Business Opportunities Weblog

January 5, 2010 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

With toy store shelves and television commercials chock full of eye-popping video games and fancy tech playthings, it came as a surprise to many that some of the hottest toys this holiday season were inexpensive, relatively low-tech battery-powered hamsters imported from China called Zhu Zhu Pets, according to a story at CNet.com.

For avid eBay sellers, it was the perfect recipe for profits–if they managed to jump on the trend early enough.

Jorge, a field inspector for a Southern California insurance company, had no idea what Zhu Zhu Pets were when his daughter asked for one for her seventh birthday late in the summer. “She saw the commercial on TV and asked me for a Zhu Zhu Pet,” “I went to my local Toys-R-Us, where I have friends who work there. I asked for the Zhu Zhu Pets. They didn’t even know what it was. They had four of them, but they’d promised them to some lady in LA.”

This is what piqued Jorge’s interest: He, and his local Toys-R-Us, are hundreds of miles away from Los Angeles. Someone far away was looking for these toys, which signaled to him that they must have been, for one reason or another, difficult to obtain. This was relevant to Jorge because, as a side project, he’d been selling toys on eBay for about a year.

The story began, as so many do these days, with unfortunate circumstances induced by the recent recession. “The reason why I got into eBay was that I was laid off from work. I was off work for about 10 months,” he related to CNET.

As the parent of a young child, he had an in-house market research indicator. And when he found a new full-time job, he had to accept a significant salary cut, so he kept selling toys. “Going through eBay has afforded me to survive.”

He ended up buying seven Zhu Zhu Pets, all for the market price of about $8. He kept one for his daughter’s birthday. The rest, he put on eBay. They were sold the same day.

Continue Reading: “For eBay Sellers, A Holiday Hamster Hangover”

Photo by Cepia LLC.

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Tags: Ebay & Online Auctions, Ecommerce, Fad