Have Fuel Prices and Inflation Affected Your Sourcing?

by: AddyUp

You think you have it bad. This side of the pond prices in some garages have already passed £2 a litre. Yes litre not gallon.

by: Alfacar

I drive about 600 miles/trip to get my stuff. My sources raised their prices for items I get for resale and when I make that trip there is not so much choice of items as they cut down on their inventory and they waiting extremely long time to get new inventory. My inventory suffers and is expensive to get. Then look You get items ready (some turn out to be bad—loss of inventory). Then you have Ebay with all those recent predatory fee hikes that sometimes allow buyers to get your items either free. Electricity went up (you use it for climate control). Storage is up. And then USPS that keeps raising pricing (most my items ship priority). In fact you start feeling that you are choked on all sides. I can;t raise priced]s because buyers won’t buy. Work for free? Work for loss?

by: Chicago48

I live in Chicago where there's fairly good public transportation.  For Seniors $1.50 a ride, and of course there's the unlimited weekly pass and day passes.  I can walk to the nearby Salvation Army and a two other thrift stores.  So the gas is not effecting me except -- in the grocery store.  The truckers are passing the cost onto the consumer and I've seen the prices go up and up.

by: Bluedenim

Last time I filled up my truck it was $115 and we have not been driving as much. Used to take road trips to stock up for the holiday season but the cost of gas, hotels and food is way too high to do so.  And for the first time in 10 years of business my sales are really down. So we haven't been thrifting as much locally either. Budget cuts, everywhere.  

by: Modlcitizn

All of my sourcing is online and everything comes to me in the mail, so no I haven't been affected.

But, one of the fellows in my sellers discussion group says sales of collectibles are down because people have less discretionary income.  I haven't seen it yet, but as he said,  "You can't eat stamps!"

by: Elextek

Combined errands with trips to thrift stores and shipping drop off. Less frequent trips as well. I have changed to buy online from other websites to resell online at others. The only scary thing about that is you cannot control how the other people actually pack and ship the item you want to resell. My new business motto is to ''supply a known demand'' - getting better and research and interpret the data we have access to (paid or otherwise). While the shipping paid for from the buyer has never been a revenue source, I've experimented with adding a fixed cost of smaller items which would be below the true expense of the actual shipping label.
Also, I've noticed that when I ''save'' or ''favorite'' an item i'm contemplating to buy I might get an offer from the seller which is acceptable within my profit margin. Otherwise due to shipping and price may have been just outside of my business model.  

by: Stone Cutter

*** Jewelers got a break...so far ***

I'm an artisan jeweler. Typically the "metals" market gets jacked up by investors who use precious metals to hedge against inflation, however, so far, this hasn't happened in this recent inflation surge. For my shop, it's the price of silver and gold that can be a problem, however, silver and gold prices have remained steady. We'll see how long this will last.

by: Toledo Maude

I have been selling for 35 plus years with a few ups and a lot of downs.

2002 was a banner year for me, the following year Bush goes to war.  Sales dropped 80% in 2003.

A year later desperate for something new to sell, I started to sell ''seconds'' from a local glass factory.  Built the business up to a steady income.  Then the bosses who ran the factory stopped selling ''seconds''.  Another nose dive.

Early, in my career I imported rugs.  A local dealer and I would put money together to advertise in a big city newspaper.  Sales would take off and then the stock market predictably would dive frightening potential buyers.

Always something...