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I had great sales numbers last week mostly due to one big sale. The remaining sales weren’t bad either. However, I left mid-week to visit with family, so sales slowed down during my Time Away.
My big sale was a set of vintage speakers on offer for $600. One of my dad’s friends gave them to me in 2023. My dad said that I should give a commission to his friend when they sold. It took me a year to get them listed mostly because I always put off testing electronics. When I did list them, I told my dad about it, and he said that his friend had passed away in the meantime. This is not unusual considering my parents are in their 80s living in Florida with many other East Coast aging parents. I guess it is good news / bad news situation for the COGS.
The speakers had been very popular with several people contacting me about them or offering a price I wasn’t willing to accept. Two potential buyers asked if I would take the speaker part out and only ship those, but I wasn’t interested. I had local pickup as I did not want to have to ship them. I am currently working on arranging pickup for the buyer driving out from Brooklyn.
Jay & Ryanne – I don’t mind making these posts, but what’s up?
Week of Dec 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 1796 eBay, 41 Etsy
Items Sold: 8 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $29.36 + $20 Commission
Total Sales: $781.31 eBay
Highest Price Sold: eBay $600 for Set 2 Vintage JBL 88 Speakers Type L88
Average price: $97.66 ($25.90 not including speakers)
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0 -
Week of Dec 22 – 28
Total Items in Store: 1200ish
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: $201
Total Sales: $1237; Net $817
Highest Price Sold: eBay $103 (Set of three new plates (RA))
Average price: $44
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $200 – After Christmas RA, $10 thrift Christmas clearance.
Number of items listed this week: 4I reported in the scavenge of the week but bought mainly some Anthropologie clearance right before and the day after Christmas. Have some some of that already (probably close to the $200 I spent) and waiting for a few more matching pieces to arrive. The other clearance sales weren’t great. I might check them out again as people tighten up spending in the coming weeks. Truth be told, I’m paying down a credit card now and we don’t usually ever carry a balance so I’m not looking to buy too much more.
Hope to get back to listing. The puppy is a good one but still needs a lot of tending to. My kids are still home so they can help make sure she doesn’t eat anything she shouldn’t. We got her a bed by my desk she can sleep in while I’m on the computer working. I still need to tackle the garage and inventory though.
I just found some new items I had to cancel last year in the wrong category bin. Super frustrating. Last year I did totally convert and organize the listed smaller item storage in my guest room closet with clear bins. I use painters tape for marking as some turn over completely. The garage is only half organized.
Sales were good. I’m doing 40% off Christmas and 20% off everything else. Also sending extra 5% – 33% more offers. Some older and less exciting merch is going out the door. Christmas is tapering off.
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PS. Mercari is very very slow. Had hardly any sales during the season on there and my stuff is cheap. VAMP/Niknax on District was painfully slow. It seems largely like those are live selling platforms and the BINs are not moving much overall. VAMP is whittling down its sellers even more. Both say they are going to try some things to improve BIN…
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Week of 12/23-12/29
Items in Store: 3007
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales: $1,024.00
COGS: $110.00
Total Profit: $914.00
Average profit: $38.08
Average sales price: $42.67
New Listings: 10
Items scavenged: 0
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 35
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,596.81
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 34
2024 ASP $46.36
2024 total sales $83,034.00Another year in the bag and it was another record year. I hit $83k in gross sales. YAY! I also sold more items than ever at 1791 items. I listed less than last year at 1835 new listings vs 2500 last year. In 2023 I went from a 2k item store to a 3k item store. This year I maintained the 3k item store. My sweet spot is going to end up around 3500 items that I maintain. I am beyond thrilled with how my year turned out! My long term goal is still to list 40 items a week, sell 40 items a week and maintain $40+ ASP. To get there I have to list more in the short term. Thankfully I have a several THOUSAND item death pile. The days of hoarding a death pile in case I lose my job so I can go full time without sourcing expenses is over. I already have a fully robust store that – for many people – is a full time income. It’s time to go ahead and reach my store’s full potential even still as a part time business.
I have a list of goals for next year:
Process upgrades
- Upgrade listing/shipping computer and switch to 2 vertical screen setup
- Finish upgrading shipping supplies station (in progress)
- Add light on articulating arm to photo station
- Convert 1 wardrobe in inventory shed to bin storage – adds 9-12 bins (250-300 items)
Bottom line – I need a cleaner, more efficient work space. Anything that can save me time – even at seconds per item – adds up and is worth investing in. I want to get to where I’m selling 2300-2500 items a year. Saving 30 seconds per item on any one of my processing steps (listing, shipping, photography) could save almost 20 HOURS in a year! If I can reduce my times by 30 seconds on every step, that is a HUGE time savings. Doing this size of store part time with the workload I have means efficiency is the most important aspect of everything I do. Anything that can improve my listing quality with minimal cost and zero net effect on time is also worth doing. That’s why I want the articulating light arm. For smaller items my light setup isn’t as effective. Having a light I can move into place will increase my image quality (better lighting = lower ISO value of camera = less graininess and more detail)
Store goals:
- List 2500+ items (get store to 3500 items)
- Maintain scavenging parameters that focuses on high STR and high value. I only want to source $50+ items unless the STR guarantees a fast sale.
- Have helper photograph 30+ items a week to tackle clothing backlog deathpile.
I want to source less than ever this year and keep focusing on death piles. Not counting the premium hoarder collection, this year was the least I’ve ever sourced by volume of items. I think I’ve hit the sweet spot for now and just want to maintain. It will be several years before I would run out of death pile even at an accelerated listing pace of death pile items. It is so important to keep scavenging even though I’m buying less as you can’t find the home run items unless you are still looking. Getting to 2500 items listed should be much easier as my son will be more consistent than my daughter was. In 1Q 2025 I plan to burn through a big pile of clothing – I’ll create 10 listings a day during my break/lunch at work so he always has 10 items to photograph each day. He’ll keep improving his speed, so 50 items a week should be no problem for him. I want to front load as much listing as possible in the 1st quarter of the year. The stretch goal will be 1000 new listings in 1st quarter.
I think I will start culling old items as well this year. Things that just don’t have much value vs the space they take up and/or have very low STR have got to go. I’m much more tolerable of very small low value items. If I have a big item that is taking up alot of space and sells for less than $50 – why am I keeping that around?? It’s not even worth blowing out price wise because the risk of an INAD return or a shipping damage claim on a bulky item could end up costing me money.
Premium Hoarder update:
Sold 4 items for $405.
At this point I’m only still doing this number because I pull the data anyways for a spreadsheet where I’m keeping track of my profit on this pipeline. Maybe I should stop tracking it and just accept this will be a part of my business for another year or two. Thoughts?? (Checking to see if anyone is reading still) I already know I’m going to end up around $150k in sales once it is all said & done. It was very important to keep track of numbers early on since my upfront costs were so high. Now – not so much. I have 477 current listings for a listed value of $77k. I still have around 100 or so listings left to do which will add another $10k to list value. These items do keep my ASP up, but I know it won’t last forever. My hope is that my enhanced sourcing methods focusing on higher ASP will balance my store out over the next 2 years so once all these items are gone I will still have a $40+ ASP going forward. Pre hoarder collection I had a $35 ASP that was solid as rock independent of store size. I’ve been at $49 ASP since I started listing hoarder items. So steadying out at $40 seems realistic with my enhanced sourcing rules. This collection really pushed my whole business to the next level. I want to maintain that momentum!
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When I buy something that ends up with a huge profit, I keep track of it for a while just so that I can calculate the ROI. I just like looking at the number. However, after some time goes by, I forget to keep adding in the sale price, and the number doesn’t get updated. I bought over 100 whiskey pitchers for about $29 in 2019, and my ROI is 59.6. Multiply that by 100 to get the percentage!!!
Also, just trying to prove that I am indeed still reading …
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You’re an inspiration. Incredible numbers, but what I really look forward to every week is learning from the ways you think about your business and how you come up with process improvements. You have an incredible sense of what you want to accomplish with your business and I love to see how you involve your family and use the extra money from your reselling business to improve your family’s life and make memories with them.
My vote is ditch the hoarder update unless you hit a significant sales number or until it’s all gone. Track some other number that’s meaningful to you. Maybe something related to those death piles?
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Thanks for the feedback! I also posed this question to my wife about the hoarder tracking. She said “are you just doing it at this point for ‘s***’s and giggles’?”
well….yeah. I like the positive reinforcement ego boost that I made a good decision.
I’m officially done separately tracking hoarder items. I can always run a report in eBay later down the road as I keep these listings in their own store category.
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Sharyn, Jay and Ryanne’s eBay store is on vacation through January 11th, so my assumption is that they’re taking some extended time away from their businesses to rest, recoup and dream up (or work on) their next big plan. I like to think of it like they trust us enough to know that we won’t burn down this forum in their absence!
12/22/2024 to 12/28/2024
Total listings: 397
New listings this week: 18
Items sold: 14 — 6 via best offer, 7 via seller initiated offer, 7 via advertising
Gross sales: $483.7 (down 68% from one year ago)
Net sales: $265.69 (down 73% from one year ago)
This is what happens when you slow down on listing. You’ve been warned!
Average sales price: $34.57 (down 34% from one year ago)
High sale of the week: $39.66 net Ryan Suter signed full sized Team USA hockey jersey — I bought and sold 30 (!!!) full sized signed jerseys in 2024, and that shelf is down to its last one, Clayton Thorson. Godspeed, Clayton, you’ve fought the good fight as long as you could. Now somebody hurry up and buy you so I can fill that shelf space up with other stuff!
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I’m spotty with this part of the forum but here goes. I don’t believe I listed anything during this particular week.
Total Items in Store: 456
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $120.25
Cost of Items Sold: $32.00
Highest Price Sold: $50.00 (Briefcase)
Average Price Sold: $20.72
Returns/Issues: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5
Number of items listed this week: 0
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