How to Sell Military Hiking Day Packs Online

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If I asked you who wears tactical military gear, what would your answer be? Most people immediately jump to members of the Army, Navy or Air Force. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that there is a huge recreational military tactical gear market, including military hiking day packs.

I discovered this because I recently became friends with a group of people who have a shared hobby: Airsoft. In Airsoft games, players wear military-quality gear and run through exercises and games using airsoft guns. Interested, I researched this further, and discovered that there are lots of other groups of people that wear and use military tactical gear too, such as hikers, who often wear it because it is sturdy, warm and has lots of pockets to hold survival gear.

Interested, I decided to pick a piece of military tactical gear for this Monday’s Market of the Week. But unfortunately, I ran into a problem: I didn’t know anything about the market, and I didn’t know which piece of gear to write about, and so I didn’t know what gear people were buying.

How to research a narket if you don't know anything about it

You’ve likely come across this problem before: you hear about a new niche market, such as this one, and it sounds like it could be very lucrative. But you don’t know what items are being sold in the niche, and you don’t know what is popular.

A tool that I use to quickly see popular, lucrative items in an unknown niche on eBay is the Marketplace Analyzer app, which I highly recommend for sellers. You can put any keyword into this app, and it will show you a list of popular auction listings within that niche, including how much money those listings have made over it’s lifetime. So I put in “tactical military gear” and it gave me these results:

One item in particular caught my attention: the military hiking day pack. It caught my attention because in less than a year, this single listing has done over $5,000 in sales, but the item that less than $20! That is a lot of sales. I clicked on the item to review the listing for myself:

Look how popular it is! This seller has managed to sell 333 of these, and 301 people are watching the listing. That is one popular item. But how easy is it to sell? I put the item into the SaleHoo Market Research Lab and found out.

Quick snapshot:

  • Success rate: 74%
  • Average sale price: $18.68
  • Competition rating: Easy

Skip to supplier details or read on for the full breakdown.

Success rate on eBay:

There are a lot more bids than listings, which isn’t a surprise. I had never heard of tactical military gear before meeting my new friends, yet people who purchase it for their hobbies are very passionate about them and spend a lot of money on it each year. As a result, not many sellers know about it, but there is a hot buyer market with a massive 74 percent success rate. Perfect!

Competition rating on eBay:

According to the lab, there were 237 bids for 80 listings. That is almost a 3-to-1 ratio for the number of bids to hiking day packs, meaning there is a lot of room for new sellers to enter the market and take advantage of this buyer demand.

Product performance: How much money could you make?

On the most popular day, sales peaked at about $310. On the least popular day last month, sellers still raked in $60 in sales. This is good, but even better is that we know that this item has long-term viability. We know this because, as the eBay Analyzer App showed, items in this niche have been selling consistently over hundreds of days. This isn’t a one-off wonder; it is a stable niche with a steady stream of buyers.

Going beyond eBay: Should you sell this in your online store?

I opened up our free keyword research tool, Traffic Travis, to see if there is a lot of internet search activity for military hiking day packs:

The results didn’t return crazy-impressive numbers, like thousands of searches. But it did reveal that combined, there are thousands of searches each month for phrases related to this and, as we’ve already seen, this has a healthy buyer demand. It would be worth including these in your own store.

Trusted suppliers selling this product

Trusted supplier #1:

Trusted supplier #2:

View the SaleHoo listing now or join SaleHoo to get access.

Christmas is upon us, and it isn't too late to get started! Even if you don't know what to sell, you can use the Marketplace Analyzer App and the Market Research Lab to uncover great items to sell this holiday season.

To access our directory of wholesale suppliers and take advantage of SaleHoo’s Market Research Lab, sign up as a SaleHoo member now.

When you register, you'll get access to more than 8,000 suppliers and comprehensive training to help you find the best products to sell online, as well as access to our members-only forum, which is full of tips from other members (including eBay PowerSellers) that will help you make money online. Join SaleHoo today.

Disclaimer: The information published here is strictly for informational purposes. All above products are only suggestions for items which the author believes may sell well, and this article should be viewed as opinion only. All above products were researched using methods recommended by SaleHoo and found to be potentially profitable for sellers at the time of writing. All sellers are encouraged to conduct their own market and product research.

 

 
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Sarah Chrisp

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