STAY AWAY FROM E-COMMERCE, THE MARGINS ARE JUST NOT THERE!!!!
Name me 10 guys who have made it in e-commerce, non PL, without owing the whole world money.
I did tax returns for Amazon guys. $10MM in sales with 1% margins is considered good.
Good for you. Maybe I'm naïve, but I've seen enough.
Even with 5% margins, and I'm referring to NI margins, (Chareidim just don't seem to get the difference between Gross Margin and Net Income), and 25% Inventory stocking, and an investor for 10%, you're -19.5% cash flow before you open shop.
But people live in LaLa land.
Duh. There are dozens of people that I know making massive profits in PL. Some just make a living, some make millions.
So eccomerce is more alive then ever.
it's fine to say "stay away from retail arbitrage".
Or even better, generally don't sell retail with not enough gross margins to cover basic overhead or even direct costs.. but only morons do that anyway... I agree there are way too many morons with asinine business plans. It frustrates me to no end..
But I would not steer people away from eccom. It is an industry that litterally finances and supports huge segments of our community. It has a very low bar for entry, doesn't require formal training, and can scale up rapidly. Many succeed.