I bought a small 3.5/3.00- 4 tube on ebay for $9.90 delivered from Melb.. I just counted the stamps on the Aus post package $5.50 and I'm guessing the Aus Post package has to cost a min of $3. ????
Packaging is about $1.70 for a small bag or $2 for a Parcel Box Small 220x160x70mm and packaging is sometimes half if you buy in a 100 lot.
I know a lot of shops sell items for $25. that pay $1. for the item landed in Australia.
Tube 50 cents ,packaging $1. ,$5.50 post , cost is $7. , profit is $2.90
I bought some gasket sealer High-Temp RTV Silicone in a 3 OZ tube for $15. on eBay delivered, the postage price in Australia was $10. , so the Silicone is $5. , If I go to a cheap shop here the Silicone is $26.
The Silicone I bought was made in Mexico so you would think the silicone costs about $1. landed in Aus, so $4. profit.
Not much profit from each item but adds up when you are selling box loads of items.
Another possibility is people are selling free samples that factories give to businesses to try ,a lot of places send free samples before you make an order when buying in bulk . There are always people selling factory seconds online but don't tell you.
Factory seconds they can get from the bins and then there are all the items that just disappear from manufacturing and shipping containers.
I found out that some things I had bought cheaply were originally supplied in bulk for secondary manufacturers from even bigger factories. With things like adhesives, sealants, and herbicides the expiration date for bulk supplies is stamped on the crate supplied to the secondary manufacturer but not necessarily on the individual tube or package.
For certain products the shelf life might be three years, whereupon the product might be only 80% effective and cannot be used by the secondary manufacturer. They sell the soon-to-expire bulk crates on, often at a massively discounted rate rather than pay disposal fees.
There are some “businesses” that specifically target remaindered stock. They pay close to nothing for it and break up the bulk crates and sell them on to individual consumers. A decent proportion of the time it won’t matter in terms of performance but if you get what you think is a reputable product cheaply and it doesn’t perform then this can sometimes be because it’s sat in a warehouse somewhere for years.
I looked this morning and they still have them listed for that price so they haven't worked out they are wasting their time. I have been to their store and it is packed to the roof with stuff
There is another reason why some businesses don't make any profit ,there is a loophole in Australia that if you are a student from overseas and living in Australia you can start a business and if you can prove that you ran a business for a year or so ,the government will grant you permanent residency in Australia. It doesn't matter if the business runs at a loss.
Sometimes it's obvious if you see a shop that is mostly empty and the people that work there can't speak any English.
All kinds of thief happens. I just had a fuel pump to disappear during shipping from Amazon. It made it to UPS and then they couldn't track it any further. I wrote the vendor as where the package was and said Amazon lost it and sent me another one. It took four weeks to get a replacement for my customer. Luckily the current replacement was just for stock as I went ahead and order extra one which arrived well before the replacement and customer never knew I had problems getting the replacement pump.
The missing pump is probably already been sold on eBay.
