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Comment by skellington | Hacker News Reader

Why can't I just buy it off AliExpress for $6000 + $50 shipping?

He talks about some of the extras he did in the post. Assembly, testing and pre-purchase inspections. I assume some of the markup will be removed when others enter the niche.

You can also find some deals on branded equipment on gov auction sites. People are buying lots there, refurbishing when required and reselling for similar markups.

All of the options require a bit of legwork and elbow grease.

Having the combination of capital to buy an entire shipping container of these and also put in the months of work to sell them for a $60k profit seems like an uncommon combination. Like I’d personally find it super cool but I don’t have $100k in cash to gamble on this

Because all the BS rent seeking parties you have to deal with as part of international shipping will make that $6k excavator 12-15k. A lot of costs are fixed per shipment hence buying container fulls and reselling.

And the Alibaba importer is going to care a lot more about satisfying a potentially repeat $100k importer over a one time $5k buyer, and when you purchase large orders like this you can set quality standards for your products and the seller is on the hook if the products do not match the listed requirements.

Basically, you're paying more but they're taking all of the hassle and worry and a large part of the risk out of the operation for their cut and you're not paying much more than you otherwise would for the service.

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