Selling Cell Phones

[JLevi]

My friend exports cell phones, and makes good money off of it. He is willing to provide the sources he buys phones from, but our situations are a little different. He's from outside of the US, and so he buys them in the states from a bulk distributor, than sells them where he lives. I live in California. He says he knows people who do sell cellphones on Amazon and e-bay etc, and so along with that I want to possibly open kiosks in local malls, and hire a few friends to man them.

What should I expect/look out for? Any advice? Suggestions?

[Harold Mansfield]

My friend exports cell phones, and makes good money off of it. He is willing to provide the sources he buys phones from, but our situations are a little different. He's from outside of the US, and so he buys them in the states from a bulk distributor, than sells them where he lives. I live in California. He says he knows people who do sell cellphones on Amazon and e-bay etc, and so along with that I want to possibly open kiosks in local malls, and hire a few friends to man them.

What should I expect/look out for? Any advice? Suggestions?

My advice is not to do it this way. It is far easier to get a new (or refurbished) phone from your carrier, direct from the manufacturer and other sources than mall kiosks.
Those were popular in the early 90's, but I just don't see it now as a lucrative way to sell phones.

Not to mention the expense of refurbishing used phones, and all of the inventory that you'll have to carry to be competitive with what I'm sure are many stores in the malls selling phones and services.

JMO of course.

[Alexcook]

Selling Cellphone without any brand name would be an uphill task for you. With so many top brands competing with each other it would be very hard for you to find a suitable market for your product. Also its a known fact that while selecting for electronic items customer by default choice is for Brand name.

[WPCarer]

The only way I see this working for you is if you can sell the cellphones at a CONSIDERABLY cheaper price than the main providers, manufacturers, etc. Also, if you were able to do things like repair screens for cheaper, because I know getting that done from big cellphone providers can be quite expensive.

Iseult

[Ryan@focus]

Are you selling samsung and Iphone? Can you take these phones to Straighttalk and jump on a network easily? Need to know your product a little better.

[mentrabi]

My friend exports cell phones, and makes good money off of it. He is willing to provide the sources he buys phones from, but our situations are a little different. He's from outside of the US, and so he buys them in the states from a bulk distributor, than sells them where he lives. I live in California. He says he knows people who do sell cellphones on Amazon and e-bay etc, and so along with that I want to possibly open kiosks in local malls, and hire a few friends to man them.

What should I expect/look out for? Any advice? Suggestions?

In a lot of cases it makes sense to start a business where others are already having success. In this case, cell phones. The only problem is they have been around for a long time and as a result are commodity type items. Regardless of brand name / condition / location, your margins will probably be very low making a sustainable business model difficult unless you can push very high volumes. When you get into commodity phase of an industry, it's all about volume and managing / reducing costs.

How will you get the volume needed to sustain low margins? Most of the time companies target repeat purchases. This is great for yogurt sales, but difficult for cell phone sales (repeat purchases aren't exactly a weekly thing).

How will you manage / reduce overall costs? Most of the time companies will look to integrate from retail into manufacturing to better control costs there. You'll be sourcing product from someone else, so there's at least 2 layers between customer and manufacture, making over all cost control difficult.