Scavenger Life Episode 235: A "Slow Business" Is What We Want

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We had a much better week. Pretty consistent sales. We also sold a lot of weird items we’ve had for a while. Those are the best sales.

We talk about our concept of “slow business” which is just a twist on the whole Slow Movement.

“It is a cultural revolution against the notion that faster is always better. The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting.”

As we continue to sell on eBay and invest in rental property, we’re trying to make sure every step of the way feels sustainable. There’s no hurry at all. Death is coming no matter what we do.

Also, in the past, we were always looking for a sense of purpose and family in our work environments which was rare to find. Of course as we grew older, we realized that the purpose of corporations, companies, and businesses isn’t to make us feel secure or give us individual purpose. This is why we’re creating it for ourselves the best we can. We keep building our lives one slow pair of old shoes at a time.

In this episode, we mentioned the following links:

Because of the possible extinction of elephants, we found out that eBay will remove any listing even with the terms “faux ivory”. Check out eBay’s policy here.
Amazon continues to dominate online retail. This article sketches a picture of exactly how large their reach is, but it also notes that Amazon still make a very slim profit as it continues the race to the bottom on prices.
Interesting article exploring the growing problems of returns in the US. Supposedly 15% of all online sales are returned vs 8% in brick and mortar stores. Many of these returns are simply sold off to liquidators, and much of it just ends up in the landfill. Cheap junk is cheap.