Ten Common Toy Investing Mistakes
Hello friends,
Today we’re diving into ten common toy investing mistakes that I’ve made myself and/or see others making as well. A lot of these can be applied to reselling in general, so make sure to take a birds eye view and see if you can apply these to niches outside of toys as well.
Let’s go!
1. Not Paying Attention To Your Competition On Listings
If you’ve been at this awhile, you will start to become familiar with the storefronts that frequently sell the same things that you do. You’ve probably stalked their storefront, Googled their LLC, and maybe even looked up their address to see how nice their house is. In short, you start to develop some ‘enemies’ who don’t even know you exist.
It’s important to understand their models and how they operate.
For example, one of my mortal “enemies” is Toy Planet. Why? Because I sell a lot of Hasbro. They also sell a lot of Hasbro. The difference? I’m pretty sure they have a direct account with Hasbro and are able to obtain a lot of closeout deals. I cannot compete with their sale prices. And even when I think I’m being smart and monitoring their stock count, they often set their maximum limit to random numbers so you can’t really tell how much supply they have.
I have been burned numerous times by buying a lead I thought was solid and not paying attention to Toy Planet being on it.
Why does this matter? Because as soon as I take any buy box share, they can immediately undercut me to a point that I can’t sell the item profitably.
Not only that, but it’s also an indicator of SKU performance. A lot of what they sell they’re obviously getting hundreds or thousands of at severely discounted below wholesale rates as leftover stock from Hasbro. If Toy Planet is sitting on an item at a price that “doesn’t make sense”, that’s an indicator the item was liquidated by Hasbro in a closeout deal and could appear at places like Ross, or have other sellers that have obtained it at a buy cost that I can’t beat.
Learn your competitors, learn how they price, and you will become better about not just what to buy, but when to send stuff in. I rarely send stuff in if Toy Planet is on it now, I just wait.
On top of all that, it’s important to monitor stock counts. Seller count is not as relevant as it may seem, but the quantity that sellers have is. 100 sellers with 1 unit each? No big deal. 5 sellers with 300 units each? That can be scary.
Pay attention to who is on the listings and how much they have before you go deep on a product!
