes are stackable and you can spot the item immediately from the custom SKU you created. I have been doing this for years and have had people comment negatively towards it. Makes things so much easier in my opinion...
What is the reason people give for not liking this?
I do this too it makes shipping shoes so easy and fast
Love the organization system. Currently updating mine and there are some useful ideas here. Thanks Delko!
Wow awesome content! Thanks Dustin and Adam!
Such a great video! Love the organization and maximizing the use of the space!
Great breakdown Delko! I appreciate you answering all of these questions. GLWS!
A genuine reseller, not a “content creator”. 👍🏽
Yep a hustler!
Just got to 100 listings and made a quick inventory system. Glad I already started something see how extensive this get
Can’t wait for the follow up podcast tonight ✊🏻
Great video and good seller with a nice set up. I would say one thing he can upgrade is putting shelves in the room he has his totes in. It’s cheaper and easier to get shelves and boxes than totes. He could probably fit 3 times the inventory in that room. Also he could use some of the methods I describe below to measure out a diagram his warehouse to make it easier to do layout improvements.
I have experience as a eBay seller, but also as a manager at a target fulfillment site and an Amazon fulfillment site. And I also have experience working as an industrial engineer designing buildings and doing retrofits with Amazon. I actually used pictures and stories from my old eBay buisness in the interview to get promoted out of ops into engineering.
I am just getting back into ebay full time. But I have a lot of experience being one of the few people to do reselling as a full time job and work designing e-commerce buildings. So here are my main to points below.
Now for that room he can get to that times 3 storage utilization and still gain the benefit of using the boxes. He already bought the totes he could go double deep on the racks he puts next to the wall. So he could get even more storage capacity when he upgrades to shelves. He can have one aisle next to the wall and one flush to that on front with boxes. The aisle in front would be narrower or could be longer and go out to two feet or so. He just needs to be able to safely reach in or have it where any future short female employees could reach in and grab the Handel of the tote in the back.
So when he picks he would just need to remove the box in front then he could grab the tote behind it. Like I would have a little roller pick cart where I can put my picks on the bottom level of the car, but set the front boxes on the top section of the cart while picking from the tote. Those plastic totes slide on plastic shelves very easily. But they should on other surfaces as well.
He could probably do narrow aisles because he would not normally need to remove a tote. And if he did he could just remove the other front box in the same shelf level in that bay of the racks. Then he could pull it out at an angle.
Now he would have to measure it out because depending on the selves he uses he might not gain any capacity by doing two back to back shelves against the wall. But my first guess is that he could have two doubles up aisles in the end and possibly one in the center. It depends on whether he goes north to south east to west. And whether he uses 1 foot, 1.5 foot, or 2 foot deep shelving. The cheap plastic ones usually come in 1.5 or 2 feet depth. But I think he can easily fit 3 times storage cube in that room.
And doing this would allow him to use the totes he already has spent money on strategically to gain extra cube when he upgrades to shelves.
Now he could use a very long heavy duty storage rack, but with him about to move and growing his business putting two smaller racks back to back is the more flexible option to be reused in a different set up later.
I would at a minimum measure the totes dimensions, measure the racks. And then use some graph paper to cut out little shapes for the racks. Like 6 inches a square is usually accurate enough for a home ebay set up. Then draw out the room using the same scale on another piece of graph paper.
Then you can play around with placement of racks to see how you can fit the most in there while leaving access to the doors. And more easily decide with your racks need to go north to south and which ones need to go east to west to maximize the amount of storage that can fit.
For projects that require more precision you can diagram your a warehouse out in excel using squares to represent 1 foot per cell. You put 1’s if you’re using feet in the squares and drag it across and down the page a few hundred squares. Then you make all those 1’s white to match the background. Then you highlight different colors the outlines of the objects such as storage racks.
After you diagram everything out you can measure distances between things by highlighting the cells in between them as the distance is shown in the bottom corner. That number is where the invisible ones matching the background are being summed show up when you highlight those cells. And you want to make sure that the cells are the same size north to south as south to west to ensure the layout is visually correct which makes it easier to find ways to improve the layout.
For precisions but to keep it easy to use I would go with 3 inches squares. But for most cases 6 inches would work. I would just double check the final excel layout makes since by measuring the items more pricing before buying anything you won’t be able to actually fit by a couple inches. Most other eBay equipment and easy assemble shelving are divides me by 6 inch’s. But I like 3 as it is a good balance between detail and crashing my computer. It doesn’t take much for 1 square to 1 inch to crash your computer if your trying to do all the rooms in a house that way.
You can also use power point as long as you size the black square for the room and the icons you make for the shelves are proportional. You can make those in excel and then copy and paste them to PowerPoint. It is easier to move things around in power point.
In power point I would add a scale at the bottom. That way you can verify that the scale is not stretched north to south or east to west as that happened sometimes when copying from excel. Then I would make the room out line make the room layout the background so you don’t have to worry.
You can also use blueprints of your house and make them the background. You can cut and paste a room and cut and paste the scale that might be in the other side of the blue prints. Then you can shrink them both down or make them bigger to fit the power point slide. That will make sure the scale is proportioned to match the room even if there from two separate cuts of the same picture.
Then you can make the racking icons by using that scale as a measuring tool and then copy and paste a bunch of them. Just don’t resize any of them, rotate and move only. If there are words and crap on the drawing put a white square over the notes so you can just see the outlines of the room or rooms.
Then control select the white square or squares and the picture of the layout. With them all highlighted cut and paste special as a picture. Now you will have a diagram with just the shale of the rooms that still matches the size of the scale you already copy and pasted.
If I was measuring out one room to maximize capacity or to make a more efficient space I would do the hand paper method. In this scenario he could potentially fit another 500 to 1000 items of storage in his warehouse by taking an hour to look up some different 1 foot to 2 foot deep racks and by cutting some pieces of paper to move around before buying storage racks and boxes.
If I was doing an initial layout of a house size to full wear house I would use power point method. You can make multiple slides with different layout options rapidly almost as fast as moving paper around or faster in some cases. But it is way better that trial and error especially when your going to move and you already have access to the layout of the place your moving into.
But if I already had a draft layout by hand or in power point and needed to get precise measurements I would use excel. I don’t have cad on my computer, and you can get an accurate enough design for a small start up warehouse with 3 inch squares. So prior to moving a bunch of stuff or buying expensive equipment I would then diagram it out in excel using 3 inch squares.
I would put 3’s in the squares to ensure I can get a accurate number in inches at the bottom right hand corner when in need to highlight squares to get a measurement. A specific example of where you would want to measure it out in excel would be to see if you can shift a bunch of racks a few inches and go with slightly narrower aisles can you fit an additional row of storage racking. Basically once you have an established design but need to make a precise business decision where you don’t have more than a foot of tolerance and your only going to move a few things.
But most of the time power point works. I even made example diagrams when considering different design options for building layouts when I worked as a design engineer at Amazon. I would do 50 layouts in power point using screen shots of a draft cad design. Then as long as everything is sized proportionally you can drag everything around and look at new designs super fast. You just copy and paste the entire section of the layout you’re designing with all the equipping and stuff that needs to get moved around.
Then if you need to resize anything you just need to make sure to highlight every picture and cropped item and resize them together. You use black or white squares to cover the old layout then copy the squares and the main diagram together. Then paste as a picture to get a new diagram. One I had a thought idea I would then do it up in cad as a more flushed out draft once I had a good concept worked out.
I'm really liking this new creative and helpful content man!
Really appreciate that 🙏
Great series thanks for the video!
Interview with Dustin: th-cam.com/users/live0xl-bq0ttHE?si=7bHfJ4jZQNUFsesl
Since everyone’s been asking what Dustin uses, these are the links he sent me where he gets his totes and shelves!
Hat Storage totes: amzn.to/45gBzUq
Metal shelves: ebay.us/salplH
Love the loose shoe system. I'm stealing that.
Love this series!!
One question I have is when you list an item and are determining the shipping cost, how do you list your items shipping wise if you aren't packaging ahead of time.
Currently I take photos, package, measure and weigh and post listing with calculated shipping. The downside is it makes it more difficult to find items inside their packaging. I do have printed labels with numbers that I put on the packaging and put that number by the item in my excel spreadsheet where I track all my items COG and net profit.
I'm not sure why your doing it that way. Your only making it more difficult. Simply weight the products with the box, polymailer or whatever packaging you use 'without' taping the box or sealing the polymailers. After that's done simply take the products out of the packaging and organize them using whatever inventory system you use. Once you get an order simply grab the same packaging, seal it and slap the label on it.
Once you've shipped a couple hundred items you start to get an idea of what different boxes or packaging weighs. I know I need to add 2-3oz for most padded mailers, or so many ounces for certain box sizes. You'll also get to know what most shipping options will cost by how much they weigh. And like Adam says, always use the furthest zip code from you as a worse case scenario to calculate that shipping and you should be set. There are still items every now and then that I miscalculate but its just one of those things you learn as you go.
Love watching these keep it up
Lots more coming! I appreciate it!
How do you purchase that amount of product volume from retail arbitrage? Thanks for the video!
He does online arbitrage too where he can do more volume. I’ll have him dive into the percentages of his current business RA and OA on the podcast next Thursz
Realized I don't think we covered this, But I do Most of my Sourcing Via RA (Retail Arbitrage) I Might do 15-20% via OA (Online Arbitrage). Online you can get a lot more of one particular item, however some times in-store you can also especially if you have several of the same stores near you.
Thanks for sharing.
Nice use of space.
Where did you buy the chrome shelving in the garage?
cool because I have a spare place next door now all I have to do is buy and sell stuff. LOL
Good stuff!
That's awesome
I live in my car - when MPT car-cribs?
If you run a reselling business out of your car hit me up 😂
That would be pretty dope frl. Small items or clothing I could see that lol
W video!!!
I tried to search Dustin’s eBay store and couldn’t locate it.
At the moment I don't share my store publicly. I may at sometime in the future however as of now I don't.
Hit the like button 👍