custom built PC's

S

sjhaycroft

Geek Trainee
me and my friend are thinking of starting a small web based company up specialising in the sale of custom built pc's and parts. just wondering if there is much money to be made in such an industry? and how would we go about ordereing in bulk, like where do you actually order from. thank you
 
I think that it would be a slow start at first and that you would need a lot of capital in order to get the parts in, but once you get known and you have a steady client base, you should be alright.

You usually get parts from a supplier, not directly from nvidia or amd:P you should check out your local or nearest supplier and usually ordering in bulk is the way to go, because if you run out of one item, you would have to wait a couple of weeks (or maybe less) to get one.

hope these help.
ps: if you do want to start a website, dont hesitate to contact me, I can do it for you.
 
To get the products you need to contact a wholesaler...like Ingram Micro UK
As Zeus mentioned, buy products in bundles...which is good to get more discount but again, if your company is small then there is no use of buying stuff in big quantity because you might not be able to sell all the products and Hardware prices drops down very fast. You will be facing loss....
Third thing which you can decide is to sell a particular brand products...like HP (which is number one in the world at the moment)...More your annuall gross sales figures increases..more benefits you will start getting from them. I work in HP so I know about it....

With the web based company, it might take lots of time to get the traffic coz you need to have proper adds for your website nd then customer satisfaction(wich is main part).
 
I think that gaining some considerable profit will cost a lot of time and resources. But the experience gained, if just for personal use, will be huge. Respect for considering such an idea, cause I know I'd be much,much more careful and thinking.
 
One way of ensuring constant cash flow is 'bread and butter' stuff like selling nicknacks like USB pens etc. You get these by the ton from far east wholesalers for literally pennies and sell them for quite a profit on eBay or classified. Some of these wholesalers can either sell you PC parts or help you contact wholesalers who do. Obviously you will need to shift hundreds of 'nicknacks' to make sure you always have some cash coming while you develop the more lucrative part of the business.

In any case you still need the initial cash to start off....
 
I think you'll find it hard to compete against the likes of Dell, who really can get components cheap and they sell themselves with the marketing history.

I'd think very carefully about it, plan well and see if you can make the business sustainable.
 
Keep in mind that you're probably not going to compete on price with the likes of Dell and HP. Where you can make headway is with service. If something doesn't work, you can't just say "Hey, that's not our product." and leave it go. You may not sell certain software or be a programmer, but if a customer, or potential customer does ask for help, you're going to need to give them that help. This isn't to say you'll have an immediate answer, but if you're genuinely willing to take a look, you can win them over. (Obviously, this doesn't include those rare turds that want to cause hell, but most of the time, customer service plays a big part.)
If you provide great customer service, not having the lowest price won't be so bad. Sure, you'll loose some potential customers, but not as much as if they hear about your service being bad. Put service first, followed by pricing. People are willing to pay a little extra for something if the service is good.

Depending on the scale, you may also want to look into insurance in case you run into trouble. I would make sure to specify what is and is not covered with repairs. I know the stores do not warranty against data loss. While I don't know the reasons behind it, I would guess that it's to protect the business from that type of thing. It's awfully hard to guarantee data recovery on a bad hard drive when you don't have the tools to do so. There's just a lot of potential liability that I see with guaranteeing data there.
 
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