How To Make Money With a Furniture Flipping Business

With online retailers making it simple to order new furniture with the click of a button, it’s easy to forget how many timeless pieces already exist, waiting for someone to give them new life.

Take it from Bo Shepherd and Kyle Dubey, who noticed discarded materials while biking around in their hometown, Detroit, and saw these as an opportunity to salvage quality pieces. They found such joy in flipping furniture that they made it a career, starting their reclaimed furniture shop, Woodward Throwbacks, in 2014.

In addition to a Shopify store, Woodward Throwbacks operates out of a 24,000-square-foot brick-and-mortar location a few miles north of downtown Detroit. In 2024, Bo and Kyle even published a coffee table book featuring their greatest hits.

The success of Woodward Throwbacks and dozens of other furniture flipping businesses shows that with a little elbow grease (or paint), a sense of style, and a small investment in learning a new skill set, you can make money flipping furniture. 

What is a furniture flipping business?

A furniture flipping business involves finding or buying used furniture, improving or refurbishing it, and selling it at a higher price point. Some good reasons to start flipping furniture? It reduces waste, it’s a creative outlet, and it’s a great side hustle—or even a source of full-time income. Plus, you don’t need much to get started making money flipping furniture. 

How to run a furniture flipping business 

1. Start with research and a business plan
2. Source items
3. Restore items to their full glory, or beyond
4. Set the right price
5. Find your marketplace
6. Make your marketing shine
7. Consider offering shipping or local delivery

1. Start with research and a business plan

Research online marketplaces like Craigslist, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and 1st Dibs for similar products to understand the market. What pieces don’t sell? What disappears in a day? Note price points, how long listings stay up, and how different furniture pieces are being marketed.

Then, create your business plan by answering these key questions:

• How much time will you spend flipping furniture? 

• What workspace, supplies, and expertise do you need?

• Who is your target market?

• What is your goal, and how will you measure success?

• What’s the lowest profit margin you can make per piece? 

• Where will you find furniture?

• Where will you sell furniture? 

• How do you plan to find and reach potential buyers?

2. Source items

To find the right pieces, build up a wide variety of sources selling furniture at low prices, or even better, giving it away for free. Here are places to start looking: 

• Facebook Marketplace

• Craigslist

• Buy Nothing groups on Facebook

• Thrift stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army

• Local resale shops

• Flea markets

• Estate and garage sales

• Street corners and dumpsters

When considering which pieces of furniture to flip, weigh the logistics: If you don’t have a vehicle large enough to move furniture, factor the cost of renting a truck, van, or trailer into your profit margin calculations. The same goes for space in your own home. You may not want to live with a spare dining set in your house for however long it takes to restore and sell it, but side tables are another story.

Additionally, inspect each piece to determine how much work it needs. Don’t forget to value your own time and realistically assess your skill set.

3. Restore items to their full glory, or beyond

Used furniture has often had a long life, and the types of repairs each piece may need vary widely. YouTube is full of tutorials—just a few hours of research can get you started on a new furniture flipping skill set. You can also find furniture flippers on channels such as Instagram and TikTok, whose before-and-after videos can inspire ideas for your own restorations.

While there’s no substitute for experience, and each piece will need a different treatment, start by gaining a basic understanding of these essential skills: 

• Wood identification. Some wood furniture only needs to be stripped of a subpar paint job and refinished in order to shine. Other wood pieces are wobbly, cracked, or otherwise structurally damaged. Before you can become an expert in either refinishing or repair, you first need to learn to identify different types of wood (Shopify merchant World Interiors has an excellent guide). 

• Refinishing. Get familiar with the different tools you’ll need to refinish wood, like sandpaper in various grits, scrapers and chemical strippers, paintbrushes, and new finishes. Check out online and in-person classes at the Woodworkers Guild of America to understand how and when to apply different finishes to different types of wood.

• Repairing. Furniture that’s wobbly might need new dowels or screws, while cracked furniture can be repaired using wood filler. Other pieces need new hardware or hinges. Online tutorials and workshops can help fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Furniture manufacturer Mohawk offers in-person classes across the country. The Woodworkers Guild of America also has online tutorials.

It takes time to master new skills, so practice on less expensive pieces before you move on to true antiques and unique finds.

4. Set the right price

Successfully flipping furniture for a profit hinges on setting the right price. These steps can help you determine what to charge:

1. Calculate your time investment. Set your hourly rate accordingly. For example, three hours at $35/hour = $105.

2. Record your upfront investment. Consider supply costs, including purchase fee, paint stripper and scraper, and finish. Let’s say in this case, it’s $125.

3. Research similar items online and calculate the average price point. For example, you may learn that dressers like the one you’re selling go for about $500 each. Use this to adjust your pricing if needed. 

You can use several pricing formulas for your business. Cost-plus pricing, competitive pricing, and premium pricing work well for the refurbished furniture business. 

Once you get going, adapt your pricing based on consumer response: If your pieces are selling very quickly, you can try raising the prices to see if your pieces are still in demand. Conversely, if they’re not selling well, you may consider lowering the price. 

5. Find your marketplace

Several factors matter when choosing a platform to sell your pieces. Here are the pros and cons of popular options: 

Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace

• Pros: High traffic from existing customers, ease of upload, excellent search engine functionality to boost discoverability, low or no seller fees

• Cons: Lots of competition, less customization

Etsy

• Pros: High traffic from existing customers, ease of upload, excellent search engine functionality to boost discoverability, great customer service

• Cons: Lots of competition, less customization, high seller fees

1stDibs 

• Pros: High traffic from existing customers prepared to pay luxury prices, excellent search engine functionality to boost discoverability, great customer service

• Cons: Lots of competition, sellers must apply to list, very high seller fees/commission paid to the site

Chairish

• Pros: High traffic from existing customers, excellent search engine functionality to boost discoverability, no application to sell, free listings, facilitated shipping, great customer service, including assistance with beautifying listings

• Cons: Lots of competition, unlike Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, very high seller fees/commission paid to the site

Building your website using Shopify

• Pros: You own your customer and website data and manage customer relationships, you have the ability to build your own brand with highly customizable options, and can showcase your merchandise in a competitor-free environment 

• Cons: No built-in marketing engine, more decisions to make up front as you build your site

You can also create a multi-marketplace strategy by posting on a site that aids in discoverability, like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, and include a link back to your Shopify website. This could allow you to leverage the algorithmic power of established online marketplaces while building future brand power on your own site.

If you want to sell on social media, this guide can help you get started. 

6. Make your marketing shine

When shopping for restored furniture, customers will expect your marketing to meet a certain standard of professionalism before they take the plunge and make a purchase. Why? As a furniture flipper, part of your value proposition is that you’re offering leveled-up used furniture. Customers are coming to you because you’ve done the hard part—including sorting through poorly lit Craigslist photos or scouring thrift shops. So show off what you’ve accomplished.

The more information you give your potential customers about an item, the more likely they are to buy. Think about what you’d want to know before making an investment in a large piece of furniture. Take well-lit photos and videos (natural light is best) that feature the details you spent so much time on: the gloss of the wood finish, the hardware, the way the old drawers open and close smoothly. Make sure there’s some consistency in how you photograph your pieces. Aim for shots from similar angles for each piece and a clean, distraction-free background.

Write concise, grammatically correct product descriptions that include dimensions, materials, and the item’s backstory. 

Choosing a unique business name and investing in a logo design can also strengthen your marketing strategy.

7. Consider offering shipping or local delivery 

Shipping items adds a considerable logistical and financial burden. Even if you’re using a service like UShip or CitizenShipper, which offer shipping solutions for oversized items, the cost will likely be higher than driving your item across town. It often makes sense to offer shipping only if the items you're flipping are ultra-rare, high-quality, or bespoke—and therefore likely to sell for higher prices that would make shipping worth your time and money. Want to make it easier on your customers, but not ready for a shipping workflow? Consider offering local delivery.