Wednesday, July 25, 2012

K-Mart Update

In a recent blog, I wrote about finding toys on clearance for $1.99 and $4.99 at K-Mart.   Since I am continually in scouting mode, I decided to revisit K-Mart today during my lunch hour to see if they had any clearance toys left, or had restocked the clearance shelves.

Much like my first visit, I was disheartened when I didn’t see any $1.99 and $4.99 signs.  And, also like my first visit, I wasn’t satisfied, so I grabbed a toy that I knew had been $1.99 last week, and took it to the nearest price scanner.

99 cents.

Holy cow.

Semi-excited, I walked back to the clearance aisle to find three K-Mart associates re-pricing the clearance toys to 99 cents.  Trying to be as unobtrusive as I could, as they repriced a toy, I grabbed it, scanned it on my phone to determine return on my $.99 investment, and either put it in my buggy, or back on the shelf.  All told, I grabbed 28 new toys and games. 

Speaking of the toys, over the weekend, I finally had time to get the first batch of toys ready to ship to Amazon for sale through their FBA program.

For FBA, I use a third-party service called FBA Power (www.fbapower.com), which makes the whole process of labeling sale items so much easier.  It also keeps track of how many of each toy I send, as well as the total value of each shipment.  I shipped 31 toys in four large boxes, including this Baby Alive doll.



Remember her?  She’s the doll that randomly makes baby noises, and bounces up and down for no apparent reason, and scares me in the middle of the night.  Well, I didn’t have the foresight to turn her off before shipment …

Yes, you guessed it.   As I am carrying in my boxes at the UPS store, this annoying little girl starts making baby noises, and bouncing up and down, which made my box look like something was alive in it.  The employees had a dubious look on their faces as I explained the situation, and expressed my worry that the chatty toy might somehow affect the shipment.  One employee then said that as long as the baby doesn’t yell for help, it should be OK. 

We all got a good-natured laugh at that.

Fortunately, the boxes made it to Amazon without incident. Now, I’m just waiting for Amazon to check them in, and start selling them for me.

1 comment: