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I have been a junker my whole life…dug for bottles with my parents as a kid and poked around junk stores with them too. My dad and I would participate in the annual huge local flea market JUST SO we could get in before everyone else and peruse treasures after setting up our table. I started collecting with comic books and it just went from there.
I worked in corporate retail management until the age of 34 when I left it in the dust to pursue my dual passions of being an artist and being a vintage seller. I opened up a retail shop 13 years ago, and when the economy imploded in 2007/2008 I moved online and now have 4 shops: Amazon, Ebay, and 2 Etsy shops. I participate in several vintage booth shows throughout the year and I also put on an Vintage Show twice a year that’s been featured in a national magazine.
I closed my retail shop May of this year…it was grand being a shopkeeper, but I needed time to do more travelling and also start writing novels.
It’s all about following our passions….life is very short, as we are painfully made aware of from time to time, and if not now….when? The day after my farewell party at my shop I flew to England for a glorious week, started writing the first chapter of my novel there, and it’s been a grand ride ever since.
I love selling online and I firmly believe it’s the wave of the future. I really appreciate having this forum and reading comments from such seasoned, friendly and knowledgeable people. While I have been selling on Amazon for a long time, I am relatively new to Ebay and I am learning so much and enjoying the journey. Thanks everyone for making this fun.
Lacy
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Thanks Jay.
I started out selling books on Amazon. It was a natural progression, as I was already scavenging at estate sales and garage/yard sales for vintage goods and I also LOVE BOOKS. My specialty was buying large collections of books and I was quite lucky over the years….but the market fell out for books on Amazon a few years ago, and while I still buy books to resell…I mostly sell them other ways, including the vintage shows that I do. People love beautiful old books.
My shop was a mixture of vintage items and new items that have a vintage vibe. I figured out that these new items would sell quite well on Amazon and have built that part of my business up to selling over $100,000 on Amazon every year. It’s a extremely competitive market and I’ve had to evolve to keep up, but I like the challenge. I go to the Atlanta Wholesale Market every January to scout out new product, and that’s a blast in itself…getting to see the new trends.
I had thought about selling on Ebay for a long time, but with wearing so many hats had never quite pursued it until I talked to another vintage shopkeeper in the Summer of 2016 and she mentioned that she was doing quite well on Ebay and had moved most of her inventory off Etsy and onto Ebay. That was all the nudge I needed to start my Ebay journey.
I did want to mention that I LOVE the term scavenger and scavenging. Thank you for introducing such a great word into the picking vocabulary. People say junking or picking and I do call myself a Glitter Picker since my eye is drawn to pretty things, but “scavenger” is the very best word for what I do. I LOVE it!
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Awesome. Sounds like you’re very much a pro.
Just curious. When you say you sell $100k on Amazon, do you mean gross profits? Or your net profit after expenses and cost of goods?
If you’re currently buying wholesale and just sending in shipments to FBA, selling vintage on eBay will be a different beast. Are you already taking photos on each vintage item and listing on eBay?
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Welcome, and…Wow! Sounds like you sure are busy! I’d love to hear a little more about the vintage shows. Some years ago, I argued that small shops and shows would make a comeback for vintage and crafts because a lot of people like to shop for that stuff in the Real World as a form of entertainment. It’s one reason I feel more and more people will buy stuff like toothpaste online….no one enjoys “shopping” for toothpaste, but people enjoy “going out and shopping for antiques and stuff (often shopping with a friend or two, making it into a social occasion). Also, commodity goods, like toothpaste, are easy for sites to catalogue and are thus ideal for online selling, whereas older stuff is harder to catalogue properly (as ebay is finding out, and as Amazon admitted when they pulled out of their one effort at running auctions of older stuff)
What I’m seeing around here is, older antiques can be a tough sell because the market for the real thing is so small, but “vintage” and repurposed (and new stuff with a vintage vibe)seems to do well in shops, in part because so many lifestyle shows, magazines and blogs etc encourage people to buy the stuff. I think it is also the “hunt” and, at the same time, the serendipitous discovery of some great treasure the buyer wasn’t actually hunting for.
So, I’m really wondering: what are you seeing in the real world selling? What stuff seems to be popular? Is it a social thing? Buyers demographics? Young , old, men, women? Just any observations you’d care to share would be appreciated.
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Jay,
I sold $151,955 on Amazon in 2017. After cost of goods and Amazon fees my net profit hovers around 16% of that. I sell about 70% FBA and the rest I fulfill myself. There’s a LOT not to like about selling on Amazon and the competition grows ever fiercer but Amazon has been very good to me over the years so I try not to complain too much. I agree that selling on Ebay is a whole different animal and so far I like it much better.
I started on Ebay selling the same vintage-new stuff I was selling on Amazon, as that was the fastest way to jump in, and then started putting my vintage on there too, taking my own pictures of unique items. I have huge death piles, as I have saving items that I thought would be great on Ebay and are too specific for my local antique shows. A good example is a vintage brass water meter that I picked up at a barn sale for 25 cents and sold on Ebay for $45. One of my big goals for 2018 is to get a HUGE amount of these goodies listed on Ebay. Right now I have about 80% new retail on there and only 20% vintage and that’s going to change as I move forward. It’s always MUCH more thrilling to sell the vintage treasures.
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