[Guest192038]

Why not work backwards and start making sales before you have stock, so you know if the business is possible, and if so, what kind of margins you're working with to pay for advertising, inventory, fullfilling orders, packing, shipping, wages, rent, etc?

For example, setup your online store and buy your Facebook ad campaign for teen girls, and try to sell them the Justin Beiber case that you could potentially order from China. When they go through the order process, inform them it's 'out of stock', and flag a potential sale in your database. Now, analyze the numbers, look at how much your ad campaign costed, how many potential sales you generated, how much it would cost to order those actual cases from China, how much it would cost to ship them, etc, and see if the business makes sense. If so, start with a small batch of inventory as you said, you'll get more experience with the entire process, any hidden costs or time involved you overlooked, and go from there.

[pc86]

If you are willing to invest a slightly higher amount to test the waters, you can buy a small batch (e.g. 100 units) but sell at the large batch price (e.g. what you would if you had 10k units). You will lose money overall but if your 100 units sell out in 3 days you might not lose as much sleep placing that order for 10k units.

Depending on the product the variance in price between a small order and a large order can greatly influence perceived demand.