Diversifying retail & services

[localpcshop]

Hi everyone,

We have a storefront in north London, We support business and our shop mainly services Home users, Laptop repair ect.

Q. How many of you sell products in your shops? - we have just started and found it successful in places.

Obviously having cash tied up in stock displayed on our walls has a downside if it dosent sell. However... we have done quite well selling -Media Players, CCTV, Speaker systems, External Hdd's & other accessories.

What i would like to know from you is;

1. What are your experiences stocking for retail, what worked , what sold well?
2. Along with the products you sold were you able to up-sell any services, Like installing the CCTV cameras or support- did selling these products lead to new work?
3. What sold well with you? How did you promote?
4. We are based in quite an Affluent area and are considering selling high end products- again cash in stock is the problem- is it worth while?


Cheers in advance

 

[mnaty]

We do the same. Accessories in cables is by far the most profitable.

For higher-end items like ext-hd we keep small stock levels and charge a slightly higher premium than box stores.

One other good item we have found sells well is the micro tool kits we use for device repair. The 30-40 piece all in one snap boxes. Customers always asked if sell when they saw us using ng so we added a few to the shelf and they move steadily.

 

[larossmann]

what sells best and all I should have ever focused on selling were used devices that people never paid the bill on. stuff i get for free or near free that i can sell for $600

the rest sold like shit. but, admittedly, i wasn't really trying.

 

[turbo]

most profitable is...... buying broken water damage mac and fix it sale it ... insane profit....put ad on local website like kijiji or gum tree.... buy broken mac and iphone fix it sale it....

 

[D_R]

most profitable is...... buying broken water damage mac and fix it sale it ... insane profit....put ad on local website like kijiji or gum tree.... buy broken mac and iphone fix it sale it....

Does it really work for you? When I'm trying to buy a water damaged mac, most people want to have 300-500€ + they take their HDD/SSD and Ram out (if possible) because they worry about their private data.

 

[Repairable]

D_R why dont you provider them a external hdd case for the hdd they have and that way lower the price, giving them the feeling of beter bang for bucks

Also talking out ram makes the system alot lower on valeu for me, explain them data is not stored there when the machine is Told to turn of it writes it to the hdd

 

[D_R]

Repairable And how should I do that? Because most of the devices that are offered to me are already without a HDD. And... I don't think, I can lower the price by putting the hdd in an external case, because currently a new 3TB HDD costs about 75-100€.

And do you want to laugh a little bit?
In Germany we have "eBay Kleinanzeigen", it's like the Craigs list in US. Today I found an offer about a Macbook Pro.
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s...-ghz-8gb-ram-hd6750-defekt/458211143-278-9196

In short, it's a A1286 MBP with an i7 and 8GB RAM, the MBP does no start, no chime and no picture on screen. It's sold without charger or HDD. The MBP has some scratches on the top and bottom.
What do you think does the seller want for this crap? 600€ !!!!! 600€ !!!!!!!!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7i9eru8jvy9zq6s/Screenshot 2016-04-24 20.19.05.png?dl=0

Are you kidding me????

 

[Repairable]

Even if A hdd is sold 3tb for €75/100€
It is not there hdd so it holds a mutch smaler valeu they take out the hdd for data securety

I can only say they are crazy, also if People come to me whit those Kinda offers ill thel them in a fasionat way to get the fuck out
I wont even haggle the price, ill tel them that maby People are willing to pay more then i can offer but because of the many machines offered i cannot give them more then ....

 

[localpcshop]

Now we have started selling products; we have found some items Need absolutely zero effort to sell, ranging from 30- 120% markups.

I spent 2mins demonstrating an android media center, It dident work property (HDMI lead), I said " well.. you get the point" and walked away- the customer still bought 2 of them! They have sold particularly well, people install KODI on them.

Things like External HDDs are a natural extension to upsell, especially when people need data recovery, we have always stocked them.

The reason for having a stock range; and this might be different to others but our situation is the following;

Between us taking in new work, fixing machinse and customer collecting repaired laptops, cash flow over the week can be disjointed.
In one week 2/3 days we may only take £200/£300 per day, taking most of our income at the end of the week when people collect.
Overall we do quite well, but this seem sub-optimal too me, when thinking having ok sized retail outlet in a nice area.

I know a local printer i know, sells around £300 per day in Printer ink- surprisingly! but the margins are quite small with ink.

-@larossmann from time to time we also get those golden laptop Donations, and turn around a healthy profit-

Its why im sourcing ideas! - it seem however most of us dont stock retail items

We are doing the following
1, Mac mother board repair - (Because our outsource company in the UK is useless)
2, Stock the shop with items targeting home users
3, Ipad repair- (I know but we are late to this ship)- they just seem like more hassle for smaller margins
3, Youtube videos- just done out first how too

I do fear our industry will end up like the TV repair industry- and in the UK that trades is Dead, so diversifying will be much more important in the near future.

 

[D_R]

I do fear our industry will end up like the TV repair industry- and in the UK that trades is Dead, so diversifying will be much more important in the near future.

Well, in Germany the TV repair industry is doing quite well. But I'm not talking about the classic TV repair shops, we have something like a mafia. The "companies" are running by some turkish or arab people, they put their advertisements everywhere and if there is just a little problem with the tv like a loose flex, they are selling you a new power supply or a t-con board and charge you 400-600€ for a worthless TV. And especially they rip off older people.

The funniest thing I heard about this gang was, that they put a Scart Cable into the TV and played a Video on a Tablet PC, like it was doing a diagnosis where at the end there was a message about a faulty power supply on the screen.

 

[localpcshop]

D_R; That is quite interesting TV repair, in the UK died Many many years ago.

think the only reason laptop repair is holding on is because people have data, without that that data most of these cheap Windows laptops are throw away.

Our market (or at least from our perspective) is moving more into repairing quality or more expensive devices,

Like more apple Mboard repair. less repair time involved, higher profit, deeper knowledge, customer service

 

[turbo]

always works for me... which are you live?