Bulk Buying and Small Business (Our $100 GC Winner Shares the Scoop)
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Photo credit:
Flickr / Hey Paul Awhile back we invited small business owners to share how a membership to Sam’s Club may help them save money in this tough economy. We received great feedback from many small businesses, but only ONE got the prize and a chance to share their experience in a post on Wise Bread. Hear how much our winner really saved, and some more tips for keeping a business (or home) more affordably with our own bulk-buying methods.
Chrysa Duran from Jinxy Media was chosen to participate in the challenge, getting a $100 gift card to Sam’s and a one year business membership to grant her access to the bulk-buying mecca. Jinxy Media focuses mainly on online media sales (books, CD’s, DVD’s, etc) and incurs mucho shipping costs as a result.
According to Sam’s Club:
More than 600,000 small business owners rely on Sam’s Club everyday to run their stores, day care centers, restaurants and home offices. In order to show its support of main street entrepreneurs, the warehouse club launched the Small Business Savings Drive and committed to visiting 100,000 small businesses and identifying $270 million in savings by the end of National Small Business Week.
So how did Jinxy Media do in its cost-comparison exercise?
Chrysa gave us a report back after she worked with Sam’s to see how she could save money. Her verdict? She realized that she probably could get lower prices on her office and shipping supplies (mostly bubble wrap, mailers, and other shipping necessities) by shopping online. The benefit to using Sam’s, however, was that it was a one-stop shop for her. (There’s nothing fun about placing several orders or going all over the web to put together a hodge-podge collection of the lowest prices.) The convenience factor was what won her over, something that is important to many small businesses these days (not to mention how much you can save in shipping costs when only buying in-club from one supplier).
So is a club membership a good deal for you?
While I can’t attempt to answer what is obviously a very personal question (Sam’s met with business owners one-on-one to help determine the same thing), we do have some general advice to those looking to save big by shopping big. Here are our favorites:
Bulk Food Bin Bags (How I got Mine for Cheap)
Shop In Stores with Concrete Floors
Bulk-Buying Tea (Ultimate in Cheap Drinking) via QueerCents
Buying in Bulk to Save Money on Meat (with photos!) via CommonSenseWithMoney
Congrats again to our winner! To read more about Chrysa, visit her blog at http://thriftyjinxy.blogspot.com and for more Sam's Club small business tips, see their site, too at http://www2.samsclub.com/smallbusiness/?est=371&mid=smallbusiness
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