Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about what to do if your local thrift stores don't have good items to flip.
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What To Do If Your Local Thrift Stores Don't Have Good Items To Flip?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about what if your local thrift stores don't have those good items for you to buy and resell.
Melissa: And we're gonna dive into what you can do about it.
Rob: All right, guys, so on today's episode, we're talking about thrift stores and more specifically, what if you can't find, or your thrift store doesn't have those good items that we are reselling and other resellers are reselling?
What if you can't find those items at your local thrift store?
Melissa: Yeah, so this is a comment that we get every once in a while on our videos or social media. Just recently we posted a video of something we found at a thrift store, during our summer road trip and somebody commented, but the thrift stores around me aren't like that.
Like they don't have any of that stuff in them. So, we kind of wanted to come, like combat that obstacle, 'cause I know some people have it, like, well, the thrift stores around me don't have anything. So how, what? We're gonna dive into like what's some things that we can do to get past that? So.
Rob: Yeah, absolutely.
And the first thing you can absolutely do is don't just rely on the thrift stores. You might not have good items, or you can't find good items in one of the thrift stores or multiple thrift stores. What if you broaden your horizon and start looking in other places to find those cool items that you can turn around and flip.
Melissa: Like we actually don't go to thrift stores very often. We do it more for content than anything else. But your preferred place to find stuff is either the flea market or marketplace apps. Yeah, marketplace is really probably one of your favorite places to find stuff. So, you know, you can broaden where you go.
Thrift stores, I mean, they're not really our favorite. We, we go, we stop in obviously when we are at places and we'll, we'll stop in here and there. We'll have like a mom and pop one near us that we like to go to. But, know that like thrift stores everywhere are different. So the one that, that video that somebody commented on recently was talking about is not anywhere even near us.
So it's one that we stop at when we visit my mom in Colorado and we go there 'cause it, and it does have a lot of stuff. Yeah. So it's overwhelming. Like our Habitat here it you were saying like it goes faster because we have a big area, bigger area, bigger. So they don't have a lot of stuff like it. They do, but it goes quick.
So we don't usually buy a lot of stuff from there. So we used to go to another one that had better stuff or had more stuff. So I don't know why that one had more stuff, but some of them will have more and some of them will have less. And it's just kind of finding those ones that tend to have more of the items.
So, and you might have to go drive a little bit and it might be worth it. So once a week you drive to another town and go visit a couple thrift stores over there, and then you can kind of find out, okay, well they have some good ones. It's worth me going once a week on the weekend or whatever it is, and stopping at a couple of them.
Rob: Absolutely. And maybe just like we said, finding some other avenues to find those items. Whether that's Facebook Marketplace, whether it's OfferUp, whether it's Craigslist, depending on what area you're in, one of those apps alone will be more prevalent or will be have higher posting, postings in those apps.
You can use those. You can use yard sales, do a search on the weekends. If it's in decent weather year, you live in a, a city that has a lot of yard sales on the weekends. And, and I know sometimes of years, some different times of year, yard, yard sales are a lot more prevalent. But be looking at those yard sales to be able to source some items, thrifts, not thrift stores, flea markets.
You can check out local listings. Do a Google search on flea markets in your area and try to just broaden your horizon of where else can you find these really, really good items to turn around and flip.
Melissa: Yeah, and I would say another obstacle that, why this happens sometimes too, is that you might go to a thrift store and you don't find anything because you're overwhelmed.
So you're overwhelmed with all the stuff that there is. And we tend to gravitate towards certain items because we've sold them before and now like, kind of in our head, we know about what they're worth and we know what it's worth it to pay for in order if it, the value's there. But we can kind of hone in on that.
So maybe staking a step back and like narrowing down your niche like. Niche, niche, however you pronounce it, but finding two or three like categories of items. Do you like clothes, do you like shoes, do you like, we gravitate towards the appliances 'cause they make some more on exercise equipment. We like the bigger items, but find whatever niche it is that, and pick two or three of those categories and really start to look for those items because I, I would venture to say you would find more of them if you just focus on them and not try to get overwhelmed and looking up everything at the thrift store and you're like, ah, this is too much and then you just shut down.
Rob: So yeah, such a great point to stop the overwhelm is really honing in on some stuff that you're familiar with you, like you have hobbies with. Those are the kind of things that you definitely should be looking for first when you go into an unknown thrift store, a flea market, a yard sale, really try to pick those items out first. And then maybe pick one or two items that you know nothing about that look like they're worth a lot of money, and maybe they're priced really, really cheap. At the right price, then do a little bit of research on those. But this will help you limit the overwhelm, when you are actually out there sourcing.
Melissa: So, and there may actually be stuff too, like there, there's totally, I will say yes, there's definitely stores that don't have as much as other stores, of course, but sometimes it's like your ability, not ability. What would you say it is more of a mindset thing. Absolutely. So it's like you kind of get it in your mind like, they're not good.
My, the stores that I are near me are not good. So what's even the point? I can't do this reselling thing. And that's kind of gives you an out to not make this thing work for you. Yeah. So it may be that you're giving yourself an excuse and I don't know if you wanna tell like that.
Rob: Yeah. When we talk about this, I think about, one of our coaches, Joanna, coaching in flipping for profit. She's in one of our groups. She's amazing. She finds some amazing stuff. She's really, really cool. She lives in the same town as one of our other coaches. They live probably 30 minutes apart. And the other coach, which is Stacy, would always find this is more in the beginning of her journey.
Yeah. Yes, would always find amazing things all in her area. All in their, they're both area, like I said, 30 minutes apart. They would always, Find, or Stacey would always find amazing I items, and Joanna would be like, I, I live right here too. Why can't I find those same items that Stacy is finding?
Melissa: She's like, nothing here. But then she's like, ah.
Rob: So, and that's exactly what she did. And then finally she's like, forget it. I'm not gonna use this as an excuse that I can't find anything anymore. I'm gonna find the items and I'm gonna change the time of day that I'm sourcing for items. I'm gonna change the type of wording that I'm using, that I'm sourcing for items.
So she starts changing her mindset, changing what she's looking for, different times of day and doing that. And then immediately within the next week she started finding these items that she could flip and make money on. So it is a, a lot of it can be some mindset that you're just saying, hey, I don't, I can't find those items.
But broaden your horizon. Find some other places that you can look and also change your mindset and be like, okay, I, I mean, we're not all the power of positivity, you know, like a lot of people preach that, but definitely it's one of those things, if you're thinking you're not gonna find anything, typically you're not gonna find anything.
But if you're going in thinking, okay, I'm gonna find something really good in here. You might, something might catch your eye and you might be able to get a really good item to flip.
Melissa: Yeah. And we do go, it's not like every time we stop, we find something like we do sometimes just stop in and you know, look around and then pop out.
Like we will just do a quick stop and sometimes you do a quick stop and you're like, oh man, look at this. Like this is amazing. So, you know, it can be different times a day, different times that you stop. But I do think that a lot of people tend to use it as an excuse when there are other ways. And if, if your area is horrible like you or the thrift stores in your area are horrible, then maybe just once a week or once a month to go travel an hour away to a different area and find, you know, either like a bigger city or something near you that you can go to.
And another place things you can do is when you do travel. Like say you go away for the weekend, you know, find some road trips along the way or, sorry, thrift stores along the way of your road trip or yard sales. Or yard sales and see what you can find. And then maybe you can find some that are consistently have a lot more items.
I think the one that, that one is so good, but they, they just have so much in the back. Like they just, they're overwhelmed with stuff like, and a couple of them are like that. Yeah. Just overwhelmed with so many things that they can't even fill the, or the floor is filled, but they can't get things moving quick enough.
So anyways.
Rob: Yeah. Absolutely. And that's such a great point that you can travel. Maybe once a week, once a month, go to a town that's close to you and do some research on those thrift stores, make it a day. Hopefully you can do it over the weekend where you can hit some yard sales, hit some thrift stores, some auctions if possible, flea markets, whatever it is.
But pick a day that you can go and make a day of it, whether it's 45 minutes an hour away, and you might really. Find some gold mines out there, that you are able to go back for once a week, once a month, and really find some good items. So that's the other thing you can do is just travel a little bit.
I know one of our other students, that I think about Brandon. Yeah, he, he lives in a small, rural area to where he's like, all right, once a month I'm taking a trip and I'm doing a five hour round trip. Then I'm going around these areas. I'm sourcing on the apps before I go, and then I'm bringing back $3,000 to $5,000 on that road trip that I'm doing.
And he does that once or twice a month to where he can pick up some amazing items, come back and then sell them, out of his house. And that's really, really cool.
Melissa: And I'm, we're not a CPA or accountant here, but, you can also write off part of your trip if it's for business. So if it's for work. So just keep good receipts and keep good track of your records.
Rob: That's it. Gas, gas mileage, all that kind of stuff. Keep records of that so you can talk to your accountant. It's your business, that's it. But you're all, it's all going towards your business. So it is definitely a write off to do it.
Melissa: And you know what, it's another funny thing though, Jo, going back to Joanna, she now sources for like, she helps us with our one-on-one coaching and with our sourcing membership. And she goes and she finds this stuff for people, which is super fun because, going from not being able to find anything, going from being frustrated to now, she helps us out a ton. So that's awesome. So it's a lot of fun. So it's, and we also wanted to let you know on that note, we are opening up our one-on-one coaching group again.
Woo-hoo. So we're taking applications. So if you think that it could be a good fit for you or you wanna learn more about it, definitely just fill out an application and we'll get to talk to you and see if it's a good fit for you that we'll put the link in the show notes and it's fleamarketflipper.com/workwithus if you wanna check it out. So.
Rob: Awesome. You guys rock it. We'll see you on the next episode.