687: $200/Flip: Inside the Return Reselling Side Hustle

0:01Here's a business in a box side hustle that's got the potential the possibility to turn into a full time income stream. Let's call it reselling return items, but not like the treasure hunt of liquidation pallets or something like that. This is a little more systematic. It's got lower transaction volume and hopefully a higher profit per item. And it's got the ability to get inventory for free, which is pretty cool. The catch is that these items are big. They're bulky. They're furniture. They're mattresses. They're exercise equipment. So you got to have a way to transport them. You got to have a way to store them.

0:32Today's guests have been doing this for the last eight years, the last three of which has been a full-time income, flipping anywhere between 40 and 60 items per month. Matt and Hannah, welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Thanks for having us. So this is all facilitated through a side hustle app called ShareTown, which we've covered before. But my hope is this will be the deep dive because you guys have been in it since almost the beginning. Hannah, you mentioned you found out your brother had a friend who was doing it. But Matt, what's your reaction when you hear about this random side hustle? Hey, you can make money reselling semi-used mattresses, mattress returns.

1:10What's your gut reaction here? Just one of those things where I was like, is this a joke? Like it just sounded kind of out there and it sounded too good to be true. And I think when I got started, before we got started, it also was like, well, how is this logistically possible? Because like you think about a mattress and it's pretty big and it's like, how am I going to be able to do this? So I think I went through all of the ways it wouldn't work. And then it was like, well, let's just give it a shot. Kind of that was the decision process. But I had a full-time job. You know, it was busy already.

1:40We had little kids and I had a career. And so it was like, but at the same time, we also had debt. And so it was like, let's figure out ways to pay that off. I was game to try it out. Be creative. Because we needed it. And then it just worked out. So it's funny. I think that I remember we were going to Southern California, like within a month or two. And I remember being like, what if we just try it? We could just pay for our Disneyland tickets. Like if we do this, we could like trying to make it like some incentive, you know, anyway. But I do think I remember you laughing at me just all of this.

2:12It's funny. It's definitely one of those things where when it first came across my desk, I had the same thing. I was like, is this for real? Like, how does this work? Because it's just, there's a lot of moving parts to it. And I'll give you my high level understanding and you can correct it. You kind of fill in the gaps. So these direct-to-consumer mattress brands and furniture brands and exercise equipment brands to a certain extent, like they've, ShareTown as a company has expanded into different product categories, but my understanding started with mattresses. And so all these companies have their 100 night, better sleep or it's free guarantee.

2:42And so customer buys the mattress and we've actually returned a mattress through a ShareTown rep, like where you get it, you try it out. You're like, it's not for me. And you feel kind of bad, but it's like, hey, that was the risk reversal that led us to pull the trigger on the purchase in the first place. You say, hey, Mattress Company, I didn't love it. Sorry, we need to return this. The Mattress Company is like, we can't really take it back. We can't really resell it as a new mattress because it's not new anymore. And so this is where ShareTown comes in to facilitate these returns and either get those donated or get those resold because the company probably can't resell them.

3:16But as an individual contractor, as an individual reseller, like, hey, I've got this like new or almost new mattress. It's still in really good shape and we can put that out into the marketplace. Pretty spot on. The logistics for a mattress company just is not easy for them to finish that end. And they started out eight years ago before this was like really a common, well-known thing. I think people are kind of more familiar with it now, but they suggested donating them. So if you don't like it, donate it, give us a receipt. And I think that they just found that wasn't, customers were frustrated because they couldn't actually get them picked up.

3:51There weren't very many companies or charities that could come pick them up. Anyway, so now people like us come pick them up, help make sure that they're new. And then we help to resell them so that they stay out of landfills, so that the original customer gets their money back. And so that lots of people in our communities are getting killer deals on a basically new mattress. Yeah. So that's the revenue flow. So you pick it up, you go list it for resale on Facebook marketplace for a decent discount off of the retail price and the customer gets their money back and you take the proceeds from that sale and you give some back to ShareTown.

4:25Do they share some of it back with the original company and then they take their cut and then you take a cut? It's like the revenue gets sliced up in a bunch of different ways. Yeah. We don't see their end of it. So we're not sure what the split is there, but we get a cut and then ShareTown gets a cut. And then we assume that they distribute some back there or something happens on that end. And they have different contracts with each company. So it just probably looks different for each partner. Is there a target profit per item that you guys aim for? Well, we found over the years that about$200 is kind of a good average.

4:56Some certainly can be more, which is awesome. The majority I would say aren't, but there are some here and there that are kind of the unicorn items that you're just like, oh, that was awesome. And then there are plenty that are less. Average is$2 to$2.50-ish. Yeah, I'd say about$2. And still around that ballpark? Or has there been some downward pressure on that? I do think that it's decreased a little bit. We used to kind of have a little bit of a monopoly on the markets that we've lived in, in the Bay Area, just because we were new. The whole thing was new. So we were kind of the guinea pigs.

5:28So I do think that we had a little bit more leeway back then with pricing and stuff like that. Yeah, we were one of the only people that did it in the Bay Area. We went all over the place. Again, kind of the guinea pigs, just like, we don't even know how to pick these up. We don't even know how to package these. We don't know how to market them. Nobody did. We didn't have shared resources. We just kind of... Funny. I wonder if you guys were the ones that come to our house. We should go find our little paperwork. It's a Honda Pilot with a little pull-behind utility trailer type of thing. Maybe not.

5:58We had to... Did shove a lot of big mattresses into a small CRV. Okay. Wow. That's another piece of the pie is like the logistics of like, well, you're going to need a truck or a bigger car to be able to, okay, even if you fold it in half, is it really going to fit and bag it up? These people who came were clearly not their first time real quick, get it down the stairs, fold it in half, bag it, boom, off to the next one. It's like, because that's out of the$200 expected profit on it. It's like, you got to account for the drive time and the storage and the real estate and all this stuff. Yes. Well, yeah, I guess we're not taking that into account.

6:31It's hard to say exactly what we're spending per mattress because it It depends on how long it sits in our storage unit and how much space does it take up in our storage unit. So I'll say our 200 to 250 profit is what we're making. It's not really accounting for the gas that we used or the packaging or the cleaning products just because, like I said, it can be really hard to monetize accurately the price per item. All right. Let's walk through a typical transaction. And so maybe either a memorable one of yours or the first pickup or maybe a typical pickup You get a ping request as it comes with your phone through the app and say, okay, it's 20 minutes away.

7:10Do you want it? Do you claim it? Like, what's this process like? Now we have an app. When we began, we didn't. But now we have an app and it's really awesome and great. And you don't get a pick and choose. It's just kind of assigned to you. You have a radius that you're willing to go. Ours is about 60 miles. And that's pretty typical if you really want to be able to get stuff. You kind of can't just say, I'll just get anything down the street, you know. So we do have some decent traveling that we do. They give you a window, like you say, within the next three, four days, you make an appointment to get out there.

7:43They expect you to contact them right away. But it's up to us and the customer to schedule it within whatever time frame works for both parties. Yeah. Typically, we try to have it scheduled within about seven days. But again, sometimes there are circumstances that keep that from happening. And as long as we're both on the same page, then it's usually fine. But we go ahead and reach out and schedule it. And we do that all through this app. And then I am the one who goes and picks up the item. So we usually, I just have an F-150 truck, a Ford F-150. And so we always try to get about four mattresses per run.

8:23Yeah. If it's local, if it's like in our town or really close, then we're a lot more willing to say, let's go get one or two because it fits with their schedule or whatever. But if I'm going into Seattle, I want to get four just to make the most of the day. It's just way more efficient that way. So when we first started, I just had either a CRV or a Acura MDX. So just one mattress at a time. So after I'd say a year, maybe a little less than a year, we upgraded to a truck because we started to realize that it made sense to scale up. But anyway, so then I'll go pick up four mattresses at a time and then bring them home.

9:00and then we clean them. And eventually Hannah finds customers who want to buy them. You're able to do the pickup on your own. Yeah, we utilize help for a lot just because they are either too thick to fold on my own or too heavy to do that. But yeah. And just so that we can protect customers' homes. So generally, ShareTown really wants you to have a reliable helper that you can pay or work that out amongst yourselves, whatever. But generally, they want you to have a helper so that you're not banging up walls or knocking off picture frames or this and that. Yeah, exactly. And it's not a great customer experience on the return side.

9:41Yeah. Yes. So who's helping you then? Is it a part-time employee or part-time contractor or helper person? Yeah, I've utilized a lot of just family friends and people that we know through church or neighborhoods or whatever. So people that I don't love to just do it with just anybody because I'm driving around for a long time. A couple hours in the car. Small talk gets pretty soon if you don't get along with the person. But try to just like high school aged or late high school, early college aged kids that want some money and have flexible hours. It works out really well. Yeah, you can manage most of it on your own.

10:15So you really just need an extra set of hands. I don't feel like we've been able to get away with a lot of 18 year olds that are wanting some side work. In the beginning, eight years ago, everything was new and everything was overwhelming. Okay, how are we going to do this? And now a lot of it is just so second nature. I've done it a million times. I just, like Hannah said, I just need a second set of hands. In the beginning, it was like, all right, let's figure out how to package this. Let's figure out how to lift this. Let's figure out how to put it in the back of the car or whatever. Now it's just, let's make sure we're not knocking over the urn, you know, the nightstand.

10:50Yeah, on the man. You got it all dialed in now. Sidehustlenation.com slash share town is my direct referral link if you want to learn more. I'll be right back with Matt and Hannah with some of their marketing best practices. Hey, we got this inventory, but if we want to get paid, now we got to sell it. That's coming up right after this. There are less than 100 days left in 2025, which means less than 100 days left to hit those goals that you said or to refocus your energy on what really matters. If you've got some catching up to do and maybe you've been procrastinating on taking that next step, our sponsor Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the role you need to fill and find them fast.

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13:13That's q u o.com slash side hustle. Look at them getting that three letter domain q u o.com slash side hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service quo, we'll port them over and no extra charge. Whoa, no missed calls, no missed customers. Okay, so you get them home three or four at a time, clean them up. You do a do individual listing photographs? Or is it just like, hey, this is the brand, this is the model number that we have and we're going to throw up a generic listing for that piece of inventory. Photos, I feel like are one of the most important pieces of the puzzle because you can have a really nice mattress and it can be staged with terrible lighting and it's going to sell for less or not quickly versus you could have a more used mattress, but if it's staged or just not as nice of a model or something, but the photo is awesome.

14:07I mean, think about anytime that you're going on Facebook marketplace to look for an item even the things that are around it. I'm like, oh, she has a cute home. She must be nice and her house is clean. You know, you're very subtle, like positioning. Yeah. Yes. But those things add up. I'm like, oh, I like the pictures that she has in her background. So I don't try to worry too much about those types of things because that can get very work heavy. But we try to stage them where we can. Some of them are in our own home. Some of them we've staged in a garage or a storage facility. And then we also do share some resources.

14:38There are reps that are elsewhere in the country. It's gotten a little bit trickier because there are so many reps that I really don't want to be utilizing the same photos as anybody else that's in my area because there are plenty of people and I don't want it to look spammy. It can look spammy if we're using the same photos as someone else is using the photos that we're using. Yeah. So we try to stage as many as we can and take pictures of them as we can. And then we just kind of will reuse the same. So it's not like I'm taking a new picture for every single item we get, but I can pull from the previous one of the same model and list it again.

15:12But often people will ask, can I see photos of the item? And then we'll just take pictures of it and send it over. So because we take because we do take pictures of everything. But as far as listing goes, sometimes we do use staged. Yeah, we use staged photos for the item, not the exact item. Make it look good. I feel like this is a story from the early days of Airbnb where people were throwing up just these dark backlit, you know, real sketchy pictures of wondering why nobody is booking this place. And so they would sign in the professional photographer to take like the wide angle, you know, brightly lit picture.

15:44Oh, look at the difference that made in the bookings. So, so far, no money has changed hands. You didn't have to pay the customer that you went and picked the thing up from. Now you've got it listed. all the Facebook marketplace best practices, like you mentioned, having really nice pictures and an accurate description of what it is, the brand, the model, all of this stuff. Anything else you're doing to make your listings stand out here? Well, I would say one of the big things is that we have a ton of reviews. So Hannah does a lot of work to request reviews and then to, or ratings. Yeah. And then also give ratings to people that buy from us.

16:19So it kind of inspires or spurs them to say, I'll rate you back. So Hannah has a lot of five-star reviews on her page that makes people say, oh my gosh, used mattress might sound a little weird, but look at all these people who have said that it was a great experience. So that is a huge differentiator for us. And I can't always pretend to understand the algorithms on Facebook because I think they change all the time. So it's always a guessing game. And I've learned over the years to try not to stress myself out trying to figure out what is going to get my view, my listings viewed the most, you know, but definitely in my head, if I can mark something as sold and get a good review and all that is going to tell Facebook that, Hey, this is legit.

17:03Yes. Keep showing my items. But I think something that I would say my number one tip, and I think this applies to a lot of side hustles is just consistency. I post mattresses every single day. And I've posted mattresses every single day for eight years. They seem to reward like the recency of that listing. So yeah, and then it's just I just think old stuff just becomes stale and stops getting views and stuff like that. If I've got something up that's getting lots of attention, I think that again, the way algorithms work, it's telling other people to keep clicking on it because wow, look how many people have already clicked on it.

17:39But if something just like for whatever reason didn't get any traction, I'll take it down. I might change the photo or change the ad a little bit and just repost it. And I just do it over and over. And I think that is a big difference because getting the item is hard work and time consuming, but relatively straightforward. I think that people can get discouraged because they aren't moving things. And I think that all has to do with selling things. Yes. They're not selling things. They're like, man, I picked all these up. Everybody says it's great, but they're not selling. I think that the big difference maker is how much like energy they're putting into that item, you know?

18:21Is it all Facebook marketplace or are there other channels that you like for reselling? We use some other ones. Facebook is definitely the most lucrative or the, you know, the biggest bang for our buck as far as time yields the most sales. Yeah, for sure. Offer up is pretty good. I've seen that kind of decline recently. I don't know why, but that we We haven't, we used to get, there's a time there where we were getting quite a lot of interest there. We still get some every week from that, but, and then we used to use Craigslist, but I feel like the bigger the other ones get, the less people are utilizing something like Craigslist or whatever your local, you know, online.

18:5810, 20 years ago, Craigslist was the only game in town and that was the place to go for all this furniture stuff. Yeah. So I think it's kind of slowly dwindling out. I used to make a point to list there because again, that consistency mindset, I've always been like, I'm going to put some effort into every single avenue so that I have no reason. Then I know I did everything I could do. Does ShareTown give you a pricing guidance on, well, this is the product that you have. This is like suggested list price or anything like that, or based on the condition of it, like maybe it's a sliding scale. Every item has what we call a minimum ad price.

19:31So that's all based off of numbers that they found to be successful for that item. So you're able to list above that price if you want to, but you can't list below that price. And that kind of helps so that we're not undercutting other people in our area or, you know, that type of things. And then they have a set price per item that we're required to pay once we sell it. And so you have some room because people are going to negotiate on Facebook Marketplace. So you kind of know your, you know, your floor. and you're able to say, well, if it hasn't moved for a while, maybe it's worth it to take a lower price and just, and clear it out.

20:08Totally. Yeah. And we can take less than that. We just can't advertise it for less. So if somebody comes in and offers us less, we can take that. But yeah, we used to kind of have a little bit more room, but now that we're not the only people in our area doing this, there's quite a few. We can't get away with listing at much above minimum ad price anymore just because they can go somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Talk to me about the payment logistics because you're going to receive payment in cash Venmo. Well, who knows what or maybe you like since you've done so many of these like do you have like a little square reader or something like that?

20:45Yeah. So we use all of that. I would say that we try to steer people toward Venmo and cash more than anything else. And just because we're really comfortable with those quick, reliable. Yeah. And we use Zelle. We do use the square reader, but you know, it charges a fee. And so a lot of people don't want to do that just because it makes it end up costing a little bit more for them. Let's say you take the payment, say it's$800. And now you have to report that sale to share to, Hey, we sold this one. We picked it up last week, we sold it. And now they're going to want their cut there, say 600, if we're going to aim for that$200 profit per average.

21:22And so is that sale, what triggers that? Do you have to manually report once a day, once a week what moved? Typically, you will mark it as sold upon the sale, and you can even send the customer a receipt through that app. So now Sharetown knows that you've sold that item. You write in how much you sold it for, all of that. And then every Monday, it prompts you to pay for all of the ones that you've sold in the previous week. Do you find people coming to pick this stuff up from the storage unit and, you know, open up the door and seeing like a wall of mattresses and be like, these guys are like dealers?

21:58Well, it's funny because people will ask what I do for work. And I'm like, well, how much time do you have? Because if I just say I sell used mattresses out of a garage or out of a storage unit, it sounds nefarious or weird. So we do have people who are like unprepared, I think, for like what it is that we do. and I'll open up a storage unit and they're like, what is going on? But you spend two minutes explaining what it is and it just clicks. People get it. When we first started doing it, I felt like people were really, really skeptical because I think even then buying a mattress online and having it delivered to your door was a very new concept.

22:33But now I feel like people are aware. I feel like they've bought mattresses from these companies themselves or they know people that do. It's just become a lot more commonplace. And I think a large majority of people are like, oh yeah, I can go get one this way, you know? At least relative to what it was before. And us having all of those good reviews on Facebook really helps with that. But like literally yesterday, somebody came to look at a mattress and was like, I'm a little skeptical about buying anything used. Like, can you please pitch me on why I shouldn't be? And I was able to talk through it and just gave them a good customer experience and they walked away with a mattress.

23:10So like - I mean, they've been able to see my profile where I have dozens of mattresses listed We've got over 700 reviews, you know, like, so it's not terribly surprising usually once they come show up. Yeah, we had a guy years ago whose specialty, his flipping specialty was appliances. So same thing, open up the door to the garage and it's, you know, wall to wall, washers and dryers. And so people would be like, yeah, they pause for a second and then it's like, well, I still want the thing, you know, even though you're clearly in the business. But this is, what is the storage unit cost on a monthly basis?