Welcome to Ghost Business - where mediocre business ideas go to launch or die

This week's agenda:

• College Summer Junk

• What Dall-E Thinks We Meant

• Viability Score

College Summer Junk

Getting your college dorm set up is fun, and admittedly, fairly wasteful. We buy all this new stuff, bed, couches, desks, kitchen items, chairs, you name it. Often only used for the year or two, only to be discarded at the end of the year when the student moves back home or to another place on campus.

Seeing these kids head off to summer, you'll often find gold. Barely used microwaves, furniture and house hold goods that are discarded because 1) Students are moving back home where they already have all that stuff and 2) there are no buyers because all of the other students are trying to get rid of their stuff as well. 

The supply is far out-weighing demand.

So the wheels started turning 🛞 🔥 

If you are on campus (or live next to one), you can acquire all of the gently used items and throw them in storage for the summer. When class gets back in session in the fall, sell all the goods to incoming and returning students for a massive (huuuge) profit.

What would this look like?

I would go to the wealthiest university in my area. Wait until finals and hand out flyers to students saying you'll take their gently used items. You can boast about being "greener" for re-using goods, providing used items for those who have a tight budget, yadda yadda, you know how to play the game. 

Look for items that have high value, great shelf life and small (the more you can fit in storage the better).Throw that stuff in storage for the summer and go back out to that school and nearby schools, to hand out flyers that you have gently used goods for sale.

Even better, just put it on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and similar sites for people to come and collect directly from you!

Your biggest expense would be the storage unit would can be less than $100/mo. You could even try to sell the items directly on used goods sites to pay for the first few months. Anything you don't sell you can donate for tax purposes. 

Scalability:

• This is incredibly easy to scale. Start small on a nearby campus. As you get bigger you can afford larger storage units and even buy some better selling items for a larger markup.

• Once you get too big for that school, open up shop at another school. You can check the online schedules for schools that go into summer on different dates so you can manage multiple schools at the same time. Then hire out kids to do this at their schools.

• Bonus points if you're able to convince a school to do a "flea market" at the beginning of the year and offload the majority of your goods at once. Selling point is your providing a service to the students, this is reducing the schools waste, and you can give them a cut of your sales.

Viability: 

1 [building spaceships hard] to 5 [easy peasy]

This business is a 5 ghosts, SUPER EASY TO START. You need very little money to get this off the ground and would only take about a weekend to get going. You would start by taking the FREE discarded items and selling them. All profit.

The hardest part might be moving the items if you don't have a truck or are too young to rent one.