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As I have mentioned before, I have been a hobby eBay seller for the past 2 years and am retiring July 1 (at age 56 – thank you very much). I have the ambition to grow my eBay store to 500 – 1000 items, and have been picking up stuff here and there at estate sales, thrift stores and yard/garage sales in anticipation of having more free time after I quit my 8 – 5. My unlisted pile is probably 300+ items.
This past week, I got my photo studio set up and put up 15 new items (not much, but what I could manage). I sold a tie-wallet yesterday morning and searched high and low to find it. Finally, after about an hour of searching, I discovered it in a box of stuff that I had set aside to list. I was so frustrated. The experience of listing new items and not being able to find a sold item made me realize that before I bring one more item into the house, I need an inventory and storage solution.
Listening to past SL podcasts, I know that J+R frequently mention that they see sellers start out with all sorts of excitement and are often gone in 6 – 12 months. They hit one of the barriers to growing the eBay business – inventory control, listing, customer service. They have piles of unlisted stuff (hoarders). This may be me, but not this weekend. I drew a line in the sand and decided I will not buy one more item for my eBay store until I have EVERY SINGLE ITEM in my existing pile listed, inventoried and stored. To that end I picked up one of those 72x77x24 inch shelves and six giant bins. After assembling yesterday, I spent hours this morning with my existing inventory assigning each item to a bin and updating my listings with that bin’s ID. I have 3 full bins and one more to go. It has been a shitty slog that felt every bit as bad as the work I do in my 8 – 5, but I figure I will get it done once and then enroll every new item in the same system.
Anyway, I will hoard no more. I will buy only what I can list and list everything I buy. If I dump the eBay store, I will come back and tell you guys why. Wish me luck, Daniel
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Good for you!!
Many sellers don’t implement an inventory system until they’ve got hundreds of items. It takes time, but it is very worth it. I recently went through all my clothing tubs, bagged and labeled the items. It makes finding the right item a breeze! AND hopefully, it will make a hired helper have an easy time of finding an item for me too!
I have five shelves on each shelving unit. The units are alphabetical So one unit (that holds 10 tubs) is unit G, then the top row has G1A and G1B. I continue all the way down like that. Then inside each tub are the items in numerical order. So when I sell something it tells me G5A11. I know to go to tub G5A and look for item 11. Use these numbers in your SKU area and you’ll be able to see which items are in each tub from your computer. Oh and when using the item numbers put a zero in front of items 1-9 so they are in proper order on your computer.
It has taken lots of time, but I’m very happy with it now that it’s done.
Good luck Daniel! -
@Jay – thanks for the encouragement. I have already discovered that I hate china and glassware. It is a pain to store and a pain to ship. I still have about 30 pieces of early american pressed glass that I picked up for $0.50 a piece (estate seller thought it was just normal kitchen/ barware). I sold the most valuable goblet for $120 and the rest has not moved. I am going to find a way to move it – perhaps will look for a local buyer to take the lot.
@Sue – thanks also for the positive words. I am doing mixed bins on racks with letters to specify the rack and numbers to specify the bin. Because the bins are mixed, I think I should be able to find things quickly, but I may get into lots of t-shirts or other small stackables that would promote numbering the items inside the bin.Thanks so much for the support. I will continue to be transparent about my experience. -Daniel.
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Hi Daniel, good luck with your exercise. I’ve got the same rule: don’t buy until the Death Piles are gone! Only… some days it’s hard to resist! LOL. My DPs number in the 1,000s, can’t wait to get down to only 300 items!
My inventory system started out as a number in a box on a shelf, e.g. R1B1#123 (item #123 in box 1 on rack 1) but it got unwieldy fast! So now I changed to an alphanumeric system that has proven extremely simple, easy, fast, and failsafe (touch wood!) I created categories that were assigned letter. So A=Auto, B=Books/puzzles/board games, C=Caps and hats, etc. Then I bought some Avery 8160 labels and created a page in each category: A001; A002; A003; A004, etc. I have one of those books made of clear plastic pockets and slipped the pages into a pocket. The book stays in my listing area.
Once I’ve done listing photos, I place the item into a plastic bag for storage, slap a label onto it and then cover the label with a quick strip of packing tape (so that the label doesn’t fall off if it stays in storage for a while) and snap a photo of the label and the weight of the item for the listing.
On the outside of my storage totes, I put the numbers of a category. So the first box is labeled A1-…. and I wait until the box is full and put the last number in (e.g. A1-A43). The next box is then labeled with the first number of the next set (per last e.g. A44-…)
Wow, it’s a lot longer to type this out than actually do it! Takes seconds to do!
For storage purposes, it’s easy to combine boxes. I just combine two boxes and change the numbering on the outside label. Every item is individually numbered, and I just put the totes in order on the shelves. Finding my item takes mere seconds.
Perfect system for my goldfish-sized attention span!
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Amatino, thanks for outlining your inventory/storage process. Can you explain why your original process (R1B1#123) got so unwieldy? I ask because this is essentially what I am doing now.
It sounds like the advantage of your present system is that you can quickly consolidate all the “A”s together so if you have 99 items and items 48 through 74 are sold, you can move from two boxes to one box. Also, because you have things in categories (e.g. Books/puzzles/board games) you can find things even if they are not exactly where you expected them to be. Thanks, Daniel.
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Aperture: Here is our inventory system —
Hard Goods: These are on shelves marked 1-15. We don’t use bins on the shelves, just put the item on the shelf. We only mark the shelf so that we can rearrange on the shelf to accommodate more room without having to update the location in ebay/SixBit. For items that are in the warehouse, we have them packed up and ready to ship with the SKU# on the package, and the location is the shelf in the warehouse with WH in the SKU (so that we can differentiate warehouse from house).
PS – The prepacking for the warehouse was huge recently. Denver had 85+ MPH winds last week. Lots of dust and sand inside the warehouse, but since everything is already boxed, we just wiped them down and kept shipping.
For shoes, we have four racks (SH1-SH4)
For clothes, I use file drawers by type (Casual – C1-C15, Dress D1-D5, Jeans J1-J15, etc). SKU is on a tag on the outside of the clear polybag they are stored in.
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