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What's the general consensus on buying-tidying-selling bikes as a way of supplementing a salary and cutting down office hours?
A great way of losing your sanity and money.
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Don’t do it.
Have as few bikes as you can, treat them well. This made me happier. -
I worked (and still do on and off) for a company that specialised in this. Without going into too much detail it's essentially one guy based full time out of an independent bike shop. In order to support his salary and wages for myself and one other mechanic (both part time) we were turning around 30+ bikes a month typically valued at £500 and upwards on top of regular repair work.
In order to make enough money to make it viable as a business you need to be dealing in 'high end' bikes (think margins). The trouble with this is the people who have the means to buy what you're selling will probably want to try it beforehand. This is especially the case if you haven't got a brand/reputation behind you. So you need to be available for viewings or be willing to post. Then you're into the realm of postal returns. Which are a nightmare.
TL;DR It's doable, but difficult.
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I do a bit of this, more for fun than profit, but it all depends.. I have a fella who supplies me with bikes.. they range from £20-30, I buy them, give them a clean, new cables, tyres etc and sell on.. Best I did was a Raleigh for £25 which had full Shimano golden arrow and put £3 bar tape on it and sold for £125.. I also got a Kona mountain bike and blew the tyres up and made £80.. I just enjoy playing with bikes.. and I was off the bike for about 9 months with health issues, so it was a great way to potter at things when I couldn't ride.. I have 4 bikes sitting at the house needing attention at the minute!!
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I did this as a student. It was possible to start to learn about what the market demands. For example, an old out of service Raleigh Shopper/Twenty can be had for £20 on eBay. You can buy those and rebuild them, buying basic components to replace the busted parts and sell on for £100. Overall I made £20-£40 profit when I counted things like travel, cost of parts and consumables. Some might say a part time job pays better.
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What's the general consensus on buying-tidying-selling bikes as a way of supplementing a salary and cutting down office hours? @Dogtemple mentioned it previously and i had a brief chat with @littleK a while back about this, keen to find out what experiences people have had with this.
I don't earn a high salary so i wouldn't need to make much to make it work but as i'm someone that isn't very good at switching off i'd be concerned that mentally it could be a bit much (thinking about builds, listings, checking pm's etc).