Hidden Clearance at Dollar General – can it make your Amazon arbitrage business more profitable?

Dollar General is one of the more popular stores for online arbitrageurs to source products as they sell a wide variety of items at very competitive prices. In this article we’re going to discuss Dollar General’s hidden clearance, as well as other ways you can leverage items for sale at Dollar General to significantly widen your profit margin.

What is “hidden clearance”?

Put simply, hidden clearance is where a retailer marks an item down, but doesn’t change the sticker price – so the only way you’d know it was on sale is if you bought the item, or if you had access to the retailer’s app or website. Hidden clearance bargains are an important part of retail and online arbitrage as they allow you to get discounts on inventory that very few other people know about.

Does Dollar General have hidden clearance?

Dollar General doesn’t do hidden clearance online. The price you see on the website is the price that you will pay. It doesn’t officially run hidden clearance in-store, either. Dollar General does something called a “clearance event” around six times per year, and it’s possible that in-store you may find an item that’s been marked down but the sticker price hasn’t yet been updated. It isn’t company policy to do this and so hidden clearance isn’t a reliable arbitrage strategy at Dollar General.

Despite the fact that you will not find any unadvertised deals (other than any money you might be able to get taken off using a coupon) Dollar General is actually one of the best places to source products for online arbitrage, and we’re going to show you how to do this using SourceMogul.

The best products to buy at Dollar General for retail arbitrage

Dollar General has some fantastic online arbitrage opportunities – in fact, when we wrote this article we were quite surprised at how easily we were able to find quite a few very profitable products.

Household supplies and electronics

Small household supplies such as pots and pans, strainers, storage boxes, etc can be excellent online arbitrage opportunities if you can get them at a good price – but also, Dollar General sells a multitude of small kitchen appliances such as blenders, mixers, coffee machines, toasters and more.

For example, we found an Aerospeed Box Fan for $24, and at the time of writing the same product was being sold on Amazon for $49, leaving you a potential profit margin of $25 (after Amazon fees, of course.)

*By the way, we found every arbitrage opportunity in this article using the SourceMogul app – which scans hundreds of stores (including Dollar General) in order to find you the best Amazon arbitrage opportunities.

Outdoor living

This is very much a seasonal niche, and it may not be worth purchasing these items out of  season unless you can store them at home, since if you ship them to Amazon FBA and they don’t sell quickly enough, Amazon will charge you a storage fee. However, Dollar General has a great selection of outdoor products such as patio furniture, outdoor decor, coolers, planters, flowerpots and barbeques, all of which have excellent online arbitrage potential if you can buy at the right price.

Health and fitness

Dollar General can be a great source of health and fitness products such as resistance bands, shoe insoles, kinesiology tape and more. While these products tend to be small-scale – we don’t expect you’ll be making hundreds of dollars profit on each item – Dollar General tends to offer these items at a very competitive price, leading to lots of potential online arbitrage opportunities.

To give you an idea of what you might be able to get, at the time of writing we found a Pro Strength 5 lb Kettlebell for sale at Dollar General for $8. The same item was selling on Amazon for $23, giving you a $15 profit – a nearly 200% margin! (before Amazon fees)

Be aware, however, that you might experience subcategory restrictions on some of these products if you’re a new seller. For this reason we’d recommend staying away from things like protein powder, supplements, etc. Make sure you fully understand the kind of restrictions you might face before you commit to buying a product.

As Seen on TV

Dollar General’s range of As Seen on TV products is quite small but there is definitely profit potential in some of the items they sell. As Seen on TV items always sell well on Amazon, and there’s plenty of opportunity to pick these items up at Dollar General – for example, we found a 14oz can of Flex Seal Brite available on Amazon for $21, which was available at Dollar General for $15.

Finding products at Dollar General using SourceMogul

As we’ve mentioned, all of the potential retail arbitrage opportunities we’ve found in this article were found using SourceMogul. In order to do this yourself, log into SourceMogul and filter by “Dollar General” in the “Retailer” section. This will then show you the total number of products available, as well as the products that SourceMogul expects will be profitable.

We’ve written a few very comprehensive guides to using SourceMogul to source products from hundreds of US retailers, not just Dollar General. We’d encourage you to have a read of as many of these guides as you can to ensure you’re well equipped to find the most profitable online arbitrage opportunities!

Other ways to maximise your profit margin

Unfortunately there really aren’t many ways to get money off Dollar General items to try to wring some more profit out of them. This is in stark contrast to slightly more upmarket stores like Lowe’s and Sam’s Club, where there are lots of different ways to get money off, or cashback.

You might find that you can get a coupon or a deal for a specific item, but a lot of the discounts Dollar General runs are in-store and so aren’t relevant for online Amazon arbitrage. We’d say it’s pretty safe to assume that if SourceMogul identifies a potentially profitable product for you, you’re unlikely to be able to get any significant amount of money off as a discount, unless you can get hold of a coupon code somewhere online.

This isn’t to say you can’t make money reselling Dollar General items on Amazon – we’ve given several very good examples in this article already. It’s just worth being aware that Dollar General doesn’t have as extensive a cashback offering as some of the other major retailers.

Dollar General Hidden Clearance FAQs

Why does Dollar General sell items so cheaply?

Dollar General purchases items in bulk from overseas, so due to economies of scale, can afford to sell items a little cheaper than other retailers. Additionally Dollar General does a lot of private labelling – you will find brands available here that aren’t available in other stores. This is nothing new – Costco, Sam’s Club and Lowe’s all do this too.

Additionally if you spend enough time on the Dollar General site, you might notice that some of the cheaper items aren’t actually available to purchase online and are only available in specific stores. To be honest, most of the better retail arbitrage opportunities we found unfortunately fell into this category. However, there’s still lots of profit potential sourcing products from Dollar General online – and SourceMogul is by far the best solution to help you find these products.

Are Dollar General clearance events available online?

Dollar General clearance events generally take place in-store only, so aren’t particularly helpful for you if you’re doing online arbitrage. However, what you could do is use SourceMogul to identify potential online arbitrage opportunities and then travel to the store to see if you can get the item a little cheaper.

Conclusion

While Dollar General doesn’t have a hidden clearance or unadvertised deals online in the traditional sense, it’s definitely very possible to make a lot of money arbitraging products sourced there. Ensure you’re using SourceMogul to find these products, and you’ll be presented with the best possible price that’ll make you the most money when reselling these products.

SourceMogul doesn’t just give you the option to arbitrage from Dollar General, however – we compare millions of products across hundreds of US stores. If you’re serious about online arbitrage, you need a product sourcing solution, and SourceMogul is one of the most comprehensive out there.

We offer a free, no obligation 7 day trial of SourceMogul – which you can access using the link below.