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By the way.. A search on Worthpoint brings up over 4,000 items. The angels go for $1,500. 1,100 of the items listed go for over $150 to $175 all mostly home decor made out of various hammered metal techniques. Certainly a BOLO item. Look for the small button medallion welded on each item.
mike – MDCGFA
We have sold 3 pieces by Jan Barboglio within the last year give or take. A rectangle serving tray for $325 , a round serving tray for $297, and a mosaic wall sconce candle holder for $251. All 3 for $873. Our cost for all 3 was $120. Each piece had the metal medallion signature welded on. We found them over a 6 month period and all sold within a few months of us listing them. They are all metal and fairly heavy.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Ryanne: Talk about eating road kill. Don’t we both know of someone who has picked up a bag with a burger in it off the road and ate it a few years back. Hhmmm! LMAO 🙂
mike – MDCGFA
That seems logical. A bottle neck is a bottle neck. Operations should be able to identify what or where to bottle neck is and design solutions to get the work flow moving. But that will take cash.
Just an example: Maybe what is needed are bigger trucks and faster trucks. Well if that hypothetically was a solution, then where would the cash come from to outfit the whole fleet of trucks across the country.
I have heard our carrier say that she was loaded to the gills and had to make return trips back to get the rest of her daily load or to take in the boxes she had gathered so far in the day. She also said a whole lot more packages are being sent than letter mail and the boxes fill up her small “truckeete” quickly.
But just an example. The USPS has a lot of fancy equipment they bought to move letters faster but if the work load is leaning toward packages, then maybe they should split into two companies. OH WAIT!, that would be much easier for “Private” companies to do. :-).
Anybody have any letters delivered to them from FedEx, UPS or Amazon Prime?
Just talking through my teeth.
mike – mdc galleries
Jay just make sure who ever you guys hire that they can read a ruler, understand fractions and decimals, can 10 finger type, knows something about many materials used in clothing and home decor items and can see color correctly. It really helps to have someone that is good at all of this because it really helps productivity.
Most of this you can check out during your interview process.
Hope I didn’t offend anyone. Just stating what we have found to be the better helpers we have tried through the years.
Good luck,
mike – MDCGFAHowdy:
Try a “Magic Eraser” or generic knock-off slightly moistened. see if it helps.mike @ MDCGFA
“Mike – when you say you sell for higher prices on Etsy, do you list at higher prices than on Ebay? or is it about not having a best offer/discount function, and selling for full price?”
Yes.. The higher prices on Etsy are due to the fact we don’t have to deal with offers which lowers the selling cost, and that we offer “Shipping Included” in the Etsy Items and we build in either Zone 6 or in some cases even Zone 8 into the price so we make money on any sales that are shipped to any zone closer than that [zones 1-7].
We also build 25% on top of all of that because we want to make up for a Sale that we run. We have a Sale running about 200 days out of 365. Usually about 25% and occasionally 30-35% percent. So we always build that 25% into our item prices along with the Zone 8 prices. Then when a buyer purchases an item not on Sale on Etsy, they pay a much higher price than an Ebay item that has calculated shipping, [no built in shipping] and also that 25% SALE buffer built in and no offers accepted.
But the actual BASE price of the item is the same on Ebay and Etsy.
Hope that is understandable.
It is funny that even when we run a 25% Off Sale storewide on Ebay and take offers, a high percentage of our Sales come from people also making an Offer in addition to the Sale Price. And we notice the amount of the offers “seem” to be about the same amount as the calculated shipping is. It is like the buyer sees the ON SALE price, then sees the shipping costs and makes a lower offer by subtracting the shipping cost from the “ON SALE” price. Sort of the Buyers way of trying to get Free Shipping”.
In other cases, it seems the buyer doesn’t even see or care about the original price that gets crossed out with a red line during a Sale [Prior to the “SALE” price, only sees the discounted [On Sale] price then offers 50% less than that.
It is because of all this nonsense of back and forth, multiple offers, etc. that we are currently talking about using our Etsy approach on Ebay.
Take an item we procure for $5 that we research and decide we would like to price at $35, then we add the cost to ship it to zone 8 at let’s say $14 = $49 and then we mark that combined number up another 30% = $63.70 and that will be our starting listing price.
We leave the Make Offer turned on and add FREE SHIPPING. Then we can accept a 50% off offer at $31.85 or put it on a 25% Off Sale and take a 25% lower Offer and still be fine and end up where we wanted to be in the first place.
We still get about what we wanted, and the buyer gets to feel like they got to make us lower our price by their lower offer and they GET FREE Shipping and they are happy.
But we all know it is all about a perceived value or a perceived deal to the customer on Ebay.
So it is that Make an Offer that lowers our margins on Ebay.
Think about why retail stores almost never offer more than 80% Off Sale but will within about 30 days be done to 40%-50% OFF. That is because it is built in and the buyer who buys as soon as an item hits the racks pays top dollar and gets the pride of first owner of a new design. But the bargain hunter waits for the 50% off Sale late in the season. Well the store is still making what they wanted anyway.
Even at 80% Off they are still covering the cost of the item and a small margin. A $69 dollar ladies dress or coat cost the retailer maybe $4 or $5 bucks total.
And as always, just our opinions here at the business and that and $1.50 will get you half a cup of coffee.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
We do not. We pack and ship the same way we do on Ebay. We also use our Ebay branded boxes and tape for all our Etsy sales.
Ratio wise we sell about as much on Etsy as we do Ebay. We have about 1,200 items in our Ebay store and about 750 in our Etsy store. So, we sell about the same if both stores had the same number of items.
We cross post on 3 sites currently and will be adding a fourth shortly. All will be handled by one software app called SixBit which we can ship to all through, manage inventory through, auto delete from all other sites when an item sells on one site. Much has been said here about 3 or 4 programs that can do this.
We do use the Etsy Promoted ads, but a seller can control their own budget. We have it set at $1 per day or $30-$31 per month, but with about $750 to $1k per month on Etsy, it is just a cost of doing business.
We are in the final stages of our Shopify Store and will be going live with that hopefully in the next few weeks, then will come the integration of Mercari into the mix, then the up and coming Facebook Market Place Shop. That will be 5 selling platforms for all our inventory all managed and controlled and synched through the one program SixBit.
Jay and Ryanne have 5 income streams [or will have], but 4 of them are not e-commerce sites. Ebay, rental properties [shampoo and booze], their video conferencing business, Ryanne’s interior design services with her sister, and now a coffee roasting venture, and I bet you dollars to donuts with that coffee, Jay has some stocks or mutual funds in their somewhere. HHhhmmm!!! Maybe I am off on this, but they do juggle a lot to create a multi-faceted income stream. This day and time, diversification is a must especially with all the non-sense going on inside of these platforms like the Ebay upper level staff getting indictments and Etsy CEO jumping all over the place with their fee platforms.
What I like about Etsy, no offers, maybe every now and then in message form, but no in place system for allowing buyers to click on make an offerr. We sell for higher prices on Etsy. We offer shipping included on etsy but have all 8 zones covered and extra for handling on over size lg. DIM Weight packages that require “Franken Boxes”. Buyers don’t seen to care. And by mixing in the shipping they can’t tell what is shipping costs vs. just a higher object/item cost, it is just part of the price that they are willing or not willing to pay.
We don’t make anything pretty inside because we ship all breakables and have a “special cocoon packing” methodology we use, and it doesn’t lend itself to have ribbon tied all around it. But drop a glass candelabra we have packed from 4 feet up, on it’s corner onto concrete and it won’t break. Tons of our reviews all mention our packing. So nothing pretty, pretty.
Also Etsy because of google is desiring plain backgrounds also, so we no longer do any extra props or curating of our photos, which has greatly increased our productivity.
Because of corporate shenanigans of all sorts taking place in all these platforms, many online people are pro diversification and that’s what we are doing.
Now all this is just an opinion here and as i always say, that and and $1.50 will get you about half a cup of coffee.
Mike,
MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Equipment.
Collins Creek CollectionsI like the idea of a sampler pack also. A selection of say 4 1/4 lb. or 4 half pound sampling of 4 different flavors/blends just to check out which you like then do a subscription based on the ones a buyer likes best.
Just now used mine. Has to be used by the end of this month [June]. Then come next month [July 1sy], we will get our regular coupon code for the 3rd quarter [July-Sept].
Didn’t really need much but as Ryanne has said before, “Who can’t have enough tape”. So 36 more rolls of 2″ tape coming in. Then in about 19 more days we will get the next $50 coupon.
AND, it’s the end of 2nd quarter and time to start thinking about and gearing up for 4th quarter already. Times flies by.
SIDE BAR: Year to date, our Sales are up by 70% compared to last year this time with approx. the same number of total items listed on Ebay and Etsy. And we are just on the verge of kicking off our Shopify Store that will include a new section called “Collins Creek Collections” as a sub-brand within our main store brand. So maybe a strong 3rd and 4th quarter will really help us end this year with a bang. Fingers crossed.
mike – MDCGFA – Atl
Try Rango and this link? Looks sort of like it.
The BC comic strip snake was usually stretched out longer and had several humps in it’s back. More vertically upright than your “coiled” snake. So Rango cartoon snake seems closer.
Hope this helps a little.
Mike – mdcgfa – atl
Found some reference books but unsure if that rabbit hole will lead anywhere. More modern is probably correct.
Japan and Made in Japan were used between 1921-1941, followed by the war when there were no exports, then Made in Occupied Japan. After the Occupation, Japan and Made in Japan were implemented again. There are many resources that have this information. I have several books listed on my blog. Here are three that include information on the 1921-1941:
“Japanese Ceramics of the Last 100 Years” by Irene Stitt (1974)
“Collector’s Guide to Made in Japan Ceramics” Carole Bess White Vol. 1-4
“Made in Japan Ceramics 1921-1941” by Barbara Ifert (1994)Check this link out also. It shows a similar image but not the exact one with the Crown. Scroll to item #1038
http://www.gotheborg.com/marks/20thcenturyjapan.shtml
Since the Japanese porcelain makers had trad ties with other provinces and also European markets, maybe the cherry blossom and start got different top symbols, like your crown to represent the location with which the mfg. was making the pieces for.
I have a couple other places I can look but will have to come back to this later. I’ll see what I can dig up tomorrow morning.
mike – mdcgfa
Found this with a search in the Worthpoint Marks research section. Doesn’t tell much except for a short description of what you are already seeing.
https://www.worthpoint.com/marks/ceramics/mark-444497_cherry-blossom-star-made-japan-export-wareCherry Blossom with Star…
I will dig into a couple of other databases I have booked marked and see what else I can find.
mike – mdcgfa
