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The most important of the vending secrets: Be careful!
I once sold earrings. I invested over $2500 with a fast-talking salesman who convinced me that I could have a great income in a matter of weeks. He said he had racks of earrings in stores, barber shops, gift shops, etc. More than 110 just in the Grand Rapids area, he said. They averaged 13 pairs sold per week, he said. And all he had to do was run the route once a week to collect his money-he said.
I did the math. 110 racks times 13 pairs at $5 per pair came out to $7150 in sales per week. I didn't know a thing about earrings, but I started to get interested. If I bought 10 racks and 1100 pairs of earrings to fill them, I'd be on my way. I'd pay him $1.75/pair: they sell for $5.00/pair; the store owner keeps $1.50/pair - leaving me a profit of $1.75/pair x 13 pair-per-rack x 10 racks = $227.50/week . Then I could expand from there.
The reality: The retailers weren't lining up to have the racks in their stores, despite the fact that they didn't have to pay anything up front. Finally, with help, I had 5 racks placed. They averaged only 3 to 4 pairs sold per week. And, surprise, surprise, the salesman didn't want to buy back the earrings as he promised he would. Believe it or not, I did get my money back - I'm very persistent.
I've since talked to a lot of people with vending routes. The truth is that if you can make $25 gross profit per site per week with pop machines or anything else, and you can have 100 sites within an hour of where you live, you can work a few days a week to make over $8,000 per month. It is also true that it is a lot of work to get started, whatever a salesman may tell you. If it were really easy, the salesman might be out running his own route, instead of trying to get you to buy $6,000 worth of plastic gum ball dispensers.
Obviously it can work. The people in the business that I talked to were doing well. I'm sure it was entirely possible to make good money with those earrings even. I was probably doing many things wrong. So how do you do it? What do you sell? What are the vending secrets of success?
First of all, you don't do it the way I did. I had no experience, and I wasn't even willing to spend a few dollars to pay for the knowledge of others. Find a mentor, follow a somebody around as they service their route, or at least buy a good book on the subject. And understand that however easy it may be when it is someday doing well, vending routes require a lot of work up front.