Tourist merchandise

[Nadim.c]

About me:
I'll give you guys a brief story of my situation. I'm 16 and go to college. Coming from an Asian family, I'm hardly allowed outside so can't really spend time after college to make money. However, I'm also grateful for many things. My college and my house is quite close to big tourist attractions in London (20 minutes walk). I'm allowed outside college sometimes. I also love cars and know how they work. My dad's car broke down and i knew exactly what went wrong and what part he needed (an alteranator). I need something to do during my free time or I'll just stay on the street doing nothing and knowing my luck, I'll end up doing something stupid (nearly got in trouble after I left a traffic cone in a one way street in front of an undercover police car before it came).

The other day, I went to do some 'market research', which was basically to see if there was any tourists there. I was surprised to see there was tourists, even though it's becoming cold. So my target market do exist. However, I want to make money from these tourists, and I'm sure everyone else does too. I want to buy merchandise of London and sell it, even if I manage to sell and make a profit of £8/hour, it's still better than working at McDonald's.

There's some questions on my mind that I don't know the answer to. Will I get into trouble if I sell without permission? Didn't seem like there was anyone there to enforce laws, apart from 2 police officers in that area. (Maybe more people are undercover police than it seems?). Also, who should I get the items off? Who manufactures merchandise, especially around East London? There are a couple of guys selling roasted peanuts around that area, with a small stall, and they don't look professional at all.

Sometimes, people drive past me in a 18 plate Mercedes with posh suits, and I look at them and wonder how do they manage to do it? I've tried making money before once, and broke even with an investment of £3.

 

[itsnathanhere]

Hi, sounds like you've got an interest in business - which is great! It sounds like you need to be reading up on the subject a bit more before you go spending money on merchandise though. Find out about how the supply chain generally works - you're not going to be buying anything straight from the manufacturer generally; you'll be going through a wholesaler and you'll be expected to buy in bulk.

Let's use those little model London phone boxes for example, your wholesaler will give them to you for a certain price (£2 each, for example) but will require you to order at least 50 of them to get that price. You've now spent £100 and all you've currently got to sell are plastic phone boxes and nothing else. You'll need to repeat this process for all other pieces of merchandise you want to sell.

It gets a little more complicated. Remember you paid £100 for 50 phone boxes? Well your competition has just ordered 100 phone boxes, but because they ordered more, they get a discount and only pay £1.50 each. Because you need to make a profit, you're selling your phone boxes for £2.50 (getting 50p profit for each one) but your competitor can now sell them for just £2 and make the same profit as you.

You'll need to be registered self employed so you can pay tax on your profits and you'd need a street trading license or you risk getting a massive fine and losing everything you've worked for. Trying to do this illegally is a Muppet's game and you're risking your business, your livelihood and even your place in college if you get caught.

My advice is stay passionate in business, but put your college career first and try to run something on the side. Why not find a target market within college itself? There's loads of problems students have that need solving and money to be made in the process. Best of luck!

 

[Mr D]

There are dozens of suppliers of goods for tourists.
Mostly imported from the far east.

Buying can be in various quantities depending on the item, however most suppliers have a minimum order level - say £250 of goods. That may work out as £1000 retail. Or less. Or more.
Say 5 London teatowels and 20 London buses and 10 London moneyboxes and so on.

Making £8 an hour? Yes it can be done. Or £150 an hour.
Or nothing. Busy times and quiet times. Has to be what people want to buy.

My brother in law used to sell tourist tat as he calls it, a weekend on the indoor market could net him a grand or more. When busy 2 or 3 times that for a couple of days work.
He had to make his money for the year in basically his town tourist season - which is around 80 days. He worked more than that but he only got paid for those days.

There will be a few warehouses scattered around for buying supplies, London isn't cheap to rent space so may have to nose around. Can easily buy on the internet from a UK supplier and get delivery in a few days at most.

 

[Ally Maxwell]

I've just made an amazing discovery. It's a tool that can be used to find wholesalers almost instantly.

If you type 'wholesale London tourist gifts' into Google, it tells you where you can buy wholesale London tourist gifts.

Stunning, I know, but there you go......

 

[Nadim.c]

Why not find a target market within college itself?

This is something I'd definitely look into. I've made a couple of pounds by doing hw for my classmates, everyone wins! But I've stopped now and need something that pays more. Definitely worth looking into it.

however most suppliers have a minimum order level - say £250 of goods.

That's another setback for me. I only have £200 in cash, I can't risk it all. Also I need a Street Traders License, probably cost more than i can afford. But tourism does seem profitable, especially when there's a lot of them. Maybe in the future for me, but not now. Having said that, I'm sure there's many other ways I could make money. A job is one way (I did work as a waiter once and hated people telling me what to do, what to wear, etc). But I've noticed my classmates not being able to manage their time, so possibly something to help time management and capatilise from that first.

 

[fisicx]

Offer to wash all the cars on your street. £10 each once a week will earn you a decent amont. Start up costs are a bucket, sponge and car shampoo.