Hacker News Reader

Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

This story doesn't seem to add up, at least at first glance.

It's not clear WHICH brand the OP is even talking about. He mentions "Hypervolt" in the first sentence, but that's not his company. Hyperice makes Hypervolt (https://hyperice.com/about-us/).

It sounds like this is a knock-off vendor complaining about another knock-off vendor. The OP, "David", links to a youtube video where the poster is "Jimmy Den" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7U8vOE4N8).

Am I wrong here? Are fabless vendors, composed of a few people, who basically rebrand white-label shit from alibaba really making (and perhaps in this case losing) millions of dollars in time-frames of months to a couple of years ??

View on HN

>Are fabless vendors, composed of a few people, who basically rebrand white-label shit from alibaba really making (and perhaps in this case losing) millions of dollars in time-frames of months to a couple of years ??

It wouldn't be surprising. I've looked into starting a side business selling some rebranded Ali/Bao items on Amazon, there are loads of niches you could corner. The thinking goes:

> The product is available for $X today, and Amazon takes a $3-5 cut.

> I can buy the product for $X-Z.

> I could sell these products with prime shipping for $X-Y, and make $Z-5-Y on each sale.

Doing that simple math often makes you think you could make a living off the scheme, even after accounting for packaging and inventory fees. If it works for a few months-years, you might double down and get into this situation.

Ultimately, I came away feeling like this is how dropship vendors find new product categories to move into: they wait for somebody to demonstrate that there's a sizable market for a product, then they add that product to their listings and cut out the competition. So you probably have 3-6 months on each successful product, tops.

It's a jungle out there.

You’re half right. Eventually sellers flood the market for that product and the profit goes down. Then as they get rid of their inventory the margin grows again.

So you have to stay on top of thousands of products, and your cost, in order to do well. It never stops.

They do but, well it depends. You need to find the right product at the right time balanced by multidimensional inputs (time, competition, having right connections, luck because you need conditions to be similar when you are ready to ship, and the fad needs to last long enough to make it worth your while etc. etc.) - so the hard part is finding "the" product. It is a lottery ticket. If it works out great, more often than not it will fail. There is a specific time window for a given product and it is not at all clear where in the timeline you are at so you need to guess. Whatever you are attempting WILL eventually fizzle (people will lose interest, most people that are interested will get one, the competition will get insane and will eat your margins) - the question is when. If it is sooner than you thought, you will lose a lot of money. If it is later than you thought, you will make a lot of money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com