small
business
wasn’t for him, and in 1970 he became an
auditor for the state of North Carolina. One
day some friends invited him to a flea market
and he was hooked. His weekends became
devoted to cruising flea markets and yard sales,
where he gravitated toward china and crystal
that he began selling on consignment.
SARA D. DAVIS
In early 1981 he took the leap and quit his
day job to start Replacements, initially running
the company from his home attic and keeping
customer notes on 3-by-5-inch recipe cards.
“I just thought, ‘I will probably never make
as much money as in accounting,’ ” he says. “I
just wanted to be happy.”
Today, the Internet drives Replacements’
current growth, with 65 percent of company
sales now online. Page’s advice for turning
your hobby into a successful company is
pretty simple: Pick something you really enjoy
doing and the money will follow.
Page certainly doesn’t mind having a lot
on his plate every day. “It’s a fun business,” he
says. “I can’t imagine retiring.” C
Replacements Ltd. owner Bob Page
grew a passion for yard sales into a
multimillion-dollar business.
Fast facts on
Replacements
• The company’s
inventory surpasses
11 million items in
more than 266,000
patterns.
• It ships more
than 9,500 orders
every week and
19,000 plus during
the holiday season.
• It receives more
than 70,000 pieces
of china, silver, crystal and other collectibles every week
from its network of
suppliers, manufacturers and yard-sale
enthusiasts.
• The company
gets 2 million visitors to its Web site
every month.
• It serves 8 million
customers in 171
countries and
territories.
Major manufacturers “used to hope for patterns that would be out for 15 or 20 years,” Page
says. “Now they say they’re hopeful it’ll be out
for four or five years.”
The world of fine collectibles is a world
away from Page’s childhood in rural
Rockingham County, North Carolina, where
he was one of four kids born to a tobacco
farmer. Page decided the hardscrabble life
Chris Penttila is a freelance journalist and
monthly columnist for Entrepreneur.
• 75 percent of
Replacements’ business is in discontinued products and
patterns; the other
25 percent is in current products and
patterns.
• It’s environmentally focused, too:
Replace ments
recycles 300 tons
of cardboard and
30 tons of paper
every year.
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