I never intended to retail parts but being on the rural fringe my deliveries can take forever and then some .
The suburb is 1/2 inside the Sydney delivery zone & 1/2 out so the city drivers get given my deliveries then get to the river realize I am on the other side then take it back
Two to four days later the regional deliveries sub-contractor drops them off .
Add weekends and this pushes every job to 2 weeks minimum and we all know what it is like tripping over 1/2 finished jobs .
When I was a kid we were dirt poor so whenever there was a really cheap special mum would get all of us to go to that store & buy the bag limit to stock the pantry.
Thus while we hd no money the pantry had near 6 months worth of staple food items & we never went hungry .
I do the same thing now days so when Covid hit it was no problems & when I became ill it was no problem .
The business stock is run the same way.
When I started I marked up all parts 100% and doubled every order thus whatever I fitted, I always had a spare which was good cause I buggered up a few jobs so there was always a second chance to bugger it up right away and in theory I had a part I would be likely to need again .
Add to that was the monthly specials , same as when I was a kid, if the discount is big enough I buy lots .
Soon it became known that I had lots of parts & people just started to call by and in particular I had lots of very old parts ( these were the heavily discounted parts ) so a lot of the stuff I paid very little for got sold at full retail which end up being at 300 % to 600 % profit
Belts are the biggest line, There is around 1500 of them and that has been a life saver as now I can try a series of 1/2" shorter belts to compensate for worn pulleys & linkages then you tell the customer that I have fitted a x " shorter belt and that saved them $ 150 ( or more ) on a new stack pulley and the shorter belts will give them another y years .
Many of those belts were bought for $ 5 and have a full retail of $ 50 to $ 100 .
AS I started to get more commercial customers I made the effort to find out what consummables they all used & if I could get the same items , sell it to them heavily discounted over the price they are paying . The big boxes offer most a 10% discount but I can go 30 % to 50 % and still make a profit . Thus to pick one item, I go through around 100 x 5lb rolls of selected trimmer lines a year and while it is a small mark up, it is a mark up that I would not have gotten otherwise and of course they use it all the time so any time an order is short of the free delivery limit I just add a roll of two of trimmer line . Add to that ear plugs, gloves , spats safety glasses / face shields batteries & blades and it adds up to a tidy amount that would have never come my way . Even better is they talk to each other so right now I supply nearly all of the mowing contractors .
They send me a text , I make up a box, pop the invoice in it & leave it out for them to pick up when they go past . Easy money .
And for then next 5 to 10 year, interest rates will be so low that money in the bank is worthless so stock on the floor is a far better investment .
Add to that it makes he shop look really professional .
THink about all the videos you have looked at .
If in the background you see lots of parts hanging on the wall you think "professional" , if you see lots of tools widely spaces & arranged pretty you think "hobbist" if you see almoost nothing but junk you think "ego maniac idiot " .
