Taking Merchandise To Mexico

In some other posts I mentioned a buyer in my area that buys his merchandise here and transports it to Mexico. Supposedly he makes a lot more selling his merchandise there, even after transportation costs. That just didn't make sense to me. Why would people in a poorer country pay more for things?

Yesterday, I was talking with someone who explained how it works. Apparently, Mexicans want American merchandise and they can't afford it because the tariffs are too high on new merchandise. There is no tariff on used merchandise so a reseller can ask more for an item than they could in the U.S. while still offering bargains to their customers.  Pretty interesting. 

Years ago at the local Goodwill AS IS sale a Mexican lady bought for 1 1/2 weeks straight. Every day she picked through tons of clothing.
She then hauled it south to Tijuana I believe and sold there for 4 or 5 days.
Then she came back for 1 1/2 weeks and started over.
A GW employee told me, she spent about 40K a year at GW and I am sure she didn;t bother with just doubling her money.

She also was extremely knowledgable in vintage clothing.
She once showed me a jeans (not a Levi's) and said $600 at least. Told me a few weeks later she sold it to a dealer in L.A. for $1,250.

GW and other charities export 1,000s of tons of used goods to 3rd world countries.
Most bulk buyers at these charitable outlets ship overseas.
If you have the right connection it's huge business.

I never thought of Mexico.  An old coworker use to send stuff home to Vietnam to her brother. I don't think she made anything off it but it supported her family back  home.....

There is also a guy fom Haiti that is a regular at estate sales.  He buys until he fills a shipping container then ships it home where he has a store.


It does go both ways tho.  Bring product from Mexico and sell at a huge profit.
But that "product" tends to get you 20 to life so I wouldn't recommend it.....   

kind of off topic here but alot of people make good money bringing old ford rangers into mexico apparently they are really popular and sell for a decent buck there. in jamaica the car to make money off transporting is toyota pickups like older 80s ones. yeah there's all types of outside the box ways to make money in this industry. as far as the mexico thing i think someone would have to have family there and kind of have some connections to make something like that work.