Individual Retail Through Dealer Membership?

[CutleryMaster62]

I'm planning on getting a dealer membership sometime soon. I plan to use it in order to function as an individual retailer through BF. I have a few questions and would appreciate your advice.

• How should I go about obtaining merchandise from manufacturers to sell on my own?
• Do you think that running my "online business" this way is a better method than the traditional one?
• What advice can you offer me pertaining to this?
• Would BF require me to do certain things to function as an individual retailer through the use of their website?
• Do I need to create a budget for something like this?
• If I need to create a budget, what should I factor in to it?

Thanks for your input and/or advice! As for those of you may be participating in something like this, please leave your thoughts or comments!

 

[1066vik]

you can either apply to each maker for a business account, or you can apply for a business account through a distributor like Blue Ridge Knives (there are others, I'm just familiar with that one)
you will need to pay for knife orders up front to establish your stock - this can $500 from some companies and $3500 from others)
figure your prices so that shipping is covered and you still have a profit margin - even if you hold a sale or offer "free shipping" for orders over $XX.
keep careful records of what you're spending to bring stock in and what you're spending to ship it out in addition to selling prices, so you can file your quarterly small business taxes with the IRS and state revenue services.

if you're doing this to support your knife hobby, it's not too time consuming.
if you're doing it to make money, it's tough to price match the big boys and still make a decent profit. I also suggest paying for a web hosting service or at least buying a domain name, creating a web site for non-BF traffic, and picking up a spare computer to host your site. (another business expense)

best of luck!

 

[Bastid]

The General Knife Discussion forum is not the place to inquire about starting a business.

It is a the place to discuss knives.