When Sam's Club entered the Chinese market, it must not have anticipated that "Sam's Club reselling" would one day become a business, even a profession.

It is well-known that the retail industry is currently facing a shrinking market size and intensified competition among peers, with various companies seeking transformation paths.

However, in this challenging situation, Sam's Club has developed rapidly, to the extent that even reselling can bring in millions of dollars a year!

Attracted by the high returns, many people have quit their stable jobs to officially become "Sam's Club resellers," hoping to achieve financial freedom one day.

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But high returns also imply high risks; the business of reselling for Sam's Club, while seemingly highly profitable, is actually extremely risky.

Moreover, "reselling" is, like "scalping," generally not welcomed by consumers and brands.

So the question arises, why has Sam's Club reselling been able to bloom everywhere, and even form a stable industrial structure?

The boom of Sam's Club reselling once shocked the Chinese retail market.

After all, in the Chinese consumer mindset, reselling goods from a supermarket is truly hard to comprehend.Various types of supermarkets can be found everywhere around us, and even internet-famous foods can quickly become popular in our vicinity. So why would someone spend a significant amount of time, effort, and money to specifically purchase goods from a particular supermarket?

To understand this question, we need to focus on introducing Sam's Club.

The full name of Sam's Club is "Sam's Club," and although it bears the name "store," it is actually a high-end membership-based store under the global retail giant Walmart.

From its inception, Sam's Club set a goal to become the most valuable membership organization in the world.

In terms of the current situation, it has achieved half of its goal.

Taking China as an example, there are currently two membership models in Sam's Club stores: the first is the ordinary membership with an annual fee of 260 yuan, and the second is the premium membership with an annual fee of 680 yuan.

The price difference between the two implies different membership benefits, with premium members enjoying more "benefits" than ordinary members, including rebates, discounts, and coupons.

This business model, which segments members to the extreme, has completely opened up a "new screening model" for Chinese consumer groups.

Because if there is a planet's difference between ordinary and premium members of Sam's Club, then there is a direct galaxy drawn between ordinary members and ordinary consumers!

To be honest, an annual fee of 260 yuan, which amounts to less than 22 yuan per month, is affordable for everyone.Based on the consumption concepts of the majority of Chinese people, if the 22 yuan is merely the price of an admission ticket, then Sam's Club is destined to lose the majority of Chinese consumers. Before entering China, Sam's Club would certainly conduct market research, and it could not be unaware of this situation. Therefore, the target consumer group for Sam's Club in China is quite clear - the middle class.

Sam's Club is a classic warehouse-style supermarket with a wide variety of products. Its advanced supply chain system allows it to offer over 4000+ SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) from all over the world. As a result, in terms of scale, Sam's Club focuses on a "small but refined" warehouse selling model.

With a smaller scale of products, the products naturally become "large," and this "large" is literally large in size. Sam's Club is not the convenient supermarket that Chinese people are accustomed to, as all the products are "extra-large portions," making it very suitable for family shopping.

However, at the same time, not all consumers are those with families and businesses. The unique membership system attracts a majority of young singles and white-collar workers. In addition, there are consumers who are concerned about the high membership fees, people who live in areas without a Sam's Club, and those who love Sam's unique gourmet food, among others.

A significant portion of these people have become customers of "Sam's Club resellers." Judging by the current development trend of Sam's Club, it can be determined that the customer base for Sam's Club resellers is definitely not lacking.Making money by buying and selling goods is not as simple as just setting up a pot and lighting a stove to create a "feast."

Phrases like "Sam's personal shopping earns a hundred thousand a month" may seem glamorous, but they don't hold up to scrutiny.

There are indeed people who make 100,000 a month, but those who can earn such an amount are almost exclusively the early adopters who have now become the "top intermediaries" in personal shopping.

Ms. Liu from Tangshan, Hebei, is a professional personal shopper, mainly dealing in products from Sam's and Pang Donglai.

Currently, she has several stores in Tangshan, with each store making a monthly profit of 30,000 yuan, making her one of the personal shopping store owners with a "monthly income of over 100,000."

Despite being part of the high-income group, she still states that what she earns is merely a "hard-earned" salary.

Ms. Liu said that her decision to become a personal shopper was due to a serendipitous opportunity.

In 2020, because she lived close to a Sam's supermarket, a friend from out of town asked her to buy products from Sam's and expressed willingness to pay a certain errand fee.

Later, as more and more people sought her services for personal shopping, Ms. Liu realized that the money she made from personal shopping each month was even more than her salary from her job, so she resigned to focus solely on personal shopping.

In 2020, "Sam's personal shopping" was still a niche market, and with Ms. Liu's reputation already established, her customer base grew rapidly and her business developed swiftly.Now, her client base has reached tens of thousands of people, which is a precious asset for any industry. Additionally, there is the most crucial issue of "income," which Ms. Liu has almost fully disclosed. Based on the current market prices, the difference between the prices she sells and those at Sam's Club is roughly 5-20 yuan, meaning that the profit margin she can earn is within this range. However, even without considering her own labor costs, the profit she makes must also account for shipping fees. The entire process can be considered another form of "e-commerce." Major e-commerce players can receive certain discounts on shipping fees through cooperation with logistics companies, but this is still a reduction based on the original profit. Therefore, overall, making money from Sam's Club reselling entirely depends on "volume."

Nevertheless, sometimes she can also have some "additional income." For instance, Sam's Club's excellent members receive a 2% cashback in points, which can be redeemed for no-threshold coupons the following month, with a maximum return of 500 per month. A "big reseller" like Ms. Liu, along with her team, has over 30 membership cards, and with a monthly shopping amount of 500,000, the cashback from Sam's Club would be around 10,000 yuan.

Furthermore, if she is fortunate enough to grab some of Sam's Club's temporarily offered products at 30-40% off, and then sells them at the original price, she can make a considerable profit. However, this situation is rare, so this money is considered an occasional "small bonus."Of course, this is the experience of being a "top daigou". In the inquiry, Ms. Liu also candidly stated that many people who rashly enter this industry cannot persist for long. Few customers, expensive transportation costs, and the labor cost of repacking are all significant expenses. The average daigou simply cannot bear the burden of this job, as Ms. Liu put it: "It's called daigou when it sounds good, but it's just a errand runner when it doesn't." Despite the earnest advice from those who have gone before, some still believe they can become the "chosen one." Consequently, wave after wave of daigous rush into Sam's Club to shop, and over time, conflicts inevitably arise. Whose conflict is it? Naturally, it's the conflict between daigous and ordinary consumers of Sam's. As we mentioned earlier, the main consumer group of Sam's Club is the middle class, who care about service and environment. Since the influx of a large number of Sam's daigous, many members have expressed that their consumer experience has declined significantly.Once, someone posted online questioning Sam, as they witnessed a daigou (personal shopper) purchasing multiple bottles of lotion, which was on special offer and limited to one per person.

Such questions are endless online, with many members believing that since they have spent money and obtained membership, they naturally deserve the best shopping experience. The reason they joined the membership in the first place was because they valued Sam's high-quality shopping environment and service.

Now, with daigoushopping rampant and products being snatched up, normal consumers are treated unfairly when shopping. Doesn't this go against Sam's original intention of providing "high-quality member services"?

However, such situations can be considered as "the onlookers see most of the game," where those involved are often confused.

According to the latest data, in 2023, Sam's Club's 37 stores in China achieved a total annual revenue of 84.3 billion yuan, which is a clear dominance over China's local retail industry in terms of both store numbers and sales.

For example, Hema, a representative of China's new retail, had a total transaction amount of over 55 billion yuan in the 2023 fiscal year, with more than 300 stores. Yonghui, an old-established retail enterprise in China, had a sales amount of 78.642 billion yuan in 2023, with more than 900 stores.

The total consumption amount is indeed overwhelming, but what about the per capita consumption?

Both Hema and Yonghui are local Chinese enterprises that have been in traditional retail for a long time, without a membership system for customers. The number of customers they have accumulated over the years is inestimable.Sam's Club has set a high bar.

The last time Sam's Club announced the number of paying members in China was at the end of 2021, claiming to have already had 4 million paying members in China.

At that time, there were 34 Sam's Club stores, averaging about 118,000 members per store.

Now, according to the data on Sam's Club's official website, there are currently 37 Sam's Club stores in China. We assume that the membership registration is parallel to the previous one, plus the new members who have joined in recent years.

Assuming it now has 4.5 million members, each member would have to spend at least 18,733 yuan to reach its revenue target.

It is almost certain that the tacit agreement among Sam's Club members to spend this amount of money is: impossible.

It's not a question of whether everyone has the ability to spend this money, but rather the fact that 4.5 million people have bought 84.3 billion yuan worth of living materials in a supermarket, which is quite magical.

Think again about the hundreds of thousands of consumption by the daigou (personal shoppers) every month, and it can be imagined how many ordinary consumers without cards are behind the 4.5 million members.

Nowadays, the warehouse-style supermarket has become a system that many retailers are competing to imitate.

Veteran supermarkets such as Yonghui, Hema, Beijing Hualian, and FUDI have all invested heavily in transforming into warehouse membership stores, but none have been able to replicate Sam's Club's success.Perhaps, the reason why the Sam's model cannot be replicated, "daigou" is also a key part of it.

As the saying goes, in business, one earns and ten lose; as long as it involves making money, every industry is ruthless.

Unfortunately, people often only see one successful person after another standing under dazzling lights, but they fail to see the countless failures swept away by the torrent of time, not even leaving a word behind.

Isn't Sam's daigou the same?

Although they are an inconspicuous screw in business dealings, it may carry the traffic, popularity, and brand effect of some colossal entity.