CV advice - when is a business a business?

Thanks for the response!

Well, if I buy an undervalued scooter quickly after its on the market and sell it in identical form soon after, would that not be arbitrage? Or can you only use that word in financial markets?

At this stage, being a second year undergraduate, I don't have much a BB bank might really care about to be honest. No industry experience - a summer internship would be my first. I'm just looking to show how I might stand out from the crowd a bit.

I probably bought and sold about 25-30 scooters and mopeds, prices varying. Maybe around the equivalent of $1000.

But yeah, If i concicely state what I did, how I did it and what the results were, would it not be alright to put on my CV? I could then elaborate if I'm asked to comment on it in an interview.

You can't use arbitrage because it sounds ridiculous. Arbitrage is generally a term reserved for sophisticated confluence of (and sometimes not) financial positions... not razor scooters.

Undervalued scooters? Seriously?

Ok... so instead of spinning it as "America Motorworks - Founder/CEO" instead list it under experience without a company name... say....

Entrepreneurial Start-Up - Started motor scooter sales operations with annualized sales of $120,000 ($30,000 across 3 months) - Sourced low-cost vendors and negotiated sales terms, eventually negotiating consignment terms to minimize working capital investment - Created and executed a successful marketing plan resulting in realizing above market gross margin of x% margin

Shows your sharp, capable and motivated.

First bullet, make it a summer thing instead of all of high school. That way you can annualize your sales to a larger/more impressive figure... while still being somewhat honest in your total sales figure (30K)

Second bullet, you found a retailer of scooters, who happened to import them himself/herself. Negotiated terms to buy them from him... at first you bought a few with savings, then after you did sales of 5-10 scooters you negotiated with him to sell on consignment terms (he gives you merchandise, you sell it, you pay him) with a 14 day cap.

Third, you sold these scooters to your peers/people you knew at a price higher than what your distributor retails them for. How? Well the scooter store was in china town, and you live just outside suburban Chicago... you used word of mouth marketing and would ride the scooters around and let friends etc... ride them to see how much fun they were. You created a facebook page and invited all your HS friends and posted videos of you and your friends doing stupid shit on these scooters.

There you go. No one in college has anything to offer a BB. Its all about signaling. What do your accomplishments/experiences signal to recruiters? That you're an average Joe?

Obviously my example above isn't mean to be taken verbatim, but is meant to show you how you could frame this to a value adding part of your resume/candidacy instead of being one of the millions of kids that put:

"Silicone Works Worldwide Corp. - Founder/CEO" representing the iPod/iPhone skins they sold on EBay.

Don't try to over-complicate/over-sell it, you'll look dumb (e.g. arbitrage, undervalued scooters). You're not structuring OTC derivatives. Keep it simple.

This is obviously my personal opinion. You can go right ahead and come up wiht a company name and call yourself the founder and CEO, and say you specialized in highly structured trading of motor scooters to capture alpha by exploiting arbitrage opportunities.... you can say you identified undervalued assets, implemented an operational restructuring/turnaround and sold for a profit with an IRR for 77%.... and I assure you everyone on that floor of the BB will get an e-mail with your resume being forwarded along with... "this one is fucking gold... maybe we can recommend him to the prop desk, I hear the Wheelie shoe market is set for a correction"