This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
The rolling cart reseller. Let's talk about reselling rolling carts and filing cabinets. You know, there's a business for everybody out there. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Today's story starts in a cluttered home office. Our featured case study, our side hustler in question,
had just replaced an ancient dented filing cabinet with a sleek IKEA unit. And then they're like, "What should we do with the old one?" It's funny, tomorrow actually on the podcast, I've got a question about using Facebook Marketplace to ship items. Should you only sell locally? Should you sell to buyers afar? I just noticed that as I was working on today's episode. And for today's,
a quick search on Facebook Marketplace shocked our caller. They noticed like teachers are begging for storage carts. They also found tattoo artists that were looking for things, crafters. And so then they go to look on Craigslist. Well, they're going to tell the whole story. Basically, the
outcome is within a few weeks, he had flipped 14 carts and cabinets. He made over $1,000. That is the theme of our segment, first $1,000. How do you make your first $1,000 with a new idea? So let's get into the details. Let's roll into the details, I should say. How does he source
inventory? How does he find buyers and keep logistics simple enough to fit into a compact hatchback? Let's pass the microphone. I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up. I changed desks last spring and suddenly had a battered beige filing cabinet hogging on my floor space. I posted it for free on Facebook Marketplace and five teachers
messaged within half an hour. One drove 40 miles, loaded it herself and said she'd been hunting for months. That experience taught me the cabinet wasn't junk. It was just underpriced storage. The next morning, I searched Craigslist for office closing and warehouse clean out. I hit
gold, a small insurance agency dumping 20 rolling metal carts and cabinets for $5 each. I borrowed my brother's SUV and grabbed 10 of them spending $50 in total. Back home, I scrubbed sticky drawer fronts with Goo Gone, masked off the handles and coated each piece with Rust-Oleum pastel spray intended for appliances. Cost per cabinet? $5 purchase plus $6 paint plus $2 sandpaper, so $13. Now I just had to sell them. And I was thinking that they could work in different ways
for different people. So I took the same cabinet, photographed it in three colorways and wrote three distinct listings. Mint green two drawer rolling file, perfect for classroom centers, $70. Matte black lockable cart, fits under a tattoo bench, $95. Coral pink storage on casters, scrapbooking paper depth, $85. That's right. I also mixed up the prices. I didn't want someone to stumble on
multiple listings and realize it was the same item. Although I suppose that wouldn't have mattered much. Anyway, after the first weekend, I sold five units and collected $400 in Venmo and cash. I reinvested half of that into a second lot. This time 10 cabinets for $8 each and a gallon of gloss enamel for brush coats. It works out cheaper than spray if you roll multiple pieces. I added $12
locking caster sets to three cabinets and marked them as mobile stencil stations for tattoo artists. Those sold fastest at $110 a piece. Delivery was the hardest part. I set a 10 mile radius for free drop off. Anything farther, buyers had to meet me at a mall parking lot. By day 19, the scorecard
read purchases, 20 cabinets and carts, $150. Materials, paint, casters, cleaner, $170. Gross sales, 14 units times an average $88, $1,232. Net profit, $912 after gas. And I still had six cabinets left. One pleasant surprise, a few customers sent photos of their classrooms
and studios tagging my personal page. It was an unexpected marketing bonus. Plus, it made me happy to know the items had found a nice new home. I still work my day job and don't have any plans to go all in with selling junk. But two evenings a week in the garage keep a steady queue rolling.
When I see a free must pick up today listing, I picture pastel drawers filled with colored pencils or black steel carts lined with ink bottles. And here the cha-ching before I even hit I'll take it. If you live in a place where you're surrounded by cast off office furniture, remember, paint is cheap, demand can be high if you find the right people. And the wheels, quite literally, are already attached. Well, anything that has a lifespan, like furniture, you know, office furniture cabinets and such, I mean, you know, those can be around for decades, right? As long as they're well made. Anything like that can be
resoled. And it's often the kind of case where buying used items is pretty affordable, like you can find inventory fairly easily just because there's so much of it. And there's always offices that are closing or moving or resizing in some way. So as we heard from this guy, he's been able to build it into a little, you know, profitable business without a lot of effort. So he's not going to get rich from this idea, but I think he's making what, $50 an hour or so, it sounds like based on the numbers reported. So there's something you can do too, right? Maybe
you want to be a reseller of rolling carts or filing cabinets, or maybe you don't, but there's something out there you can do, which of course is the whole point of Side Hustle School. That's why I'm giving you different ideas, approaches, perspectives, stories, successes, and sometimes failures, because not every idea works out and that's okay too. All right, that's going to be it for today. But of course new episodes come out every day. This was 3,264, the complete archives of the podcast available for free download or streaming at www.sidehustleschool.com.
Much more coming out tomorrow and beyond. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. From The Onward Project.
