Hover Boards A Hot Selling Product But Is It Worth The Risk?

 Hover Boards A Hot Selling Product

I work with a lot of eBay sellers, Amazon sellers, and e-Commerce business owners who hire me to help them find hot selling products as well as suppliers.

Recently one of the hottest new trends is "Hover Boards". Hover boards are very similar to a Segway which you are probably familiar with, however unlike the segway which has a handle for the rider, the hover boards are just a platform you stand on with no handle bars.

If you browse the internet you'll find hover boards ranging as low as $160 to as much as $1600. The crazy thing is all of these are essentially all the exact same item, comming from a handful of the same factories, in the same city, in China.

The ones at the higher end of the price are often "Private Labeled" or "White Labeled". All this means is that some buyers pay the factory an extra buck or two per board to print their name or logo o the board. This gives the impression of it being different from the rest and adds a perceived higher value. Many Amazon and eBay sellers do this same process with everything from phone cases to yoga mats, and many other products. At the end of the day however, that seller is selling a $160 board for $1600 and the only difference is the logo.

Getting back to these Hover Boards being hot selling items. They are the rage on Youtube with almost all the videos getting hundreds of thousands if not millions of views. Many of the Youtube pranksters are using these in their video. They are a hot selling item on eBay and Amazon and there is definately an opportunity to make money with these.

Personally I'm selling hover boards on Craigslist and I can't get them in fast enough to fill the demand. They also sell very well on both eBay and Amazon, however every one on both sites is being dropshipped from China which means the lead time is well over a month.  If someone were to actually stock these in the states and was able to ship out quickly and have them delivered quickly they could make a killing. Everone would order from the person with the shortest lead time as nobody wants to wait a month to get an item like this, they are anxious to get it. If you had these hover boards on Amazon FBA for Prime Shipping you would dominate the market. I would wager that you'd easily do a couple hundred thousand Dollars a month in sales on either platform, eBay or Amazon. 

The Risky Part Of Selling Hover Boards

Selling Hover Boards could be incredibly lucrative, but also very risky; and let me tell you why.

These Hover Boards are awesome, there's no denying that. The problem however is how well will they hold up? They are relatively new so they've only been in the states for a few months and there's been a very small number bought here in the states thus far so we really don't know how well they will hold up over time. If you read product reviews on Amazon or sites like Alibaba, DHGate, or AliExpress there's many rave reviews, however there are also plenty of reviews saying how it was awesome for a week or month; but then stopped working.

When you sell on a platform like eBay or Amazon, customers typically have anywhere from 90 days to as long as 6 months to file a claim against you for item not as described. Even if your selling on your own website customers can do a credit card chargeback for up to 6 months. If you sell someone a hover board and 5 months later it breaks, many people who dropped $500 or more on a hover board are going to file a credit card chargeback against you. You will inevidibly lose this dispute and you are out a hover board plus the money the customer had paid you. Now granted on the wholesale level these boards probably only cost you somewhere between $160 and $260 depending upon how good a price you negotiated and how many you ordered but a few chargebacks could add up pretty quickly. Not only do you have to worry about the hover boards holding up to normal use, but some customers who "abuse" them, or not follow instructions, and will still file chargebacks and want their money back.

Add to that, that though not likely, potentially someone who busts their head open riding a hover board may come after you to try to sue you. After looking at all these complications and risks of selling hover boards on eBay, Amazon, through a website, or even private labeling and wholesaling them, I've decided it's not something I want to venture into.

Hover Board Scooters

It is and would be EXTREMELY lucrative, but to me the risks outweigh the rewards. You have to judge for yourself whether you feel the same way; or if you'd like to make a go of starting a hover board business.

Now I should add, I do think buying hover boards wholesale and selling them on Craigslist for cash is not a bad business model. It's more time consuming and harder to scale than doing a similar thing online. You will also be limited regionally to people in your area since your not accepting cards and shipping, however as it's a cash transaction there's no credit card disputes or chargebacks to worry about.

That's that, just wanted to bring to your attention this new hot selling product and lucrative opportunity. It's up to you as to whether the risks outweigh the rewards or not. I'm curious to hear your guys opinions? Are you selling these online or do you plan to? What are the biggest challenges? What's your experience as far as how boards are holding up over time?