The lifecycle of used books ordered online is quite
different from books that are donated to thrift stores.
Thrift stores go through their donations, and discard, more
or less, 80% of what get's donated. The rest is discarded,
hopefully to be recycled. It is up to the sorter, to
determine
which books get kept, and generally, they keep
the ones that they know will move. What about those
other books?
Proposed service: provide equipment to thrift stores that
will allow them to:
- scan all incoming books, determining their worth
- post them online to be sold
- properly inventory books
- quickly mail books out
A service like this would provide the following advantages:
- money made from an otherwise wasted resource
- books saved (reuse is always better than recycle)
- higher profit by allowing you to see the value of the
books donated (2 weeks a go i bought a books for 50 cents,
it was worth about $40 on ebay.
The service can be run, in my opinion, 2 different ways:
1. service is based within the thrift shop, operated by their
own employees, and a percentage goes to the providers of
the equipment/service.
2. the equipment providers (or franchise owners) take
many, if not all, of the books from the thrift shop and
retail them online. A percentage of the revenue goes to
the thrift shop.
It could be a really bare bones setup, and would benefit all
involved.