I'm sitting here writing this, waiting for the sales rep for a well-known decorative item company to come round to discuss our request to stock their product in the new eBay shop we'll be opening after the Easter break. You might think this sort of deal may be beyond most eBayers, but it's not a scary as all that. To get to this stage we simply picked up one of their items in a shop, read the details on the label, and emailed the company.

The minimum order isn't into thousands of pounds, in fact it's less than the minimum order you would expect to have to make from many wholesalers.

I would even go as far as to suggest it is probably a great deal easier for us to do this than to negotiate with a company on the far side of the world, where the price is often right, but the issues of shipping, import charges, quality and most importantly communication cast a long shadow over what could be an very happy arrangement.

The point is, just because the big money powrsellers get their stuff by the containerload from China, it doesn't mean you have to. By doing something simple as contacting the manufacturer/producer direct can cut out a lot of middlemen, hassle and expense. If they are a smallish company (don't try this tactic with Nokia or Nike) they are usually quite happy to hear from you, and will let you buy smallish amounts, especially if you want multiples of one single item.

Another great source are overstocks from your local retailers, more typically in the clearance outlet type retail villages. Don't speak to the folks behind the counter, ask for the manager, or get the number of the regional sales manager.

The perfect time to do this is as stores move stock around for seasonal changes. You see the high street stores send their last season stock to the outlets - but the outlets don't always have somewhere to move their stock on to. In the majority they have to store it or sell it. As they are a shop, selling it is what they'd rather do.

If you are aware of this type of opportunity, you can do things like get like: you see an entire shelf full of mugs with an rrp of £8.99 each marked down to £1.50 because they need the space for Xmas stock, a chat with the manager gets the price down to 88p each if you take the lot, and sell them gradually on eBay over the next four months for £4.99 each.

You see, there is no lack of things to sell that can be be obtained at reasonable prices. It is how that stock is presented to the eBay buyers that is the difference between profit and loss, success and failure. There are more factors to sucess on eBay than just the answer to the question - "What do you sell ?"

Thanks for reading.

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