Finding Furniture

This week has been dedicated to finding some nice furniture to refinish. I am looking to find the best furniture possible at the best price possible. I found two night stands and a dresser for fairly cheap that I am positive that I can make a profit on. I am finding out that it may be harder than I think to find the right piece of furniture for the right prices. I think that I will be able to hit my goal with just 4 or 5 pieces of furniture. Its very interesting to see what people value their things for. I went into a furniture store that bought used furniture from resorts that go out of business or are looking to upgrade the things that they had and i was surprised to find that these people were charging so much money for their used furniture that needed work refinishing. I am going to start refinishing these peices of furniture this week and see if i can finish them by next week and get them on the market.

Update

                 This week I have started to look for furniture and come up with the costs of refinishing. I have nailed down the specific types of furniture that I think that I will try to refinish. I will obtain only dressers, nightstands and coffee tables. These items are usually fairly easy to find and usually just have 4 sides to paint and refinish. I am thinking I will try to find furniture that is dated at least 20 years. Throughout the entire process of this business I have come up with a goal to profit and donate at least $250 to the cause. I have spent some time this week searching out possible marketing opportunities. I honestly think that craigslist will be my main source of business. I think the key will be making sure that they know that there are more than just one item for sale. I might set up a blog with pictures of product that they can click on from the craigslist ad so they can see the other items for sale.

Week 3

This week was fun. Writing the business plan has been really a lot of work. I have been thinking about what would be the best possible solution for what I have time for and I think that I have what I am going to do. My big business plan has really been fun to write down. It really has always been a dream to own my own business one day. Though as I keep writing down more and more things that I think we should do I am reminded of how hard it is to keep a small business like this running. It is all fun and games until you dont have any clients and you cannot make payroll and you are digging into your own pocket just to find enough money to buy the supplies you need at work. I often think though that I have never met a CEO who didnt have to go through that at one point or another. Its interesting to think that someday I could really start a business and actually have all of the decisions to make at my fingertips. For some reason my heart feel at home running something like this but the risk makes me not want to go home. I dont know if Ill ever be able to take the risk of opening my own firm. I dont always want to work for corporate America. I would like to make money work for me. I think the only way to do that is to get involved in my own business at some point. 

Ideas

This week has been spent trying to rack my brains of ideas that would be viable to start a business with. I was inspired by the Duck tours case study. I really did love studying what he did and how he did it. I loved that he went on a trek across the country just to find a new business idea. Ive thought to myself if that would be something that I would do. I have mostly been thinking about business ideas. I work full time at a new job as a Director of Marketing and have 2 kids. I was just called into the Young mens organization and I am really trying to think of something that I can do with the time that I can allocate. I do pretty well at fixing old furniture for my wife. I am thinking of making some kind of furniture business out of my current dated furniture and others that I can refurbish on craigslist. I think I am going to need more than $20 in capital. I feel like I might need about $100 to start the business. I think I will create a blog and post specific pieces of furniture on the blog that people can look at.