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

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Andrew Waites’ eBay business was launched with the help of 50 Kenneth Cole leather jackets. But the story of his success really begins four years before the coats came into his possession. In the mid-1990s, Waites, who received an MBA from Regents University in Virginia, was employed in the school’s development office, where he worked with big-money donors.

Bill Hudson, who ran Hudson’s Salvage in Mississippi, came to campus to deliver a speech about his business. Waites was intrigued by Hudson’s business model. The company bought damaged and overstocked merchandise and then resold them at its own value-priced stores throughout Mississippi and Alabama. Hudson’s Salvage, which runs Treasure Hunt and Dirt Cheap stores, buys retail products that are “someone else’s problem”—things like closeouts, leftovers from bankruptcies, freight salvage, end-of-season merchandise, and irregulars.

Hudson’s Salvage started from adversity. The company’s founder, H.C. Hudson, owned a grocery store in Palmer’s Crossing, Mississippi, that caught fire. Hudson bought the smoke-damaged groceries from the insurance adjuster and literally ran a fire sale, advertising “Smoky Groceries, 50% Off.” The customer response was so overwhelming, H.C. Hudson found himself in a new retail business, and he searched the country for other distressed products to sell at deep discounts in his Mississippi grocery store.

Waites, who worked with the university’s biggest donors and was ready to test out ...