For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.
The Item - Apple Watches
If you look at Week 21, I cataloged my long history with Apple Watches. I did very well with them in the past. I also did the same thing in week 31 about how I basically did a fire sale on apple watches as I saw prices drop. Once again I did quite well, thought not as well as if I would have sold at the heights of the apple watch prices but that's ok.
We are back at it again with Apple Watches!
We are back at it again with Apple Watches!
As I saw prices drop further I figured it was time to buy. You can look at the Keepa Chart of the 42mm space gray version of when I decided to buy. There were about 400 something offers because of Apple Pay and the Best Buy sale that never ended.
Prices had dropped to close to $300. That's $150 below where it was the year before.
What was my logic? These move fast, sellers will get burned on price, sell out and not reload. Prices will rebound and I will be sitting pretty soon enough.
I reloaded hard at $321 (tax) for 42mm at Best Buy and $304.95 at Target (5% RedCard Discount). It was about $50 cheaper for the 38mms.
As the number of sellers was dropping (prices weren't recovering), I continued to buy more during other smaller sales. I heard that chatter that watches are dead. Price is too low. I thought I could beat it.
Sales
My plan was working brilliantly. It took quite a bit longer than I thought (about 3 months) but right about mid March I started selling in earnest
I was selling multiple watches a day at good profits. I would have waited for even higher selling prices but the rumors of a new apple watch were weighing on me.
That's just a snapshot of what can fit in one screen in Inventory Lab.
What's the Problem?
The sales were not the problem. I'll take those sales all day. The ROI is less than I prefer but it's a lot of money per sale so I'll take it when it is a fast moving item like Apple Watches.
The problem is that Apple Watches are not iPads. Everyone loves iPads. They are expensive but useful so people buy them, keep buying them and don't return them much.
Unlike iPads, Apple Watches blow. People struggle to find uses for them other than looking cool and they aren't very cool anymore so why am I paying $400 for this thing? And then the returns come and they don't stop.
4 refunds in the last 5 days. 7 refunds in 8 days. 12 refunds in 15 days. I'm sure there are more coming as well.
Do you know what 12 refunds on Apple watches in two weeks does to you profit margin? It's not good.
That's $4,864.58 in refunds in this pay period. Apple Watches are responsible for the vast majority of that. I haven't had anything close to that besides during Returnuary.
I know, some won't come back at all, some can be sold as like new. That's true, but you can keep all of them for yourselves. I don't need the headache or to hemorrhage money to returns.
I'm done with Apple Watches! Until the next sale that is....
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