The eBay Millionaire: Titanium PowerSeller Secrets for Building a Big Online Business

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Inventory Solutions

Bob Buchanan and Greg Scheuer were facing certain unemployment in 2000. The audiovisual (AV) rental company where they both worked was relocating its central operations to the West Coast, and their department wasn’t making the move. Buchanan and Scheuer were tasked with one final job of shutting down and clearing out a local warehouse.

In that old warehouse, Scheuer and Buchanan discovered a gold mine.

Theirs isn’t some story from Antiques Roadshow. The two men didn’t uncover a priceless artifact hidden in the clogged warehouse. They found exactly what they expected to find—30,000 square feet full of used audiovisual equipment that no one wanted anymore. Anyone else would have written it off as junk and decided to throw it away. Indeed, that’s exactly what the pair’s employer did. “Throw it away,” he told them.

But Buchanan and Scheuer, blessed with the creativity and ingenuity of the soon-to-be-unemployed, decided there had to be a better fate than the Dump-ster for all that used equipment—not to mention a better fate for themselves than the unemployment line. They sparked on the idea of auctioning off the gear on eBay. Yes, the equipment was used and too out-of-date to be leased to rental customers seeking the very newest technology. But most of the items were still in good working order. At one time they’d been top-of-the-line and very expensive. Surely, the two coworkers thought, someone would be willing to buy these products.

Buchanan and Scheuer ...