Chris Koerner built a reselling business doing millions in sales, but warns that eCommerce profitability is harder than it looks. Warehouse costs, staff management, inventory across hundreds of products, and massive upfront investment eat into margins. The money is there, but so is the work.
We resell millions of dollars worth of Buc EE's products every year, more than anyone on the planet. And a lot of people ask me, why don't more people copy you? It's so easy. You show up to the store, you buy buc ee stuff, you mark it up a ton, and then you sell it. I'll tell you why more people don't copy us. Because this is what they learn. They start by slanging beaver nuggets on ebay or Amazon, making a dollar per bag. Then they learn, oh, I want to scale. But first you have to learn. How do I find and negotiate a 10,000 square foot warehouse lease? How do I find and hire and train and manage and motivate $12 an hour employees? How do I. How do I manage expiration dates when I have 400 different food products? How do I use and manage warehouse management software that costs $4000 a month? How do I manage 1600 different SKUs, some apparel, some food, some gift? How do I afford $250,000 worth of inventory and store these freaking pool noodles during the off season because no one buys them during the winter? It's a lot of stuff to learn. We've already figured it out. It was hard. I wouldn't do it all over again if I had the chance. But now that we are, we're making millions of dollars a year, top line, and hoping to make a profit.
