In September, Hayden officially registered his business as a Limited Liability Company, or LLC, called MH Book Store . He is now a 16-year-old CEO.
After accounting for costs like shipping and the products’ original retail prices, Max says he turned a total profit for the year of “roughly $110,000 for myself.”
And, when you take into account some of the other online marketplaces where he sold items, like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, Hayden pulled in more than $2 million in revenue last year reselling popular items.
Hayden ramped up his side-hustle of reselling items on Amazon and other online marketplaces in 2020 to the tune of six-figure profits. In fact, by specifically targeting products he knew would be in high demand and short supply at different points of the pandemic — from above-ground swimming pools in the summer to patio heaters last fall, but never pandemic necessities, he says — Hayden, a rising high school senior, was able to sell more than $1.7 million worth of products as a seller on Amazon Marketplace in 2020, in total.
That demand helped steer record profits to some retailers during the pandemic, including retail giants like Amazon and Walmart, as well as a 16-year-old high school student from Hopewell, New Jersey named Max Hayden.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people to stay home from work or school throughout much of 2020, retailers saw spikes in demand for products that were especially popular among people cooped up in their homes.
Max’s business really took off at the beginning of summer in 2020, when demand for above-ground swimming pools surged amid the pandemic.
Hayden may only be 16, but his entrepreneurial streak already goes back several years. He sold toys on eBay in the fifth grade and then, in middle school, he made money selling candy and fidget spinners to his classmates.
“I got detention a couple of times for selling fidget spinners [in school], but from there I sold fidget spinners at the town fair and then online,” he says.
“Max has always had an entrepreneurial spirit,” says his mother, Jennifer Hayden, who works as a client associate for a financial institution (Max’s father, also named Max, is an architect). “He’s had a love of money and he’s very creative. And I think the two of those together is kind of what’s landed him where he is today.”
Hayden’s current online reselling business really started back in 2019, beginning with popular resale products like sneakers. He started out with only about $300 of his own money.
“I started out with my birthday money, things like that,” Hayden says, adding that he’s never had to borrow money from his parents to fund his business.
In the past year, though, Hayden’s business became supercharged. Many items he sells online go for double their retail price, Hayden says, but sometimes they can even fetch a markup of up to 400% if the product is in especially high demand, like when retailers sell out of an item completely.
On that front, Hayden gets help from the multiple groups he’s joined on the messaging platform Discord where resellers share tips on what products to target and which retailers might still have a hot item in stock. The Discord group members pay monthly fees for membership, and Hayden says the cost typically ranges from $20 to $100 per month for each group, but it’s worth it to get a leg up on other resellers.
Hayden says he often spends hours per day researching which products are reselling for significantly more than their retail prices, whether it’s on Discord or studying the data Amazon Marketplace provides to its sellers.
“At the beginning of the pandemic, I sold things like Nintendo Switch consoles and webcams for people with kids so that they could work from home and attend school from home,” Hayden explains. “A lot of these items were all selling out, as well as home exercise equipment and even sometimes sewing machines and bread makers, things that people were doing after they were stuck at home.”
“After school and work, we’d go around to various Wal-Marts and Targets and [Max would] buy up as many pools as we could fit into the back of the car,” Jennifer Hayden says.
“Come fall, I started selling patio heaters as patio heaters were necessary for outdoor gatherings,” Max says. There [were] a lot of limits on indoor gatherings in the fall.”
Hayden is well aware that his business success has come at a time when many others have struggled amid the pandemic. But, at the same time, like other online businesses that thrived in 2020 (from giants like Amazon to small businesses that pivoted to focus on e-commerce), Hayden also feels like he simply saw a good business opportunity and seized it.
“The pandemic is really terrible and it’s been a really challenging time for a lot of people — you know, I’m looking forward to the pandemic coming to a close. But, for me, I was able to take advantage of the opportunities that I saw throughout these past few months.”
Hayden also says he is adamant about only selling products that can be considered luxuries.
“I’ve made a firm distinction not to sell anything that’s immediately necessary, or [that] someone would need in order to protect themselves, like hand sanitizer and gloves,” Hayden says, adding that this is what creates a distinction between resellers like himself and those who engage in the practice of price-gouging (like some Amazon sellers who were fined by the New York Attorney General’s office for jacking up prices on hand sanitizer at the height of the pandemic).
Still, Hayden has faced criticism from customers online for selling sought after items at big premiums.
“There have been some people who see our advertisements and are angered by the price of the products and the low supply and the fact that they can’t get a product for the retail price,” Hayden says, referring to complaint messages he receives from customers through the Amazon Marketplace platform.
While he understands why anyone would be unhappy at paying premium prices, he believes he is simply responding to the twists and turns of the marketplace the way any seasoned entrepreneur would.
“I’m really just taking advantage of the market where the market drives the prices and the demand,” he says.
Growing his side-hustle
Hayden’s biggest expense with his business is buying inventory, which he typically buys products directly from retailers. Otherwise, his main costs are for shipping his sold products, packaging materials and marketplace fees.
“On Amazon, a typical transaction ranges anywhere from 8% to 15% in fees that Amazon takes as part of their commission,” he says.
Other than that, “there are really no costs that eat into your profits too badly,” says Hayden. He says he invests most of his profits back into the business.