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Pickle Castor must be in the stars. We got one at an auction early last summer. Had to clean it up somewhat and it sold in a few months. If memory serves me right we got for around $50, which is pretty high bid for us at an auction, but discovered the selling price. For nice ornate Victorian ones over $300. We listed at $325 and sold for around $275 [if I remember]. I didn’t even know what it was, but Susan did and she had looked it up during the earlier preview. Me, never heard of it until that night.
But if I ever see one again, I will know and jump on it.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
I hear what you are saying, but SL members have said many times before, it is still good to have an almost duplicate store cross listed on other platforms. We are working on our goal to cross list everything on Etsy that qualifies as vintage [20 years old or more] according to Etsy.
That is one of the benfits of using SixBit listing software. One dashboard, one listing location, customize everything to your liking and then the software automatically [almost] cross posts on Ebay and Etsy for you, synchs, the sales on each, and also removes any sold items from the other platform. In other words tracks all activity on both platforms and keeps them in synch.
This is a safety measure that is well worth the price to make sure a seller always has a store up, running and functional.
Mike at MDCGFA
Yes Libby.. and I was just re-reading the VERO document and Ebay says a seller needs to contact the Mfg. and not Ebay. It is the mfg. that a seller is offending first of all, then Ebay is just doing what they promised all the companies who signed up with Ebay’s VERO program, and that is to take down the item and or seller. It is the Mfg. who is offended or harmed [so they claim].
One of the big arguments, even if the item is genuine, is that their brand is getting “diluted”. The other is the status of the brand. Tiffany does not like their products being sold on Ebay, which is seen as a big discount marketplace. Tiffany wants customers in suits and ties and coming into their stores to buy items for thousands of dollars and not on Ebay at a 20% off sale, then taking offers 20% less than that. Also those prestige brands want their prices to be supported by high prices, prestige sales and ownership and not undermined by sellers who don’t know how to grade the quality of their diamonds, glass, crystal and workmanship.
I can see their point.
But doing some homework on Ebay will bring up their VERO agreements and policies. Calling over and over agagin has less value than calling the Mfg or company, tell them your situation and getting them to tell Ebay that the item you are selling or you as a seller is OK to allow to be re-instated.
I called and talked to John Deere directly. They told me what we could and could not do. It wasvery informative.
But we still buy and sell items all the time that could get a violation at any time. It is Jay’s point of many people speed but only a small fraction get caught and get a ticket. All you can do is bear the punishment, pay the fine, and keep driving but with care.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
melmn:
The VERO program has been discussed in the past here on SL. If interested you may want to do a search here on SL for the term VERO and read over those threads.
At that time I posted the link that has all of the companies that participate in the VERO program. Each company participates on different levels of activitiy and some are very sticky, i.e. Velcro, John Deere [the one we got dinged on] and others. Some are tenacious. We even got a letter from the John Deere Company directly stating we were not an “authorized reseller” and we were to cease selling any John Deere product, period. In my opinion, these tenacious companies probably are very active in pinging Ebay and bending their ears on who they find that are in violation and Ebay responds to those big corporate entities.
Here is the link again and it is a much longer list than one may think.
The VERO stands for Verified rights owner program and the key words are rights owner. All trademarks, copy rights, circle R and circle C symbols that are on items indicate the rights owner. When you buy a song, a book, a drawing, print, painting, photograph, you the buyer does not “own” the copyright and as such do not have the right to reproduce that item in any form any where as a photograph, include the company name for resell unless you have specific written permission from the Mfg. Thus as John Deere told us, we are not part of the “authorized reseller program”. A authorized reseller has to sign an agreement with the mfg. and agree to and follow a bunch of protocols with regards to how you present their products.
As resellers on Ebay we are all just taking a gamble that the items we sell do not bird dog their products on line and that Ebay also doesn’t find them through some sort of search.
Hope this helps
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Good point Jay. Never hurts to fly under the radar at all. That also points to the value of having other platforms to be selling on. A sort of self directed diversification program.
BTW Melmn, if you do cross post on other sites, get that item ended ASAP so you don’t get dinged on another platform. Some companies, as reported here on SL several times before, have staff members – employees constantly searching for their stuff being sold by people who are “not authorized sellers” of their products.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I am right there with you and hear you loud and clear.
I mentioned something to this effect earlier this week. We have the exact same story here. It may be just a changing climate in the online world of buying and with so many other platforms, who knows.
I wonder if there is a way for us all to get Ebay statistics to know if Ebay as a whole is also suffering a large decrease in traffic, visits and hits. Again, who knows, but maybe Ebay is off by millions of visitors and it is losing to other platforms or venues.
Sort of baffling to a lot of us.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
That is a question I have out to Troy and Veronica right now and they are probably the better ones to answer. I asked Troy just exactly what fields is SixBit filling in automatically vs. what will we be filling in manually. Knowing this will help us to determine about how much time is going to be required to fill in the missing fields.
But remember SixBit does automatic many other things and will track the Etsy Sales. Another question for Troy will be if SixBit will be interfacing with Ebay and marking those as deleted or no longer available or will we have to do that manually, which I don’t mind as long as I can get some sort of list that will show me the Etsy solds so I can end the Ebay listing quickly.
mike at MDCGFA
Sure thing. Guess I should have just come out and said it in the above posts but after talking with troy and Veronica and comparing our work processes which are very similiar we are going to go back to SixBit. Way back when I was using WL and SB BOTH side by side but eventually went with WL for a few reasons. One it was less costly, two they already had the Shopify about ready to go live and we were, at that time really thinking about having our own domain named store, free of the Ebay engine, and three that the Etsy interface was in the works.
Now I just don’t know where WL is with the Etsy interface, and since we are now declared as outside parties [LOL] and out of the loop we will just go back to SixBit, pay the difference and re-train using their videos, which are great by the way and settle back in with them.
As far as trying to keep the years of data we accumulated in WL, I think we should be able as Troy said, to export into an Excel CSV file and then see if the SixBit team can help us map that data to the SB fields and then import into SixBit. Hopefully we can save some of it.
As to the cost. WL is $25 per month, then the Shopify Store is $30 per month and then of course whenever they get the Etsy interface up and running, that will be another $30 +/- module cost so everything included, the WL cost is going to be approx. $85 when the new Etsy gets added in. SixBit has the Enterprise DUO pricing tier which includes 2 platforms “Ebay and in our case Etsy” for $100 per month. So $15 more per month, but it is up and running and working according to what Troy is saying. We will close down the Shopify store, we are just too old to spend the time and effort for building organic traffic from scratch and building up the volume of traffic needed to sustain repeat buyers to our “brand”. Ebay and Etsy already has the traffic.
Given the time we have had to spend working out issues on WL and not knowing when WL Etsy module is coming and how many hours we will have to spend working it out, we are just going to jump ship, retool, retrain and spend the extra $15 per month.
Plus the SixBit team does go to the Ebay Open Convention in Las Vegas and we can have direct access to the guys when they are there and hopefully meet up with Troy and Veronica also.
Hope this helps…
Mike at MDCGFA
Sure thing buddy. The whole point I was making with WL was that I was so hoping that we would be up and running for the 4th quarter and have all of our Ebay store completely cross posted on Etsy so we could have those Sales. Now that hasn’t happened I just don’t want to risk waiting on them, then spending debugging time and possibly run out of time for next year. Missing a whole year is bad enough, much less a second year.
By using our manual method [one at a time copy and paste], we still have achived to list 346 items on Etsy and are seeing Sales from that number. And the nice thing is, Etsy sales are at full price. Our Ebay store has a 15% off sale running, a 6% prmoted listing promo and we take offers and most buyers don’t even see the Sale Discount, they just see the lower number and throw out offers of 15% to 25% more on top of that. But on Etsy we have $750 in Sales from Nov. to date. On Ebay, that would be less about 30% depending on offers or only about $525.
Mike at MDCGFA
Hey Mark: I don’t have a good report on the WonderLister Etsy project.
They have not been repsonding to several inquires I have made for months now. The content of my inquires are how far along are you guys, when to expect, having any issues, can I help, should we expect this year or next and things like that. I have sent 4 or 4 emails but no response until last week.
It was short and mainly said things like, we have been spending project time on Ebay updates, issues and Ebay projected changes [whatever that may mean]. Then in response to the Etsy questions they said that according to new company policies they are not supposed to be discussing projects that in process with outside parties.
Of course I shot back a reply to the affect that I have been included in the loop in the past and have provided what I think was some valuable help and data with regards in the past and have gotten updates. I am unsure if it was maybe a new tech member or a weekend support member who didn’t know me. But it was disheartening.
Then I decided to unload a few more technical issues on them to work on. Especially a big problem I had discovered months back with regards to WL inability to handle certain search functions from User Created Folders and User Created Search and Sort Criteria. If a user creates a folder to contain certain data that is not part of the regular listing form in WL and then sets up rules for that custom field to be search, counted, sorted the folder and search crashes out. They replied yes, it has abeen a big problem for them and dig this, “in order to correct this issue, it would take a long time, a lot of manpower, and is a very complex, tedious and hard task to get it fixed and re-coded”. Well I get it, a big bug in your program will take a big effort to straighten out. And, so what.
Well have I have been trying to use those custome fields I created to track all of our Etsy listings and solds until they come out with the new Etsy extension. Well all of that data is now junked, no way for me to gather any Etsy data unless we go back and re-type our tracking codes into a different field-place. The only place I think is safe and can be sorted, counted and tracked is in the “NOTES” section. But I will have to use code words like, if it is listed on ETSY then type TRUE in the Note field. If it sells, then type in the word SOLD beside the word TRUE and on top of this manual hand work, there is no way to track the finacials in WL for Etsy, but I have all of that in Quicken.
Now on top of these things, in summary, custom fields that can’t be searched or tracked in folders properly, having to do a ton of hand entered data just to be able to keep track of what’s cross posted on Etsy and no internal WL financial data, we have decided as a team, Susan myself and our two assistants to make a big, move on our part. We can just no longer wait on WonderLister to get it’s act together, on top of telling us we are just an outside source and can’t give us any type of updates or timelines, wonky custom field issues and having to create work arounds to get done what we need to get done and then the BIG thought is what will be the bugs that will have to be worked out when WL does introduce the Etsy interface.
Given the amount of time, screen shots, pointing out problem areas to the WL team, we could have spent that time learning another competitor’s software program
So with several private email and phone call discussions with some friends and members here at ScavengerLife and despite some uphill battles of a transition, unless something big happens over the next few weeks, we are preparing for a transition to another program. We are hoping that 5 years worth of history can be saved and moved over somehow and are working on that. We have to figure out how to map that data into the new program. But even if not, we will just have to take the data lose so that we can move on and forward.
I know after all the posts I have made for the WonderLister program and team but the issues, bugs, and slow response to making what we feel are changes and improvements to their software, we are going to have to just transition, bite the bullit and move on to another listing platform.
We will probably be making a decision today at our production meeting and shortly doing the download of the trial version we have agreed on with the other company. We have gotten a 90 day period to get ourselves retrained, the new format customized to our liking and then making the switch permanent in Jan.-Feb. of 2019.
The new program does already have a working Etsy interface but I am informed with the amount of items we already have on Etsy and the new art items along with what we are going to be cross listing that our presence with them will have enough volume whereby we can help the new software team move forward with the improvements they are looking to make. So hopefully we will be of some influence at the new software company.
Sorry I don’t have better news for you, but we are cautiously optimistic about making the transition and getting better results in being cross posted on multiple channels and having to spend less time dealing with issues and corrections and debugging.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
MDC Studios
SmartParts divs.This whole quarter is slower for us than last yer yet we have twice the number of items listed. It is what it is.!
With regards to the returns topic.. We have had 30 day FREE RETURNS turned on for a long time, but one thing you can do to slow the whole process down and buy yourself time to respond to the customer is to go to your settings and click on “Require an RMA”. That is a “Return Material Authorization” number. When you have this turned on, the Ebay can’t auto approve a return without letting you know they have a buyer request for a return but need for you, the seller, to provide the RMA. You will get an email asking for the number and at that point you could go to your dashboard and communicate with the buyer, ask for your photos, etc. Then when you do fill in the RMA data field, we just put in our internal SKU number or you could use your initials and today’s date. Anything you want. Also your response time is not required to be instant so the process slows down to allow you time to react and respond.
Give it a try.
As to “Painful Weeks”. That is one reason we don’t glare at numbers by the week. We tract everything in Quicken and watch our profits by the month. It is like the stock market, down 250 points one day back up 300 points the next, but overall on a monthly basis it is a smoother chart line. Overall our month is more than the 3 Summer months, BUT less than the 4th quarter than last year despite having more items.
The curve we think will smooth out around the 2,500 item mark +/-.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Yep, looks like a very good find. Who would have thought!
mike at MDCGFA
