Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
In our opinion 15%-20% Off is not much of a Low Ball. 50% or lower is what we call Low Balling. We always have 30% or more built in to Offset our 15% Off monthly Sales and leave room for an extra 10%-15% Offers. After 30% off we still are at or above what our regular selling price would be. On top of this if we offer free shipping, which we are doing more and more these days, we also throw another $18 on top of that. Just as Jay says”, there “ain’t no FREE Shipping” and he is right. We build 30% more into our top prices,plus shipping of 5 lbs. to zone 8 and list. Now we can have a 15-20% Off Sale every 5 to 7 days and also take offers at another 15% below our Sales price and we end up still at what we would have sold these for anyway.
All it does is give the buyer the “PERCEPTION” of a Big Discount / Big DEAL or WINNING the battle [which doesn’t even exist in the first place]. We convert about 75% of our offers into final Sales using this tactic.Just our opinion also.
MIke at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
The thing about these emails as it relates to us. We run 2 and three day Sales of 15% or 20% off our whole store [all 930++] items 2 or 3 times a month. We do see activity during our Sales. But I would guess that this meets this criteria Ebay is asking for. Any items in people’s carts, we would guess, is getting an Email about their cart items being on a 15% to 20% Sale every week or so.
Amazing Taste does the same for her store items. She is always running Sales, constantly. We give ours a few days break in between. Having short Sales shows the ending time and if a “Looker” wants to buy, they see they need to hurry up or the Sale ends. Having them several times a month gets a flurry of Sales happening during those times. We usually run from Thurs. morning until Sunday mid-night. That is when most people have time to browse, especially during the lighter day light summer hours when they are outside with kids or their yards, etc.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Well good luck. I am sure you will settle into a happy win-win middle ground with them.
It was all just my opinion and one person’s opinion is just another person’s situation comedy! 🙂
mike at MDCG in Atl.
Hi Sonia: It doesn’t really add that much to the height of the stack. A 10: dia. dinner plate stack of 6 plates gets about a 1/4-3/8″ or less added in between them. So about 6-1/2″-7″ high. Then add the thick bubble wrap around the outside for approx. 3/4″ and I end up with a stack about 8″ high x 11″ x 11″. If it turned out to be a whole set of 12 [if placed side by side] that would be in a box about 12″x10″x24″=2,880 cubic inches, so just a little over into the DIM. Doesn’t add that much.
If items hit into DIM weight, doesn’t matter to us, Shipping is what it is, always has been and always will be. We don’t risk breakage and having to deal with breakage complaints over a couple of dollars on a $75 to $125 +/- sale. We never worry at all about shipping. We know our costs on shipping and always calculate enough to cover it. Profit is made in the “buying stage” and then the bottom line is if customers want it they pay it. No if’s and’s or but’s.
To you phrase “Super High”, that is relative to the buyer. Just sold last week a new in the box massage table for $125 dollars and the customer paid $98 to ship it instead of cust. pick-up. It was 42″x32″x10″ and weighted 60 lbs. He didn’t care and neither did we.
Another angle on this is why care about a dollar or two extra shipping costs when we have found a piece of glass for $5 and selling it for $100 and shipping costs them $19 dollars instead of us skimping on packaging and worrying about a broken item arriving and all the headache that goes along with it just to save the customer say $3 to $4 on shipping.
On our free shipping items that weigh over a lb. We just take the finished weight and build in a Zone 8 fee plus 30% mark up. Anyone in zones 6 or less pay more for shipping, zones 7 and 8 pay the exact shipping. The mark-up is because we always are running a 15% off sale and take offers and by marking up the zone 8 column prices we allow for that discount and lower offer so that allows the zone 6,7,8 guys to not end up paying under.
As I mentioned to Jay a few weeks back, who knows how much shipping costs are that are built into an item you find for a couple of dollars and seller for 80 times that. Example: a $5 fenton glass basket we get at auction. Sell for $95.99 and free shipping. Then what was the shipping costs vs. the selling cost of the item. There is no way for anybody to know but us. Guess what we, sell porcelain and glass items a lot in the $90 to $125 range. Was the shipping $5, $10 or $40 out of that $125. Customer didn’t care, they just wanted that eclectic, unique, Lladro porcelain piece.
Now if we sold commodity items and every body under the sun could get them and are also selling them, that’s another story, but must of our inventory sells without much question on shipping. About 75% to 80% of our inventory is breakables.
We sold a bronze sculpture about two years ago for $450 dollars. We made a wooden crate in our studio shop and secured it inside and screwed the crate together and charged the customer $150 to make the crate and shipping ran about $150. he didn’t blink and eye. We have a 100 year old Nippon vase that will be about for Sale, that will be about 24″ x 15″ x 15″ and shipping will be what it is.Sold a HP wide format printer end of last summer for $1,100 and then shipping was $250 on top of that and the customer just raved about the printer and the over all cost. And lastly we used to sell a few pinball and arcade machines. We skidded all those up, used furniture pads on them, stretched wrapped them all over and sent them by commericial freight carrier. The 16 wheeler truck backed-up right in our driveway and use a hand truck with a hydraulic lift gate and took them away. Each shipment was $250 flat fee to the customer, but they didn’t seem to mind. So again, it is all relative to the customer base, relative to the objects one sells, relative to the desire-demand vs. availability and how bad they want it.
But if you are a seller who sells nothing but T-shirts or things one throws into a padded envelope then maybe a dollar or two does matter. But we try to stay away from those items due to way too much labor for too low of a margin in return.
So long story ended, we don’t worry too much about the shipping costs and when we get any type of message about high shipping costs, our pat answer, is “shipping is what it is, thanks for your patronage and supporting american small business and we hope to see an order forth coming”. If it does great, if not, just keep listing with the radio on or making art in our studio.Hopes this sheds some light on the topic. Your question opened up an opportunity to expand into a broader area, but maybe gives food for thought in other areas.
Good luck with the dinner plates.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
Sonia: Got a tip from Linda Shields here on SL a few years back and have added this to our “cocoon” method of packing and been doing this ever since. Not a broken plate yet.
I use styrofoam salad and dinner plates layered in between the single ceramic-china plates along with bubble wrap.
Take the first plate and put a foam picnic plate [you get them at the grocery or dollar store]. Flip it so it is curved side up [convex]. This creates a 1/2″ or so air space. Then lay a sheet of bubble wrap over it and then set your next ceramic plate on top of this. Then another foam plate flipped over and bubble wrap. Continue this up for 4 to 6 plates only [no higher]. Now cut two square pieces of cardboard 1 inch bigger than the dia. of the stacked plates and put one on the top and bottom of your stack. Now stretch wrap that all over numerous times. The stretch wrap ties the stack all together and pulls inward on all sides and doesn’t allow the plates to shift l/r or u/d. This whole stack [now stretched wrapped together is wrapped in 50 lb. brown kraft paper and taped. Then that bundle is wrapped with the 1″ bubble wrap. Now proceed to the next plates if you have more. If only a couple, those are done the same way on the stack is not as tall. Remember only 4 to 6 max. plates per stack.
Now you will have two “bundles of plates”. Then package these into the main outside shipping box leaving as Sharyn mentioned about an inch all around. [Floated in the bigger box]. You can also wrap the stack of plates with the self made cardboard box in place of the stretch wrap, but we prefer the stretch wrap because it gives a little bit. Or combine the two techniques.
But remember handling anything delicate, brittle or easily breakable takes much longer to pack. We can spend as much as 30 to 45 minutes and at times an hour packing up a set of dinner plates and combining them with a set of glasses all in one box.
Ceramics, glass, china, porcelain is not a “Throw and Go” packing technique.
Hope this helps or gives you something to help you design your own system. Linda Shields idea sure helped us figure out the best way for us to ship our plates. About 3/4ths of our inventory is glass, pottery, ceramics, china, breakables. Only had 2 or 3 breakages since 2002.
Michael at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Also there are two sites we use occasionally where you can use your mouse, roughly draw the characters and it will translate it for you and also tell you what the language is. We have “drawn” in what we were sure were Japanese or Chinese characters and come to find that the language was Korean, Vietnamese, etc. So Using those sites helps to not only get a translation but to identify the country of origin.
I am rushed and will look them up and attach later but you can also Google hand drawn Asian character translators and book mark them. There are two that are very good and a couple of others that are not. You will have to play with a few then bookmark.
Also Worthpoint and Kovels has a library of Asian hallmarks but those are only available to database subscribers.
Hope this helps.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Yes.. Same thing but I knew this was coming. On other sites it has been discussed for some time now that the newly designed labels are part of the 2018 changes.
Also Ebay is going to be changing the look and feel design of the way our stores look. Custom designed stores done by professional designers will be furnished with codes so they can change to the new design changes also. Seems like it has something to do with the change over to the //https security sites from the older //http sites. Also the big question being bounced around is the possible resizing of photos. But all just speculation from the influencers.
Welcome to the new Ebay, whcih is many new changes coming over the next few years.
There are “Ebay Influencers” you can find that have Blogs / Vlogs / YouTube vids who seem to interact with Ebay and seem to have a fairly good idea of what’s up coming.
Hang on to your hats boys, it’s going to be an interesting ride! [I apologize to Betty Davis for the rip-off]
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Yeah.. I didn’t know they wouldn’t remove it either. If I have a any neutral or negative feedback i will make sure from now on in the future that I will not respond. Even though we have never had a negative and only one neutral in 16 years, we always go in and comment on about every other one of the positives. We thank them for their purchases. Many comment on our packaging process and we thank them for those Kudos.
But if we do get anything other than positive comments we won’t rush in to comment.
Thanks…
Yes.. agree. You can call just so your feedback is 100% clean BUT do as Beverly says, go to the Feedback reply page and write a reply. Only a few characters are allowed but something like Unsure about this feedback. Interior shown in 4 photos. Never contacted me about any issues or some along thos elines. but, don’t say anything negative, but your reply will be posted right under her comment and shows you did not do what she claims and you are a concerned seller.
Just my opinion…
Mike at MDC GalleriesSonia.. yeah you’re right and that is what most of us do. And you are right again with regards to the “oldsters” incl. Jay and Ryanne, even though young by our age, have given this advice for many years.
BUT.. this may be the time to explore an “Older” Ebay policy, that I think I saw somewhere, that replying to inquires, incoming questions, or anything pertaining to a potential buyer by way of asking is a metric that Ebay tracks on sellers and to keep from getting internal dings, that as a Top Rated Seller, we need to reply / answer all inquires.
Now we do occasionally do the “silent” routine, most of the time with annoying, stupid a** questions or ugly remarks and in turn report the buyer and block, but mostly we just give a shortest possible couple of words answer, to make sure we satisfy this Ebay “THING”, if it is still really such a “THING”. Like in your example we would have said something like .. “We’re willing to wait” or “Thanks for your inquiry, will pass along to the owners”, or “We hear you”, One of our favorite’s is “In receipt of your Inquiry..Thanks for Supporting American Business!”.
In any case any of the “Oldies” remember anything about Ebay stating we need to reply to potential buyers inquires or correspondence as a TRS requirement?
Mike at MDC Galleries
Guess it also goes without saying that as much browsing and research as we all do that I suggest that a heavy researcher should highlight their browser history every day and click on clear todays history and delete it. You will be surprised how much better your rig will run
Check this link out. I use it occassionaly when having issues and the standard, clear my cashe, and reboot of my rig doesn’t take care of it.
http://downdetector.com/status/ebay/map/
You can enlarge the map and see the areas that are having issues. I have seen it at times where almost the whole USA is highlighted in red. As the fix the issues, the red areas begin to go back to orange, then yellow, then back to all white when everything is fixed.
Maybe you could book mark this site like I did and use it for reference.
Mike at MDC Galleries
I have the exact same issue going on for about 6 months. I have done exactly what you have done, talked to the same people and gone through the same corrective process with the same results. The rep said everything can be seen on the channels in all of those countries. we still have a whole lot showing excluded countries.
I asked the rep, that even though potential buyers in foreign countries can see our store, items and price, what do they see when they click on the shipping tab. All I see state side when I click on the ship from what country tab is USA, Canada and Mexico.. all others are in the excluded list. I mention so what if they can see the products, if when they click on their country or try to see what the total costs are going to be, are they getting any numbers quoted to them.
I just gave up, been too busy because it was year end, year end tax close out, and a lot of back log to enter. Only had one Foreign sale since Oct. or Nov.
My rep said she would put in a work order to check this out and fix it and just be patient and it will all work itself out. Yeah, sure. Six months later and no foreign sales so guess she was wrong.
I just dread going back through all of this again. Uggh.. just putting it off and continue to work on store and shipping USA sales.
If you get an answer let me know.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Only used some auctions back when we first started in 2002. Did about 50 Baseball Cards at $.99 and allowed them to be sniped. That way we built up about 30 or so feedbacks very quickly. After that, only a couple for 15 year span.
I didn’t Jay to call me a “Sucker”..:-) [his famous line..Auctions are for Suckers]. seriously we could do about the same thing by taking Offers. Now that Ebay allows up to 5 counter offers, that is a mini-private auction within itself. We have had buyers use all 5 tries, back and forth.
Millnials or most people just don’t want to wait for auctions to play out. Either pay now and ship it to me today or tomorrow or make an offer and end it in a day or so. I think even sniping software is more for dealer buyers. nobody I ever speak to even knows about sniping, heck they don’t even read a short description.They see a vintage red vase for $35, and BAM! it is bought.
right behind you on this one guys. I have been paying for WorthPoint for years. It has just so much historical data, but it also does have HallMark and Stamped Chop mark identifications and a library as added value tools. But 3 years or so of historical data from Ebay would be nice.
I know Jay has told me before he just doesn’t see a need for info. going that far back, especially if he has to pay for it, but many times due to the unique-odd ball nature of some items that span of time does at least give a few sold items to use as a bench mark.
Guess though that they make money off of selling this information to others who offer historical archive services or maybe it is just too much information to store for Ebay and eats up way too much storage capacity.
One way to cut down is to only keep 2 or 3 photos and dump the rest. That is what WorthPoint does.
