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I began watching “make money from home” videos when my husband’s health failed, he became bedridden, and was placed on a wait list for a kidney/liver transplant. I was a social worker for a not for profit which arranged for me to begin working from home in a care giving role. But that accommodation was temporary. I could see the day looming ahead when neither of us could work.
I began Amazon, quickly abandoned it, and turned to eBay. I had only the vaguest notion of what eBay was. I began selling pre-owned clothing only because 1.) there is a thrift store 3 minutes away which regularly holds $5 bag sales, and 2.) I needed to be able to drop everything and return home quickly if needed so I wasn’t comfortable being away for long periods or driving farther.
Desperation is…not a skill. 🙂 My 16 months on eBay has been the most grueling, challenging, labor-intensive learning curve I have ever walked due to my staggering level of ignorance re all things eBay, or eBay related. I had no skill, experience, or knowledge base to bring to my efforts. But my goals were simple: Just get your husband through this. Just keep the danged mortgage paid.
The thrift store I visited is utterly chaotic, beyond filthy, and poorly lit. Boxes line the floor along one wall, blocking shelves behind, and overflowing with empty jars, stray socks, the random spider, and everything in between. “Guess and by gosh” dictated my sourcing. Not a strategy well rewarded by eBay and one that guaranteed I would work ten x harder for those dimes.
Our days were a blur of dialysis, Dr. appts., managing diet/meds, frequent hospitalizations, and often, the fire department at 2 a.m. to help him off the floor. I weaved in eBay as fast as I could source, photo, and list. My sourcing was blind, my research poor, my photos dismal, and my days long. I worked so hard at doing eBay poorly that eighteen pounds melted right off.
$5 bag sales are a pretty risk-free training ground at this thrift store where a pristine St. John is treated with the same disrespect as a stained Faded Glory. While not regularly, some amazing finds made their way into those $5 bags. Aside from a one-time purchase of air pistols, my store is filled with 1250 plus clothing items sourced for dimes, and randomly selling for $12 – $24.
Our lives have been gifted with two miracles. My husband did get through this. He struggles with some permanent brain damage, and is unable to help with eBay, but he feels well and functions independently. eBay did keep the mortgage paid. To this day, that astounds me. My recurring thought was…just think what one might do if one knew what they were doing.
My care giving role is far less intense. I have come up for air, taken a breath, eaten ice cream, and assessed. My sourcing options are no longer limited and I have a better sense of what I’m doing. I have new goals: To gear down to a less frantic pace, and gear up to doing eBay instead of eBay “doing me” via ignorance, desperation, and limitations. I want my life back.
There are items in my store I would not pick up today. Does the “bad” weigh down the “good” in a clothing category? How concerned should I be? Monetarily, my investment is insignificant, so I can address my sourcing remorse pretty fearlessly. Please share experience and strategies re purging a store of poorly sourced items and your thoughts on the importance of doing so.
Sheesh! Thank you, thank you, and …well, THANK YOU! 🙂
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Sheesh is right. Boy what a trial you have been through. And God Blessed you to help keep that roof over you and your husbands head.
Before I go into a suggestion that may be of interest, first a question that would pertain to that answer.
Do you end up paying taxes at the end of the year or do you pay quarterly taxes or have any tax money taken out of some sort of an income check? Depending on if the answer is yes or no, it would save me from going through the tip for you.
Mike at MDC Galleries
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Wow. Words can’t express what I feel when I read that. There is so much that you had to slog through, so much pain and anguish, but ultimately, I see so much to be proud of now that you are on the other side.
Just…wow.
To answer your question: When we have the “bad buy”, we just discount it deeply and get it out the door. Sales beget sales, so selling one low item will help get other sales, you get some money back for the work you did to list, you make a buyer happy with a discounted item, and you hopefully get great feedback.
If that doesn’t work, just donate back. I REALLY hate that, but sometimes you just have to…
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Be good to yourself! Being a caregiver is so important but exhausting.
We’ve been discussing shedding old inventory on another thread. I’m going to speak in very general terms. If lower value items have condition issues, I would end those, chalk that up to learning, and donate. You don’t want to sell cheap, deal with shipping it all while you are burnt out, and potentially get some negative feedback out of it. For better items that are already listed, you can try deep mark downs and/or auctions to generate quick sales but if the merchandise is not in demand, then expect low prices. Several of us have an unproven theory that ending successful auctions, accepting best offers, and sales generate other sales in the store. Starting to look for better merchandise might be an uplifting experience for you if you like sourcing. Good luck!
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A. Lyric,
I am so sorry to hear about what you and your husband have been through. Take it one minute, one day, one experience at a time.
As for your listings, I concur with ChristineR. Have sales on the stuff in good condition and maybe think about redonating anything that is in questionable condition.
I would offer that you start slow on building new inventory so it does not become overwhelming.
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Thank you all. I’m grateful for our good outcome, grateful the worst is over, and grateful we can look forward to better things. Particularly with eBay which is income still needed.
My sourcing remorse has to do with items in my store which get very little attention. Every thirty days I “sell similar”, and they do poorly for another 30 days, then another, and another, until they’ve been ignored for months.
To my knowledge, I don’t have any flawed items in my store. The thrift store I went to is so dark it’s hard to inspect clothing items thoroughly. Some weeks the number of items I brought home that were flawed would be high. Other weeks not so much. I just never listed the stuff that was flawed.
I’ve maintained 100% feedback although I honestly don’t know how. I sent the wrong item to Australia, sold a shirt that was already sold, sent Levi jeans to a lady who purchased a Levi jumper. But maybe I did have one skill to bring to eBay. I knew how to own my errors, apologize, and make them right. 🙂
As for taxes, I did hear recently that I could pay them quarterly, and that’s on my list of things to look into and learn more about.
I think I will start doing .99 auctions. But I’m also curious to know if you think having stale inventory in your store actually hurts your sales volume. Last summer was so slow/scary/stressful. I’m trying to avoid a repeat this summer.
Anyway, thank you again for your kind words.
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The reason I asked “if you have to pay any taxes”, is that you will be surprised how you can lower what you have to pay.
This is how, go to the web sites of places around you that you can donate to and download and print out their “Donation Value Guide”. These are fairly thorough pricing guides as to what the “donated tax value” is for each item you donate. The Goodwill one is bad. Too short and not thorough at all. But the Salvation Army one is detailed, has many categories and has good valuations for items that you donate.They show a price range for each item, Low to High. We just use a price in between [avg. the two].
You will be surprised at how much you can write off if you donate items to these places. Now you may only get a percetage of what you declare as the value of the items you donate, but it may come out to be more than $.99 you were going to place in an auction and you don’t have to do any work other than create a written list of what you donate, get a receipt when you donate, and put a valuation price beside it. Oh course, you do have to itemize your taxes in order to take advatage of this.
But here are some examples of the price ranges the salvation army places on items donated to them. We find we get a better value by donating and using these prices instead of having a yard sale and a whole lot less work.
Some of the categories are of course Men’s Clothing, Women’s Clothing, Appliances, Home Goods, Furniture, Childrens clothes,
end table: $10 to $50; coffee table: $15-$65; rug: $20-$90; blanket: $3-$15; coffeemaker: $4-$15; Lamp: $5-$75; pillow: $2-$8; a dinner plate: $.50-$3.00; man’s shirt: $2.50-$12.00; men’s shoes: $3.50-$25; mens shorts: $3.50-$10; womens blouse: $2.50-$12.00; womens dress: $4-$20.00; womens shoes: $2-$25;I think you can see what we mean. We use the middle of these and in many cases the tax donated value is more than we could even get for the low end, lower quality, run of the mill stuff we get in box lots, or cleaning out old inventory that we made mistakes on. Fast, easy, and at pretty good prices.
BUT_BUT, you have to need tax write offs in order to lower your tax liability. If your income level is low and standard deductions are better or if you don’t itemize your year end taxes, then these donated values won’t be of much help.
Hopefully they may.
Good Luck.Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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Mike: Tread carefully here. You can’t take a business deduction for inventory for resale AND take a personal deduction for donating that item.
When you calculate your COGS for Taxes, the formula is:
Beginning Inventory + Purchases – Ending Inventory = COGS
If you purchased the item for resale and included that purchase in either Beginning Inventory or Purchases, but it is not in Ending Inventory (because you donated it), your COGS is higher by that cost. You are reducing your Net Profit, and reducing your taxes.
If you then list the item as a Charitable Donation on your personal taxes…you double dipped.
If the item is a personal item, no problem. But if the item was in your Inventory, you can’t donate.
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T-Satt – Thanks for bringing up the double-dipping issue! I have been wondering about that for a while…. So just to clarify your last sentence, you *can* donate items that you have removed from inventory, but you just can’t take a deduction of their value if you’ve already included their cost in your yearly COGS.
Huh. That sort of makes sense. What confuses me is that I may have paid 25 cents for something at a rummage sale which has a thrift store value of $10, so the two “dips” aren’t equal. In other words, cost and value are different. So maybe when I remove from inventory and donate, I should take the $10 donation deduction instead of adding $0.25 to COGS? But if I’ve overpaid for an item that I remove (cost > value), then I go the COGS route? Is this approach something anybody else does?
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Unfortunately that’s not how it works. (Please correct me if I’m wrong)
If you buy an item for $1, then you donate it, you can only claim what you paid ($1). It doesn’t matter what the value of the item is. You only deduct what you paid. The IRS would want to see a record of what you paid for the item just like a COGS.
If it did work that way, I could just go to the thrift store, spend $10 on a bag of clothes with a value of $1000. Then I’d walk around back and re-donate and claim $1000 deduction. Obviously that’s a no go.
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Jay: You are correct. You can only deduct your cost that you paid for something. This is why you need to keep receipts for as many COGS purchases as possible. For yard sale items, it should be reasonable if audited.
The values that the IRS gives for items you donate is an accepted valuation since they are lower than what you would pay retail, and they understand that you don’t keep those receipts.
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OK, I think I got it now. Thanks for educating me, guys.
The bad news is no double dipping and no deduction above original purchase price. The great news is no longer having to keep track of and calculate value of ex-inventory items that I’m donating! And no more dealing with donation receipts (for ex-inventory items). That is going to make life so much easier!! yay.
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I’ll do you one better – download the “itsdeductible” app. All the valuations are built in. The app is made by inuit – the same folks who make TurboTax, and other accounting softwares. You can even use the same intuit login.
You log your donations in the app and then donate/get the receipt. At tax time TurboTax can go and grab your itsdeductible data automatically.
In the long run though, the tax changes coming next year will pretty much wipe out charitable contributions for most people.
Note that this is mainly for non-inventory charity donation of goods. If you are donating purchased inventory, a donation is directly deductible as a business expense for the amount you paid for the item. No need to go through the charitable donations side of taxes or use the app. Just create a spreadsheet for items that are destroyed, broken, or donated and create a line item in your business expenses for it.
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We use TurboTax and will itemize next year, so I downloaded this app. It looks super convenient and it’s pretty quick to make an entry. Some of the values are strong though IMHO, like more than you would pay at our Goodwill here on the Coast for medium and the high is very strong, only maybe good for serious brands in great condition. For example, a medium quality men’s dress shirt is $11 (the lowest value they offer in the app). On the other hand, an area rug is worth a max $7, framed art print $19. Would be interesting to see how this compares to the Salvation Army prices. The IRS guide I found quickly says “The price that buyers of used items actually pay in used clothing stores, such as consignment or thrift shops, is an indication of the value.”
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I am so sorry to hear about what you have been through. I’m glad you have gotten past the worst of it.
My advice for stale inventory: I LOVE having a huge inventory. The larger, the better. Sometimes, it just takes forever to find the right buyer. Items aren’t necessarily stale, they’re just long-tail. That being said – sometimes you do just need to get rid of stuff.
If your items are priced right, keep them listed. Maybe run a small sale to get some attention to the items.
If they’re not worth as much as you have them listed for, run a sale or an auction to bring the price down and clear them out. Or, delist them and donate them to a thrift store. They can always be replenished with new inventory from the bag sales.
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We’re also on Team Big Inventory because everything eventually sells. Unless you think an item is actually garbage, keep it listed and let it ride. Especially if you’re selling clothes in this highly competitive market, things can take time to find a buyer.
Other people run their stores successfully by burning through inventory, never letting items stay around for longer than 60 days. Someone here recently said, “I’m in the selling business, not in the storage business.” (I personally don’t think these ideas are mutually exclusive.) I guess just choose your strategy and stick to it.
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I’m a big believer in running 10%-20% sales every week, especially in the seasonally slow summer. If you’re not already doing that it’s a good place to start. Tuesday is the only day of the week my store is not on sale usually.
Mike, interesting that Salvation Army valuation sheet. I’ve used GW in the past. Those are strong values even for us here in Cali if the brands are nothing special. I feel like I’m too conservative sometimes on tax stuff.
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Glad to hear that your medical situation has improved. The best thing ever is to take care of your husband. It’s so hard but rewarding.I am in a similar situation but I know the outcome won’t be so good. My husband has dementia and has recently been diagnosed with PSP, progressive supranuclear palsy. At first we had a great time sourcing because he would find things I never thought to sell. When his dementia got worse I would buy things (very cheap) just because he found them and wanted to buy them. I would donate them later. Now I find myself unable to source and list. I’m lucky (sort of!!) that I have a huge death pile. A whole room full of stuff and then some. Now we have decided to move to a one story house for his safety. Steps are not friends of PSP as the palsy progresses. I am selling anything and everything I don’t want to move. (I had a craft business, folk art and porcelain dolls)If I could list everything in my death room I would, but I will have to pack it and move it. My ebay is running on cruise control. I am thankful for each and every sale. Before my husband got sick I had thought about cleaning out my inventory and getting rid of stuff that I thought didn’t have a chance of selling. I’m glad I didn’t because some of those things have sold. And each sale helps. If you have a store large enough to just list everything in sight…go for it. I haven’t had anyone call me and ask if I have a “widget” for sale. It has to be listed to sell. And a big thanks to Ryanne & Jay for building their storage building. I am using some of your ideas to use the 2 car garage at our “new” house to use for ebay storage. One side for listed, the middle for to be listed and one side for household stuff that I can’t get in the new house until we finish remodeling. I have a plan…now if everything just goes according to plan I will be happy.
And the best thing you ever did was stop your life and take care of your husband. Ebay will fall into place. -
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Annabel52. Life has some curve balls up its sleeve, doesn’t it?
Yes, the best thing I ever did was care for my husband through his darkest hour. It’s also something I was excellent at.
But I dove into deep eBay waters before I knew how to swim so I’m trying to keep my head above water.
The sharing and encouragement on this forum has really touched me and makes me feel less alone.Good luck to you and to your husband.
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I haven’t been to the $5 bag sales in a couple weeks because I’m trying to check out other sourcing options. I’ve been to an estate sale, a few garage sales, and new-to-me thrift stores in outlying areas. It’s been so so interesting! You can almost tell when you walk in to a place what the prices will be like. If the glassware sparkles, there’s no dust, everything is pristine and nicely spaced, that seems to be a clue that holds true for garage sales, as well.
I’ve found a thrift store about 40 miles away run by a church. The two ladies at the check out were both delightful sweethearts in their 90’s! They were having a half off sale, and are on my “keepers” list of sourcing options out of the three thrift stores I visited there.
But I will always go back to the $5 bag sales. The bag they give you is actually a big, brown grocery bag, and you can put hard goods in if they fit. I once put a NIB gadget that takes moisture from hearing aides in it, and another gadget you put around your neck to keep cool that was also NIB. They both sold for $50. But as a rule I avoided hard goods, kitchen ware, or electronics unless they are new and smallish. In part because I’m not comfortable looking things up on a phone.
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Thanks A.Lyric sometimes I think life has a pitching machine and the speed keeps getting turned up. But I have news for my life machine…bring it on, I can handle it. Back to the sourcing issue… I have had 3 sales recently of free stuff sourced at a garage sale and the free box at restore. It took 3 years for the vintage ATSF railroad menus to sell ($40 each) but since I had nothing but time invested I was willing to wait and the book that sold was from the 20’s and had an beautiful inscription so it was worth waiting for too. If I had taken these out of inventory I would be out almost $100. Patience Prudence.
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