Meet David Gillis of Flipmine

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Gillis.

David, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
While working in retail while I was 16, I noticed that I could flip clearance items for a profit by reselling them on eBay. I made a decent side income doing this; however, I always thought the process of scouring the shelves, looking for underpriced products was extremely inefficient. I dreamed of a software program that could identify arbitrage opportunities automatically, eliminating the need for manual searching. Fast forward to age 22 – I graduated CU Boulder with a degree in Chemical Engineering and moved to New Jersey to teach high school chemistry with Teach For America. During my second year of TFA’s two years program, I decided to get back into selling merchandise to supplement my teacher salary. Instead of buying the products at brick & mortar stores, I noticed that there were lots of items that I could buy on eBay and resell on Amazon for a profit.

After teaching myself basic programming, I built a small utility that could quickly identify these arbitrage opportunities. I eventually realized that this market was much bigger than I had ever thought, and there was no way I was going to be able to capitalize on it all by myself. I decided to teach myself software engineering and amp up my sourcing tool into a public product sourcing platform that I called Flipmine. I worked on it at the side while working on the engineering team of the e-commerce startup, Brandless, but decided to work on it full-time after Brandless folded in February. Today, Flipmine is growing fast and is helping lots of Amazon sellers source goods without having to leave their homes. Last month, Flipmine users purchased over 1100 products from eBay.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, not at all. The biggest struggles have been the engineering challenges associated with building Flipmine, specifically around data intake and search speed. Each day, the system ingests over 1 million eBay listings, matching them up with their Amazon counterparts to identify potential opportunities. Normally a company will have multiple teams of engineers working on a system like this, but I had to build it by myself.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Flipmine – what should we know?
Flipmine helps Amazon sellers find underpriced goods to resell.

Many of Flipmine’s users have never sold anything before, and it’s amazing to hear when they make their very first sale on a product they found using Flipmine. I like to think of Flipmine as a gateway into e-commerce entrepreneurship. Flipping products online via marketplace arbitrage is a relatively low-risk business that yields a modest side-income, and it also helps the seller learn the business. Many sellers start with arbitrage and advance to private label.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Resourcefulness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.flipmine.com
• Email: david@flipmine.com

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