Starting a business selling wheels

[M.Doban]

Here's the idea: buy used wheels from wherever I can find them (most of you know where to look), restore them is need be or financially beneficial, and sell them for profit. If all goes well I would like to start a small business doing this.

The reason I post is this: what are your opinions and advice? Although this is mainly a European car site, and I plan on concentrating mainly on classic Japanese wheels, I want to know what you think. As of now, I see nobody really doing this for vintage Japanese wheels. Sure pandagarage has a couple wheels for sale. Same really for memoryfab for wheels under 16". Are they not making money in this area because they can't? Or because they aren't trying?

Right now there are a few wheels on some Japanese auction sites I watch that, even with the shipping and handling calculated and added, I feel a profit could be had.

Discuss.

[Dudermagee]

lolol
Vrwheels.com
memoryfab.com
apt9wheels.com
just off the top of my head, unless you can bring over a large volume over on the cheap you are fucked.

[Kielan]

There are ton of places that do this already as you're aware.

But making money of small wheels, not really that easy I would imagine, as most people are running 16"+ on this "scene" outside of old Japanese cars, Mk1 VWs, and 30+ year old german cars, which aren't wildly popular, there isn't much of a huge demand for small wheels. And a lot of them are needed to be imported, which is good if you have a container or cheap ways to get them across the ocean, but I can't imagine it being easy to make money on them, especially since the market for them is pretty small.

My $.02.

[M.Doban]

You're right, that makes sense, Kielan. I was just looking around on ebay and other places for completed listings and none of the wheels really sold.

I'll keep researching it.

[320icar]

i suggest keep it has a hobby. do your regular 9-5 job, come home and look at japan yahoo or wtv. but for the sake of keeping a roof over your head, i'd say stick to a hobby. that way its fun and you dont lose the love of refinishing the wheels

[Ant]

I think you could make a little, but i doubt it'd be much. Provided you set your limits on the wheels you were buying and researched what sort of money you could get for them, there may be a windfall. I also imagine you would buy supplies in bulk or more cheaply at least to refurbish with allowing the cost of that to be spread over more sets of wheels.

Certainly wheels go for less than they would cost outside of Japan quite often, and if you know what people want and can seek it out there would be some money to be made there. But it may take some time to get them to move that's all. Also you may need to factor in shipping from you to around the world as this would open your market up a large amount but add costs.

The other option is if you are quite good at finding wheels on there and know what people want, try taking requests from people for wheels and quote them up delivered and refurbed based on what you can see on there at the time. Then ask for deposit up front or something along those lines and then hopefully you can make a specified profit so you know what youre going to make for a set before you even bid on it.

[hexagone]

I paid my way through college buying cars and wheels.

Those days are gone with now every other person hawking the classifieds and wanting the maddest stance, yo.

[electricalbox]

I paid my way through college buying cars and wheels.

Those days are gone with now every other person hawking the classifieds and wanting the maddest stance, yo.

QFT, everyone is looking everywhere for everything now. Not to mention the older days of people cleaning out storage and selling old wheels, now it is almost impossible to not figure out what you have and price accordingly, even if you are completely ignorant to automobiles.

Cliffs if you aren't getting surplus of wheels from overseas by freight:

Tons of time looking online
A lot of competition all over US for people trying to do the same thing
Dealing with people
Driving long distances
Hoping they will sell
Etc.

Out in so cal, there are people doing this for a living, but they aren't looking to make big and don't value their time as much. Sometimes you will get lucky and find a 1,000 dollar set for 200 bucks, but more than likely, the guy devoting all day to searching and making about 5 bucks and hour on average will call/drive out/pick them up before you see the ad.

I was buying/selling a lot of wheels for the past 3 years now along with my career. First year was awesome, now I am lucky to find a decent turnaround on a set of wheels a month.

BOL with your goals for it

[OOMPH!]

People are cheap as f *ck when it comes to the wheel market, you will not be able to make a living off that.

[electricalbox]

People are cheap as f *ck when it comes to the wheel market, you will not be able to make a decent living off that.

FTFY, people do it all the time out here, but IDK how their living situation is.

[M.Doban]

Good info. Thanks a lot, guys! I like the "keep it a simple hobby" idea. Maybe I'll just stick with that. Thanks again for all the info and ideas!

[tomshouse516]

I do it as a hobby, you can make some money but not a killing

[MrNiceGuy]

I was doing this as a hobby for a little while, I had to deal with so many flakey people it got old and I gave up. I do have a pretty baller stash of wheels for me and my wifes cars now though.