- This topic has 9 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 2 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
His inventory system is equal parts amazing AND alarming!
My original system was crudely by date. If I couldn’t find an item I looked at the date and then looked at what other items I listed on that date. If I could find those other items I could find the missing one. The system…sucked. Looking through a thousand items that look almost identical? Sucks.
How this works for him I don’t know. It did not work for me at a couple hundred items. I kept a tub of black shoes. It was a NIGHTMARE to find the right pair of black shoes. Once I spread those black shoes out over multiple tubs? Super easy to find the black pair in any one tub. The only saving grace is that he will always have a general idea of where an item is by style, color, and date. If you lose the SKU on an item you are screwed in a system that big.
-
-
He doesn’t use a sku.
He goes to his orders page, clicks on the sold items listing page to see when it was listed. Goes to the color and there are a few date sections within each month. So if it’s a black shirt listed on 1/1 the he checks the black shirts listed in the first part of January section.
The main way you could mess this system up is by hanging the clothes in the wrong date section but that’s a lot harder than forgetting to change a sku
-
-
What blows my mind is that this guy built a million dollar resale business on just used clothing and just one platform and in Miami of all places, not exactly the cheapest or easiest place to resell. I do think he is a total work-a-holic so I’m sure that helps but not healthy and is probably why he’s winding down the business. He has a new business though, charging a monthly fee to have people participate in his online community he and the Daily Refinement guy built.
-
Why hate on him for selling his knowledge and access?
I’m an engineer – the more skilled and experience I gain the less day to day mundane crap I do. Right now I get to hand off all the daily bs to the new younger engineers, let them flail around a while and make their best effort, then I coach them through to a solution.I’d rather not feed into the negative views of resellers. He runs a legit business, has legit knowledge, and some people want/need coaching. I say have at it selling a class and coaching program!
-
-
Nobody is hating, I don’t think I said anything negative did I? I’ve actually considered joining his reseller program to see what it’s all about. There is definitely a place for folks like him and Daily Refinement. Case in point, this group is fine for casual reseller chit-chat but not very many folks in here sell at a volume where you have to worry about employees, SKU systems to track your inventory and the logistics of hauling a carload of items to the post office every day. I’m at that point now for my model train business and folks like him are who you want to be talking to.
-
Case in point, this group is fine for casual reseller chit-chat but not very many folks in here sell at a volume where you have to worry about employees, SKU systems to track your inventory and the logistics of hauling a carload of items to the post office every day.
@JasonK is your goal to have a team of employees and a warehouse for your eBay store? Or is that born out of how much inventory you have and not enough time to process, list, etc?One of the things that I always loved about Jay and Ryanne was that their eBay business was always a means to an end — it was about getting $1000/week so they could pay their bills but still have flexibility to live their life, then to pay for their first Airbnb, then their second, then the coffee shop and now in my mind they’re basically the First Couple of Luray. But they didn’t do it alone. They have had employees to help along the way with mundane tasks like taking photos (for eBay) or cleaning the Airbnbs and they have their partners in the coffee shop who have more experience with a coffee business. They have the outdoor storage shed with a mostly organized inventory system which IIRC was based around SKUs.
I was in a place when I first started doing eBay full-time two years ago where I had thousands of items in my store and I was making daily post office trips. Honestly I could have used an employee! I’m fortunate that my spouse has always been super supportive of my eBay business and she helped a lot in those days. Especially in the last year when I still had another job and there just weren’t enough hours in a day.
Today my eBay store is much smaller, around 400 items. I am fortunate to specialize in a niche (trading cards) where I can sell a lot of my stuff on consignments. Here is how the model works. Essentially I ship my consignment cards to a company on the west coast, they handle all the scanning and identification for a fee of about $1 per card, all I do is set the price and they take a few percent of each sale. My inventory was a mess before I started sending boxes to consignment. It is easier to buy than sell and I’m working out of an 800sf apartment. So once I tried consignment, I was really thrilled. Maybe I am not always getting top dollar but that’s not always what’s most important. I have more space and time now. You can’t put a price on that. There was a period early last year where I was basically sending a full flat rate box to the consignment company every week. I have over 15,000 cards in my consignment port and it’s developed into a nice, consistent income stream for me.
I also get 500 auctions free every month with my eBay store and make a few thousand dollars in sales by sending cards to auction twice a month. Those days are a lot like you describe, I bring full bins to the post office two at a time. But it’s only on a few days each month.
I’ve also had some success with selling wholesale sized lots of 250+ cards my leftover cards which aren’t worth sending to consignment or listing individually in my eBay store. Again, not getting top dollar but there is always more inventory to find.
Is any of this applicable to your model train business?
If not, I bet @retro-treasures-wv would have a ton of ideas with the volume he buys at and the incredible commitment to listing and storage.
I am not sure how much we can truly learn from the lives of the big grind/hustle Youtube sellers. How much of their customer base are fans? How real are their numbers? I met a guy at a library sale a few months back who sells books on Amazon and he learned everything he knows from these different Youtube sellers. But will he still be at it next year when I go back to that sale? How much of a grind is his daily life? Maybe I’ll ask him and report back.
-
Nah you didn’t say anything negative. I just read it with a negative connotation.
Daily refinement does have good content. If I didn’t have this site to post on weekly I’d be tempted to join them or the CATRP group just so I’d have like minded, goal oriented people to share numbers with.
-
-
To fill the void left by the irreplaceable Scavenger Life podcast winding down, I started listening to daily refinement (not quite the same at all but it was what I found out there) however, listening to Tech, it always makes me get off my butt and start listing… How can I complain or find it hard to list 5 items a day when this guy has an entire warehouse he handmade out of boxes and tubing and lists like he does? He is all action and results. Consistent daily activity results in consistent daily sales… I decided to try that for myself and it is working well for me except it’s on a much smaller scale 🙂 I don’t want to pay for monthly coaching, I am way too cheap… however I like to listen to the free portion of the podcasts and I think having access to the knowledge base and the rest of the podcasts would be great!
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.