I am so very thankful to @fruitnut for educating me on the economics that he observed of running an online fig tree business. I am appreciative to be disabused of the notion that it can offer a living wage and I ought only consider it for some supplemental income. I would rather have my eyes opened at the outset than have a rude awakening further down the road.
For those who haven’t been reading the other thread I have reposted his remarks here.
Exactly. There’s not much profit selling these trees that are supposedly too expensive. Labor, overhead, taxes, etc etc. There’s not much money in selling 4,000 trees and grossing 100K. If someone thinks there is, well try it yourself. I did and at 25 per tree I’m not even remotely interested. And I had no hired labor and very low overhead…just using what I already had.
Doing a 1000 trees grown from my own cuttings would be a full time job. And I’d gross 25K, no thanks. When I was doing this I worked all but 60 days in 7 years time. Every day I did something essential to the business.
For fig trees the main tasks are growing the cuttings, rooting them, growing out the plants, selling them online, and packing/shipping. For a thousand trees growing and selling/shipping each roughly 750 hours. So, 1500 hours for 1000 trees. 1.5 hours per tree. If they sold for $25 and you had $10 per tree other costs that’s $10 per hour for your time.
On the site where I sold the trees it is customary to provide the buyer with several photos of the actual tree for sale. That’s 3,000 photos to sell 1000 trees. Just an example of the labor involved.
I got much higher prices than that. But to do so you had to be first out with the hottest varieties. Doing so was expensive and further time consuming.
Actually, I enjoyed growing and selling but not at $25 per tree.
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