A small group of Americans are traveling to remote Walmarts and Targets to resell rare and odd items on Amazon.
According to The Verge, they live in RVs and vans and move from store to store constantly, focusing on rural outposts.
They look for limited-edition goods, like Game of Thrones Oreos, weird cleaning products and discontinued merchandise. One nomad has found discontinued 99-cent dental floss at Big Lots that fetches $100 online.
‘Amazon is just an extension of my arm’
The nomad economy works because of Fulfillment by Amazon. The nomads resell products and send them to an Amazon warehouse.
Amazon then packages and ships items to the buyer. Another tool, a scanning app, allows nomads to see the estimated resale value of many items before they make a purchase.
“It’s almost like I’m the front end of the business, and Amazon is just an extension of my arm,” Sean-Patrick Iles, a nomad, told The Verge.
Lifestyle over profit
Most of the nomads aren’t getting rich — $40K yearly salaries aren’t uncommon. Instead, they’re anti-consumerists who don’t value possessions — they’re doing it for the freedom and the ability to see the charms of small-town America.
In Pomeroy, Ohio, for instance, nomad Chris Anderson was amazed to find the local McDonald’s had a pizza on the menu.
