Business - State of being busy, A commercial activity
In reality, business is not about being busy or getting caught in slurries of activities. Business is simply about making money. even if you have a turnover of millions of Dollars and you have 500k in debt, its is not business - it is a trap. I have seen people trying to make their business big by taking debt and having huge marketing campaigns just to earn a little profit. If your small business is earning 10-20% percent profit, it is doomed.
Refurbishing - Taking a broken product for low price and fixing it and then selling it for a lower price than original(with a one year warranty).
Let's say that you are refurbishing mac-books -
- You have to buy them from people who have done unspeakable things with it and you will pay them upfront.
- You bought them assuming some problem, but after opening it you come across another problem and you have to fix that too - spending more money.
- Cleaning job is very important to make them look like new.
- Opening an ebay account and selling them there at shared profits.
- You have to give one year warranty too.
What is the problem with it?
- Technology is getting cheaper everyday. company is selling same mac-books at cheaper rates because they have a new line of mac-books.
- you are selling these at 60-70% of the original price. why would a customer buy an outdated price for a product at that price when company is selling them for 70% price now?
- Warranty comes at a real cost because old laptops have old motherboards and sometimes they get their fuses broken.
- profit margin is low and there is no uniformity of performance in two mac-books.
here is a mac from an independent refurbisher
Here is the same refurbished mac from apple
Here is a new mac from apple which is much better than old versions and price is just 35% higher
Notice the price difference?
Why a customer shouldn't buy a refurbished product?
as a buyer, you are buying it for productivity. warranties are all good but it is important that these shouldn't get broken at the first place. repairs take upto 15 days. I wouldn't put sensitive data in a refurbished product.
What is the solution?
Refurbishing is certainly a noble cause because it saves the world from a lot of junk. But a business should be a win-win for everyone. Until the business finds a way to get prices lower than 40% of the original prices, this is doomed. Companies are well equipped with tools to refurbish products and therefore they can invest in this business(but they want to sell new products too and hence they will not sell refurbished products at much lower prices)