My bank called me up one day and said they wanted me to purchase the contents of a house that they had sold, but everything needed to be out in six hours.
$10,000 for 1,200,000 Mylar balloons. That's all that was in the house. 7′ tall stacks of pizza box looking stacks of Mylar balloons. The two car garage was full, the hall ways were lined with boxes to the ceilings, the bedrooms and living room, and even the kitchen was filled with boxes of brand new, never inflated balloons. There were probably 1,000 different styles, shapes, colors and sizes.
I called a local store to see what retail was and at the time it was $2.50 to $5, with an average of about $4 each for the sizes that I was buying. I figured I could make some money on this deal.
I grabbed a U-Haul truck and all of my employees and started loading boxes. I was out of there with the last box loaded about four hours after the call.
Fortunately, I had space to store them all in my office building.
I retailed balloons for a year. That made my $10,000 back, plus an extra $4,000 profit, but I hadn't even sold hardly any balloons and after a little research, I could tell that the method of sealing that these were was going to be obsolete before too long.
I decided to wholesale the balance of the balloons.
The company that made the balloons was in Mexico. I found someone at a trade show that month that supplied the manufacturer with the Mylar material.
I said if you can find out the cost to make the balloons, I can sell these back to the manufacturer for below the cost of production.
When they told me the cost to manufacturer, I hit them with a $120,000 sales price. They offered $30,000 and we were in negotiations. We settled at $100,000.
I got $50,000 down when the 18-wheel truck came to pick them up. I got the balance when they were delivered… almost.
The Mexican Congress had changed a law the day before the truck entered Mexico. The new law took effect immediately. Every piece that entered the country had to have a printed label stating the material type, producing country, and some other information.
It was going to cost $10,000 in printing and labor to slap a sticker on every single balloon. They would not accept one sticker per box of 250 to 1,000 balloons. The truck driver unloaded and left the goods at the border while the job was being done.
A few weeks later, the buyer wired my $40,000 check as renegotiated.
I ended up with a net profit of $94,000. I worked on the project probably a total of a week out of the 15 months and enjoyed another unique experience.
I may even have a box or two of balloons left over in my garage. Yep, found some…still.