Family Dollar Hidden Clearance: Can it be used for online arbitrage success?

Hidden clearance is a great way of sourcing profitable products for your arbitrage business at a much lower price than is advertised. Obviously, the most important thing about your online arbitrage business is that you make as much profit as possible, and using retailer’s hidden clearance sections can help you do this.

This brings us on to the subject of hidden clearance at Family Dollar – is it a viable online arbitrage strategy and is it something that will help you make more money with online arbitrage?

In short, we don’t think it is. SourceMogul actually doesn’t support Family Dollar – and this is largely because there isn’t much profit potential in the items sold there. There are a few items that might be worthy of your attention, but generally the quality and cost of items that are sold at Family Dollar means that your time and money is far better spent at other stores.

In this article we’re going to go through some of the alternatives to hidden clearance at Family Dollar and how you can make more profit in your online arbitrage business.

Hidden Clearance Explained

Hidden clearance is where a retailer keeps a product marked up at the RRP, but when you take the item to the register (or check out online) the price is actually a lot lower. This can make for some excellent arbitrage opportunities because you’re able to buy products at a discount without anyone else knowing that it’s discounted.

Does Family Dollar have hidden clearance?

No, it doesn’t. As far as we could ascertain, Family Dollar does not have any kind of hidden clearance, either online or in store. That doesn’t mean to say that you might find something in-store that’s discounted and the sticker price hasn’t been updated, but there’s no method of finding these products and it certainly isn’t going to work when buying from Family Dollar’s website.

This is one of the reasons SourceMogul doesn’t support Family Dollar – because even if you could find a discount, the kind of items that Family Dollar sells aren’t conducive to making a profit with online arbitrage – the price point is often too low for these products to be profitable.

Is Family dollar worth it for online arbitrage?

In our opinion, no. We touch on this elsewhere in the article, but the price point of the items Family Dollar sells is too low, and there’s likely to be so little profit margin even if you can identify and arbitrage opportunity that you’re actually likely to lose money after delivery and Amazon seller fees.

Family Dollar is far more useful for retail arbitrage, where you can go to a physical store and hunt for items. A lot of this is because a few of the more expensive (and potentially more profitable) items are available in-store only. SourceMogul is strictly an online arbitrage tool, however, and won’t help you with physical store arbitrage.

Stores you should consider instead of Family Dollar for product sourcing

So which stores should you use instead of Family Dollar for your online arbitrage business? SourceMogul compares over 200 stores, but there are a few stores which we’d recommend looking at first.

Kohl’s

Kohl’s is one of the largest and most established retailers in the US, and carries millions of lines. You’re likely to find arbitrage opportunities in a number of different categories at Kohl’s, including clothing, beauty and home electronics. Additionally there are a number of incentives which will help you squeeze a little more profit out of the items you buy there, such as Kohl’s Cash and Goldstar Clearance.

Check out our article on Kohl’s hidden clearance, where we explain how to get the best deals when searching for products to resell on Amazon at Kohl’s.

Target

Target is a huge US retailer with nearly 2,000 stores in the US and a significant online presence. Almost anything is available at Target – clothing, home goods, electronics and appliances and more. Target is a fantastic place to look for hidden clearance items and online arbitrage opportunities – and SourceMogul will help you find the best deals.

Lowe’s

Lowe’s is primarily a DIY and Home Improvement retailer, but also sells a number of items that have the potential to be very profitable, providing you know where to look. You’re also likely to find excellent retail arbitrage opportunities in the home decor and lawn and garden sections, with a decent list of incentives to help you make your purchases that little bit more profitable.

We’ve written a detailed article on the hidden clearance opportunities at Lowe’s which will help you get hold of some inventory for your arbitrage business at low cost.

Sam’s Club

Sam’s Club is very similar to Costco in that their physical stores are open to members only. However, you don’t need a membership to shop online, and you can pick up great online arbitrage opportunities on their website. Sam’s Club excels in the home and electronics category – so you will likely find good online arbitrage opportunities in the furniture, small appliances and electronics categories.

Check out our guide to Sam’s Club hidden clearance for the insider scoop on getting hold of inventory from Sam’s Club at reduced cost.

How to find profitable products with SourceMogul

You’ll need to first connect your SourceMogul account with your Amazon Seller account, but once you’ve done this, SourceMogul scans millions of products at hundreds of retailers to find you the best potential online arbitrage opportunities. All you need to do is decide which products you want to buy and where you want to buy them from.

SourceMogul doesn’t compare Family Dollar as there are very few potential online arbitrage opportunities due to the price point being so low, as well as the kinds of items Family Dollar sells. However, we do compare other discount stores such as Dollar General, as well as more exclusive retailers such as Sam’s Club and Walgreens.

When SourceMogul has identified a product it expects to be profitable, it will also show you the product’s sales rank so you get some idea of how quickly the product sells (so you aren’t sat on inventory for long) and also allows you to input coupons, sales tax and other considerations that might affect the price.

We’ve written lots of guides on exactly how to use SourceMogul, which we’d recommend you read in detail after signing up so you’re best prepared for taking advantage of the profitable arbitrage opportunities it will find for you.

Family Dollar Hidden Clearance FAQs

Why are things cheaper at Family Dollar?

Family Dollar is a discount retailer. They buy things in bulk from overseas, so economies of scale means that you’re likely to get a better price on the items they sell. Family Dollar, like Dollar General and other discount stores, also do a lot of private labelling, which allows them to offer products at a lower cost.

Is Family Dollar a good store to source products for online arbitrage?

No. In our opinion, Family Dollar is a less than ideal store to source products to resell on Amazon. This is for three main reasons:

The items they keep in stock don’t lend themselves well to online arbitrage opportunities
The cost of the items is so low and the profit potential so thin that you’re unlikely to be making money after shipping and Amazon seller fees
Most of the higher quality, potentially more profitable items are only available in-store – which is not useful to anyone doing online arbitrage

We would highly recommend looking at Dollar General instead – they have a similar business model but you are, in our experience, far more likely to find something worth arbitraging there than at Family Dollar.

Are Family Dollar and Dollar Tree the same company?

Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in 2015. Family Dollar and Dollar Tree maintain separate brands with separate stores. SourceMogul doesn’t support Dollar Tree either, for exactly the same reasons we don’t support Family Dollar.

What other stores use hidden clearance?

The best example of a hidden clearance store is Walmart. However, don’t constrain yourself to just thinking about hidden clearance as a strategy for your online arbitrage business – there are lots of other viable stores out there that you should be looking at, and SourceMogul is one of the best solutions for identifying profitable products you can resell on Amazon at scale.

Conclusion

To conclude, it’s our opinion that Family Dollar isn’t the best place to source online arbitrage products. Not only do they not do hidden clearance, but the product offering is likely to be quite poor, and the potential profit likely to be very small.

However, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t hundreds of other retailers you can look at for the most profitable arbitrage opportunities, and SourceMogul is the best tool to help you do this. We offer a 7 day free trial of SourceMogul so you can get your feet wet, and we guarantee using SourceMogul is much quicker and more profitable than trying to source items yourself!

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