just wanted to say hi and introduce myself

Hello, My husband and I have been buying units for 7 months now, originally we have been selling at flea markets but have decided we need a store front.  My husband works full time at another job, and i work full time on the storage.  Are goal is to both do this full time come April.  I have bought 4 units so far and have doubled my money on three of them the last I made money on but not doubled.  I have been lurking on here for 7 months and decided to take the plunge.  Just wanted to thank everyone for all the great information

Great to know that you made money on these units! I bought 3 and barely made my money back. Of course I gave 6 33 gallon bags of clothes, purses, shoes ect to Goodwill. It was fun though:)

Welcome to the forum! Feel free to share any stories!

You have been buying units for 7 months and only have bought 4?? Am I reading this right? Not trying to be a Debbie Downer here but sit down and do the math on the storefront idea. I have many times and it just does not equal profit. Also more of these phony storage shows coming down the pipe to raise prices on us all. I have bought hundreds of units of the last 5 years and even when they went cheap a storefront was out of the question. Feebay, craiglist and garage sales= 0 taxes. Someone correct me if Im off here.

Where we live they only hold auctions every 3 months, otherwise we have to travel 2 hours away to indianapolis, or outside chicago which we have done but its got to be a good unit for cheap otherwise our profit goes down. I won't buy a unit just to buy one. I also pick stuff up through rummage sales, flea markets, and I have been picking for over 12 years.  MY dad ran an auction house and flea market so I do have enough inventory to run a store front. We are just now looking into the store front I will do more research into it before we decide anything, thats why i joined this forum to learn everything i can.

Good luck!!

Welcome aboard.

http://storageauctionforums.com/index.php?board=17.0

This will give some advice on the store front.
My neighbour just opened up a thrift store she is getting all her stuff from estate sales. And she is doing great. Now I am her contact for the storage units Also I can hold my yard sales in her parking lot. (we live to far out to do them at home)
Sounds like you have a lot of inventory and you know you can't get everything from the storage units.
So good luck a lot of good information on here.

business education and experience can make a big difference in the success of opening a re-sale/thrift storefront. I would imagine someone who has run a restuarant, laundrymat, lawncare service, professional office, etc. would have an advantage in running a store over others who have never ran a business before. The relationship between fixed cost and gross sales is very important in determining if a storefront is feasible for your situation. I would think the higher the fixed operating cost you have on the business, the more gross sales you need to cover the operating costs, thus the more inventory you need, thus more storage units won. Even if you have low rent/overhead you still need to have a good marketing/advertising strategy to get customers in your doors. One of the benefits of having a storefront is people will bring you stuff to buy from them and you can pretty much set the price you want to pay for what they have and refuse all the junk. You can't do that bidding on storage units!