Founder, Aftermarket Arbitrage · 14 August 2026
▶ Watch me answer this on camera (13 min)
Every week someone tells me retail arbitrage is dead. Too saturated, fees too high, the shops have wised up. Rather than argue about it, I went and filmed it. The video above is a full sourcing session, start to finish, with the running tally on screen. First retail arbitrage vlog I’d done in a while, no planned route (my own fault, and you should plan yours), starting outside Tesco at 11am sharp. Wins and losses both left in, because that’s the only way the answer means anything.
The short answer
Yes, it still works. But the sceptics are half right, and I’d rather concede that up front than pretend nothing has changed. The 2020 version of this business (walk into any shop, scan everything on the shelf, find easy money) is mostly gone. What’s replaced it is a tighter, more selective game where the people who know what they’re looking for still do well, and the people scanning at random waste their afternoons. I show you both sides of that inside the same five hours.
What’s genuinely harder in 2026
I’m not going to hand-wave past this, because the first three below are exactly what the day demonstrated.
Fake clearances are everywhere
My first stop, Tesco, was a complete fail, and I was out within about fifteen minutes. The clearance shelves were full, which used to be a good sign. Every label said “reduce to clear”, and every discount was around 20% off. That is not a clearance. Nobody clears stock at 20% off; that’s a promotion wearing a clearance label.
Boots did the same thing later on
I said on camera what it should have been priced at to actually shift it: five to eight quid. That is not a clearance price. They’re not trying to clear it. Boots used to be absolutely phenomenal for this. I genuinely think they’ve caught on to what we’re doing. That’s a real change, and you have to price it in.
The listing traps have multiplied
In Tesco I found a product with decent numbers where the listing owner was selling on their own listing. Jump on that and you get kicked off, or worse.
Later I showed the other version of the same trap: pull up the offer-count history and look for sudden spikes. That purple line flashing up and down means new sellers are jumping on and being removed. That pattern predicts IP claims, and the right move is to not join the listing at all. Hardly anyone was running either of those checks a few years ago. I run both now, every single time, and they’re the difference between a profitable month and a suspended account.
Short-dated stock will eat beginners alive
The first Boots I walked into looked brilliant: shelf after shelf of apparent profit. Almost all of it was short-dated, and some of it was already expired.
I don’t even know if they should have been selling it. Profit on a shelf is worthless if Amazon won’t accept the stock or it dies in the warehouse. Check dates before you check margins.
Fees are tighter than they’ve ever been
That’s three things the day itself showed me. This fourth one isn’t on the tape, it’s just the job now: fees. Referral, FBA, storage, and they don’t go backwards. Which is why every number in that video already had them taken out before I put my hand in my pocket. I made every buy in that video with the fees already stripped out. SellerAmp takes referral and FBA off before I even look at the number, so the profit I quoted is what actually lands after Amazon has had its cut. That’s the tool I use and it’s the one I’d tell you to get. That’s an affiliate link, we work with them, and I’d be using it either way. If you don’t know what Amazon is taking on a product, don’t guess at it in the aisle. That’s what SellerAmp is for: it does the fee maths on the spot, and guessing is how people end up buying something that was never profitable.
What one honest session actually produced
Here’s the other half of the ledger, from that filmed day.
The day’s ledger
One barcode was covered up, so I used SellerAmp’s AI scanner to pull the product up. Then I still matched it on its own barcode before I bought. Identifying it from the packaging gets you to the right listing; it doesn’t replace the barcode match. That put the running total at £127 by early afternoon.
Home Bargains (the good old faithful) turned up replenishable stock, the kind you can go back and buy again, which we did after filming.
All in, no more than five hours of actual sourcing on that day landed somewhere between £200 and £300 of potential profit. On the day’s own numbers that’s £40 to £60 an hour depending on where in that range it lands. And it’s a figure from one filmed session, not a rate I’m quoting anyone as an expectation.
Two honesty caveats, and I never hide behind small print on this. First: those are potential profits. I say it on camera and I’ll say it again here: we’ve still got to sell the items. Until they sell, they’re potential profit and nothing else. Second: those figures are from that one filmed day. Results vary, that’s not a typical or guaranteed outcome, and nothing here is a promise about what you’d make. It’s evidence that the model still functions, not a forecast of your results.
The difference between the people it works for and the people it doesn’t
Watch the video closely and you’ll notice what I didn’t do: I didn’t scan whole aisles. Almost everyone who tells me retail arbitrage is dead was scanning everything, finding nothing, and concluding the model was broken.
The model was fine. The method was broken.
In 2026 the game is targeted:
- Real discounts only. I’m looking for genuine deep cuts (usually 50% or more off), not 20%-off shelf theatre. In Boots I said it straight: you pretty much only want to be in the clearance sections, and you’re wasting your time anywhere else.
- Judge on data, not the product. I don’t care whether I’d buy it. Sales per month, offer history, average price. The numbers decide. One of the checks I always run is the average selling price, because a current price that’s temporarily spiked will collapse right after you’ve bought fifty units.
- Retail parks over town centres. A beginner tip from the day: lots of shops in close proximity, no driving between stores. My route hit Superdrug, Boots and The Entertainer without moving the car.
- Replicate the wins. TK Maxx generally runs similar pricing and similar stock across its stores, so a good find in one is worth checking for in the others near you. How many actually have it, and at what price, you’ll only know by going and looking. I’m not promising you a multiple of anything. But if you’re not going to go and clean up, someone like us will.
If any of that is new to you, don’t try to reverse-engineer it from one blog post. The full method, store by store and check by check, is in our complete UK retail arbitrage guide. This article’s job is the 2026 question, not the fundamentals.
Consistency beats everything
The single most important thing in this business is being consistent, day in, day out. That Tesco fail matters here. Retail arbitrage is not a 100% success rate, and it would be wrong to assume it’s always going to be simple. Some stops produce nothing. The day still worked because I kept moving: Superdrug covered Tesco, TK Maxx covered Boots, and the average across five hours came out well ahead. The people this stops working for are the ones who quit after their version of that first Tesco. And if the physical legwork isn’t for you at all, the same skills transfer to sourcing from your desk. Our online arbitrage guide covers that side properly.
So is it worth starting in 2026?
My honest verdict: yes, if you come in with your eyes open. The edge has moved from “know that arbitrage exists” to “execute the checks the casual sellers skip”: real clearance versus fake, expiry dates, IP-risk patterns, fee-accurate maths on every single buy. I don’t buy anything until I’ve run it with every fee taken off. That’s why the profit I quote is after Amazon’s cut rather than before it, which is the bit most people get wrong. And it’s still a potential profit: the item has to actually sell at that price before it’s real money.
On money: I’d want £500 minimum to start this properly, and £1,000 makes it comfortable. The full breakdown of where that goes is in how much you need to start Amazon FBA in the UK. And my buying bar hasn’t moved: 20% ROI minimum, matched on barcode, never on a title that merely looks right. A wrong match costs you money and your account health; a missed lead costs you nothing.
I said it at the end of the video and I’ll say it here: on that day’s numbers, I’d take a job that paid that. What you’d make is a completely different question. I don’t know your shops, your time, or how you’d buy, and I’m not going to pretend a single filmed afternoon of mine tells you anything about your own. Plenty of people do this and make nothing. The shops have got harder. The traps have got sneakier. The sellers who treat it like a proper business, with proper checks, are the ones still making it work. That’s not a promise it’ll work for you: doing the checks properly is what gives you a chance at it, not what guarantees it. I’ve had flat weeks doing everything right. If you want the finds coming to you daily instead of hunting alone, that’s what we built Aftermarket Arbitrage membership for, but whether you join us or go it alone, the answer to the question in the title is yes. Just not the lazy version of yes.
About the author
Jack Bayliss is the founder of Aftermarket Arbitrage, where a team and a purpose-built sourcing engine find and verify Amazon UK deals for members every day. Meet the community on the community page or book a free call.
