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Yep to all the above.
That is correct. And when you print out your label, pack and add the real weight and dimensions all you will see is the actual charge to send that size and weight to Erlanger, KY. The label will have the customers name and a code on it but the address will be to KY. From there you can wash your hands of it.
Good eye Sharyn:
Yes, we also sell a few industrial parts that I have custom Mfg. as generic clones of actual OEM parts. After the 2008 housing bust and the start of the big recession we quit building houses and doing remodeling but to keep a business going I just transformed into a sub-contractor doing spray foam insulation. Since no houses were being built much, we focused on spray foaming the attics and under crawl spaces with spray foam insulation. 95% effecient as opposed to only 34% effeciency of fiberglass batts or blown in.In any case the spray foam equipment uses a few small parts that are filters and internal parts that are consumable. The filters have to be replaced in the guns often because they clog. They are wire mesh and the OEM Mfg charges almost $5 per pc. They are shaped like a thimble but straight walled. I found I could have them copied and made locally for about $.50 each. So since I am no longer in the Spray Foam business I still sell those parts online to other suppliers. Through Ebay I reach a national market. I Keep about 500 pcs. on hand in both a 60 mesh and an 80 mesh style. Basically coarse and fine and sell them in various size packs from 10 pcs up to 100 pc packs. Used to get close to $3.50 each for them but a jerk competitor [only one] started doing the same and of course it was a race to the lower prices until he finally hit the lowest price he could go, but we both still get over $2.00 per pc. If he ever leaves Ebay, of course up goes the price.
I also do this for a few other parts for spray foam equipment and also will be doing some yard equipment parts soon.
We sold locally for awhile and used the SmartParts name in those divisions. We have a private label based on that name. But I have very rarely used it here on SL. So good eye and good catch.
Mike
Amen, Brother Jay! And especially at 70 years of age and having been retired for6 years and owning my own time. π
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Amatino… I just had a mental picture pop into my head and made me laugh out loud. Even scared the cats.
I visioned you pulling up to an estate sale or auction on the tractor with a 12 ft. utility trailer behind it and yelling out to your partner, keep bidding, we’ve got plenty of room to go and I’ll keep the tractor running!! LMAO π The picture of you on a rig with a trailer loading up stuff from a sale and driving 8 miles back down the road to your storage just cracked me up for some reason. Sort of like when Jay shared his picture of all the wood flooring he loaded onto his small truck and hauled that back a long distance. Other drivers behind him must have backed way up or shot around him fast.
Just poking some fun, no offense or stereo typing intended.
Mike at MDCGFA
Sorry to hear that you have caught a touch of the “I can’t find that dang item” syndrome. Yep, it happens to the best of us.
I had two of the same items sell last week because we cross post and didn’t have SixBit up and running completely yet and it didnt catch it. So I had to cancel. But also have sold items that I also couldn’t find and had to cancel.No software in the world will help, even with individual SKU number’s if you pull an item out of it’s original bin for some reason, then replace it back into the wrong Bin. That is a Goof that nothing can help you.
In our case we just canceled the sale with a short letter of explaination that the item couldn’t be found and if we did find it down the road we would ship it to them for free. Guess what..we have found a couple of items months later in the wrong bin and we did look up there addresses and sent them the item for free. WonderLister, SixBit and East Auction Tracker EAT keeps there email and physical addresses forever, so no sweat to find there home addresses.
But sorry you had to deal with the issue, but if you ever want to step up to SixBit [which we are just switching over to from WonderLister, it automatically cross lists for us and also will kill and delete the item from another platform. And if you try to list the same item again using the same SKU it will alert you.
Mike at MDCGFA
We have both paid vehicles. Like Jay, we will drive them into the ground. They will probably last us for whats left of our life, but at that time will rethink going to just one.
But recently both cars did have to have some expensive repairs but comes with the territory. Over $2,000 between both of them but need at least car to haul inventory. Both are parked side by side, we use the bigger one mostly because of the trunk and back seat space. Can haul about as much as a small truck.
Our vote.. Keep both.
Mike at MDC galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
The wooded lot up on a slight hill sold for $198,900 and the one up the street on the flay non-wooded lot sold for $188,900.
Since these sold be fore we ever broke ground, they kind of turned out like custom houses but only in a very small way. We had already priced everything based on Gen. Contractor prices which we can still get from our older days in the business. But since the buyers bought very early [before we even broke ground], then of course they wanted to do some upgrades. We gave them an allowance number [based on our original cost estimates] and gave them our sales reps names and showroom addresses and they went to the showrooms and selected what ever they wanted as actual finished products and we just did an addendum to the sales agreement and paid us 50% down on the upgrades with the balance due at closing.
I don’t have final numbers yet because we still have about a months work to do on both houses and won’t have the final numbers until we are through with both closings. We kicked in $5,000 toward closing costs for both buyers, so will have to wait about a month to get the actual bottom line. Out of about 50 item categories on my spread sheet we have over estimated and underestimated some and the rest about where we thought. We have home building software that we used to use when we did this frequently and just had to update that. Also from the blueprints we had, we called our old vendors and asked them to give us a quote based on the prints we sent them. so we had pretty solid numbers going in.
The 3rd lot which we flipped we bought for $10,000 and sold within 90 days for $21,000.
Yep we can build a house in about 4 months straight out of the ground if we have the land free and clear. We built both of these at the same time, so they are almost both at the same point of completion.
After we pay back some of the side partner investors we still think about $40,000 ++ on both houses and we still have the fourth lot that we did not start on which we have to decide if we will or not, but based on my time constraints, I want to flip it also.
The last lot is a sloped lot which would require a walk out basement. About a 3,000 sq. ft. house, two story plus the walk out basement. These are more costly to build due to the excess concrete for the basement walls and some rough mechanicals down there [elec., plumbing, framing, etc.] but would not finish the basement off. We were thinking about pricing at about $229,000 to list with about $125k-$130k to build. But lots of earth moving, dozer and back hoe work on a basement along with final grading. We would have to figure it out, but as I said I am really not interest any longer because of the time hit I would have to take. Doing houses would mean we would probably have to give up the Ebay businesses and any hopes of doing any studio art work, making our own clocks, sculpture, table lamps for our Etsy store AND put me back “on the clock” of having to be places at other peoples time schedule and we are supposed to be retired now and make money working in our pajama’s not walking across roof joist in freezing rain and waiting for subs that are a no call no show. π π
I rather be sitting in a bar, eating Mexican and drinking Margaritas rather than supervising houses. Our store motto is “Live to Create and Celebrate”….. so it time for me to do just that.
Do I hear an Amen!
Mike and Susan at MDC Concepts, Inc
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Smartparts Small Equipment Parts
Ebay, Etsy, ShopifyThat’s us …………
Quick up date.. Out of the 4 lots we bought last Nov. as stated up in earlier posts we had 2 of them sold before we ever broke ground. Those two houses are now almost done. They were graded, concrete poured [both were on a slab], all plumbing done, both framed, roof on, siding finished, windows, in and passed all inspections. Interior items all ordered lights, cabinets, fixtures, flooring, paint colors etc. and some interior work being done. Insulation and drywall is done so we are done to the final stages.
One was to close on April 30th and the other May 30th, but we moved the April over to both closing at the end of May. Some delays took place due to one customer wanting a bunch of upgrades which they took their sweet time in selecting.
Out of the last two lots we had left, we sold one of those lots for double what we paid for it to the nephew of my partner. So the third lot is off our plate and the table. That was just clean, crisp, quick cash by flipping that 3rd lot.
The 4th lot stills remains in our ownership. We own it outright so we can just let it set for as long as we want and decide later to maybe just flip it down the road or go ahead and build a third spec house on it.
I prefer not to build that last house and just flip the lot. The first two houses as I have said in earlier posts turned out to be a scenario whereby I bit off more than I could chew. Not experience wise but time and interest wise. I discovered it was taking way too much time to the point errors were being made on our Ebay businesses and things were not getting done in a timely manner. And I have not been able to get into the art studio either.
So after the end of May and we close on house 1 and 2 I am done with building houses. Just no interest in that type of work any more and at 70 years old it is just not worth the worry, hassle, bickering, problems with the subs, quality of work, on time scheduling, political and county inspectors, time constraint hassles and the buyers.
Profit or no profit, these are the last and I will be back 100% on our Ebay and Etsy stores and down in the studio creating and celebrating.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Howdy.. To make a clear distinction. You did say the “GSP” [global shipping program right? That is different than a seller just shipping Internationally.
If you did join the GSP program which we did years ago, there is nothing for you to do or screw up differently than shipping to a US buyer.
That is because Ebay has contracted with Pitney Bowes to handle all of their International Shipments and they are located in Erlanger, KY USA. So when something sells to a foriegn buyer in a country that is included in the GSP list of countries Ebay ships to, all you do is pull-pack-wrap-box just like you always do for US buyers, go to Ebay labels and select what method you want to use to ship to Erlanger, KY. Either USPS First Class package, Priority Mail or Parcel post. Click on print your label and apply to the package. That is all their is to it. Ebay and Pitney Bowes handles everything else for you. Customs forms, VAT [value added tax] charges your buyer those fees plus import fees and custom fees, etc, etc. In many cases the fees are more than the cost of the item. But you don’t have to do anything except box, label, select carrier method and ship to Kentucky.
Erlanger is just a few states up and over from Atlanta, GA so usually costs us about $7 to $8 depending on the weight.
Also as a member of the GSP program you can look at the shipping tab of any listing and Ebay will have changed the way it looks. You will have 2 sections, one will say “we ship to these countries” and the lower section will say “We do not ship [excludes] these countries. That is beacuse due to certain political issues or civil war, etc., etc. Ebay will not ship to those and we don’t care because there are enough of the larger countries they do ship to that will get you extra sales.
Now, you can, if wish to, can go to your preferences and change those and include those excluded countries, but we never have over ridden Ebay because they know where the trouble spots in the world ae and if Ebay says don’t ship there then that is good enough for us. BUT if you want to include Brazil and the like, go ahead, but many of those countries are horrible at completing their on mail services.
If want to ship items yourself, as some do and some here on SL go ahead, but you will have to do your own custom forms and handle any issues that pop up.
The GSP program handles all issues for you.
So simply box and print a label and ship like you always do for anybody and then you can wash your hands of the whole mess unless your item is not as described or you misled the buyers.
Hope this helps somewhat…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
04/05/2019 at 10:04 am in reply to: Problem Cross Listing..Sold the Same Item to the Same Buyer on Ebay and Etsy #59802Here is a question for those using WonderLister and SixBit – [Troy].
I see in SixBit “both” sales showing on both the sites. I wonder why didn’t the SixBit Software end the cross listed item as soon as the same was made on the Ebay site? My own thoughts may be that the 3rd party software apps only “ping” or “refresh” from most platforms at a ceratin timed interval. I believe WonderLister is every 10 minutes and I think I read where SixBit is every 15 minutes. I think Ebay restricts 3rd party apps from constantly “ping-refreshing” from there servers constantly. Evry second or two eats up resources just like an issue I had with one of my SSR readers pinging Scavengerlife a few years back. Ryanne emailed me and said their site web master saw a large amount of band width being used by constant pinging-accessing. So maybe Ebay and Etsy restricts the 3rd party guys to accessing their site to only every 10 or 15 miutes or so..
So in this case, if the buyer decided to make both purchases within a minute or two of each other, that quickness in buying on both platforms did not give SixBit enough time to record the first sale, and then synch with the second site and cancel that cross listed item off of that second platform. Just thinking out loud, but seems plausible.
I imagine that is what happened between Ebay and Bonanza in Jay’s case. It sold on one channel and again a second time BEFORE Ebay and Bonanza could synch. But Bonanza has always been a little buggy for us. We deleted our Bonanza account over a year ago for that reason plus only a sale or two per year wasn’t worth it.
mike at MDCGFA
I will contact the SixBit Support team and ask about that and if tht is a plausible reason.
04/05/2019 at 9:33 am in reply to: Problem Cross Listing..Sold the Same Item to the Same Buyer on Ebay and Etsy #59801Just discussing at our morning production meeting. Our helper says the buyer may be either completing a set, wanting to start a set or could be buying for a special event and needs a quantity of the exact same items. That being said I think Vintage Treasures is right about contacting the buyer with a short letter of explanation and the “offer” on only shipping the two and giving the rebate along with the cancellation and then “ASK” if that is acceptable with the buyer and if only getting the two will suffice. AND IF SO, then we ship the two from Ebay AND IF NOT, we will cancel both orders.
Mike at MDCGFA
Well Hello and where the heck were you with this tid bit of info. about 3 years ago! LMAO :-). Thanks. Guess I just never thought of it. I won’t do too much until maybe Ayden gets 100% on board, then that way we can all kiss PayPal goodby [for the most part]. But will still offer as a payment option.
mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Thanks SCJ: I am going to start getting the clear and brown tape and not spend my coupon on another 36 rolls of Ebay “Multi-colored Circus” tape. LOL :-). So, I will spend it on some of the small size boxes that have a good side wall height for me to cut aprt to full length and create creased roll strips out of them for roll wrapping many of our breakable items.
We use lots of tape also, both internally and externally. The clear makes the box more professional.
Also being in the printing business for decades I know where I can get rolls of flexo labels printed. I may just have several rolls made up with our MDC Galleries and Fine Art name along with our “monkey logo” on it and use those to cover any other labels. Might as well start branding ourselves since we are on, [or will be shortly] 3 selling platforms.
I can also print up my own thank you cards to put inside of the box along with a discount coupon for our own Shopify store to help drive traffic there. But the Shopify store is a ways off right now. Maybe a year or so. But agagin we can start branding us for now.
Thanks for the links and appreciate your input and sharing. It’s what makes this the best place as far as a helping community goes.
By the way for those using auto listing and management software [especially Mark, Brian and Troy]. I have finally after 4 plus years finally made the swithch from WonderLister and moved over to SixBit Enterpise Duo. Took a few weeks but got it almost done, just a few more twaeks. Both the Ebay store and the Etsy store are in synch and listing, revising, bulk editing, business policies, shipping and eventually our Shopify store will all be done from a one page control panel dashboard and SB will add, revise and delete from all 3 of those platforms and keep all the financials and report straight. Still more to learn, but as Troy told me, I would have it down pretty quickly.
Take care..
mike at MDCGFA.
Looks that way to me. Etsy payment system is so painless. They just transfer my money into our business checking account. Hoping Ayden is more like the Etsy system.
I would have opted into their Beta Trial when they first announced it, but to do so, they make you opt out of the Global Shipping Program. But as soon as that is not a requirement any longer I am going to opt in before they make it mandatory.
PayPal is set up in our Quicken Accounting program and they never balance. Reconciling PayPal is the biggest pain in the rear. I have to make a blind adjustment to balance every month because they are always getting the monthly statement line items wrong. Only a few dollars but it takes way too long to go through their monthly statement line by line to find multiple small penny like errors.
One thing they do is give you a total on the monthly statement but the actual entries were either included in the previous month or show up in the next months statement. UUgghhh.
mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
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