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You hit the nail on the head.. Jay’s dicta. “LIst, then list some more”!
Yeah that is what we all kind of figured at this mornings production meeting. And at the mark up rates we use and by buying as low as we can, we figure those margins and pricing spreads will cover what few returns we would ever have. Again since 2002 we naybe have had 3 or 4 returns and also only 3 or 4 breakages and we ship tons of glass, crystal, pottery. 7 Dinner plates going out in a few minutes.
Well that is true. But we also bump those up so high and that we use a special “cocoon” process to package and wrap most of our items that the weight is fairly high also.
As an example.. if an item comes in at 15 ozs. with our packaging we usually push that to 1# 2 ozs. That makes the cost go from $5.50 USPS to up to $8.45 Priority zone 8. BUT we then ship out First Class at 15 ozs. at $5.50, then less our discount for about $4 and change and we make $3 to $4 on the shipping and 1st class will get to far out zones just about as fast and in many cases faster.
So now, if returned, Ebay will use the heavier weight and create a label for $8.45. Remember the Ebay fields for weight, is for Shipping weight, not actual scale weight.
So just interesting on how they are going to do it on items that have Free Shipping on them. But as said, now with Free Shipping a seller and make a whole lot more money, even with Sales and Best Offers.
I suggest looking up two videos by Danni Ackerman with the title Free Shipping in the title and watch those. They outline the money making method of Free Shipping. She Ships everything Free Shipping, lamps, large and heavy, etc. upwards of $40, $50 dollars and also will pay to have FedEx pack it for her and still makes money.
It is not too many items we are offering for free shipping that range between 2 lbs. to6 lbs. that we don’t have $12 up to $25 plus a 35% M/U on top of that that is not built in and we are still selling those.What Danni Ackerman says is that most people are buying on their phones and they don’t want to take the time to do the math to add the cost of the item together with the shipping. New age buyers, look at the picture and total price and buy. Almost to the tune of 65% of the buyers. I can’t tell you how many buyer messages we get asking questions and when we mention those are already answered in item specifics, they message back and ask what are Item Specifics, or I can find that on my phone. So, much I have a short text message on my desktop to just click and paste into my reply box.
New age customers hate doing the math. They just want a total price, they mostly now expect it.Example… I have two vintage Hull vases on my desk. Magnolia relief design. Beautiful. Fairly hard to find style and design. They have a Sold History on several platforms we use to rpice with of approx. $85 each. We got them for $3.25 each at an auction. the scale weight is 2.6 lbs. and the “cocoon-double box” method of our packaging we will list it at another 2 lbs.So this is how I am going to price each. 12x10x8 box at 4.6 lbs. That rounds up to 5 lbs. in USPS charts. Now with how we are doing free shipping. we don’t know where it is going so we take worse case scenario and use Zone 8 price column. That shows at $23 at over the counter rates. So, $23+$85×1.35% M/U= $145 that we will list this at and include Free shipping in the listing and Make an Offer. Now to arrive at the actual selling price.. We are almost always running a Sale so let’s use 20% off Sale and we will in most cases go another 15%-20% off on make an offer or if low balled counter offer back upwards to around the 30%-40% off total. So now, starting at $145 we will be at approx. $102.00 to $87.00. Now we are back to what the item sold for at the higest price we researched out. And in 85% of the time we don’t go to the 40% level, it is more like the 30% level.
Now the question is how much was the real shipping by the time we actually “cocooned” the vase and shipped and knowing that the actual box size is approx. correct, what about the real weight?
Will a return buyer actually re-create the cocoon, use the same box within a box, will it be lighter or heavier than originally sent. Interesting bundle of hidden factors BUT with such mark-ups as we get on vintage, rarer-harder to find collectors pieces we are OK with Ebay charging use a return fee based on whatever they want to use because we in this cases have 27 to 31 times our money return on the investment.
Just an opinion, but when something will sell at a known range and you build in the highest cost shipping you can and allow discounts and room to haggle-bargain the customer get’s his “percieved” WIN [bargain-deal] and we still smile all the way to the bank.
Take a few of Jay and Ryanne’s Sales on the extreme high end items they sold, just the Louis Vitton suitcase had enough profit in it to pay for all of their returns for a year [just a WAG – wild ass guess] but that sort of how we are looking at it.
Now this will not work on common, commodity, well available type of products. When we start listing the original artwork we have, the returns are going to be extremely high. But we will see.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Jay, that’s the rub to this whole thing. I am going to quote you… ” when we do an experiment, who’s to say that what we did actualy caused a sales increase or would the increase in Sales have happened anyway due to other factors” or something like that.
We also have started Promoted Listings this year, and doing much better on SEO phrasings and key words and there placement, we also have been taking the weight of an item, looking at shipping it to Zone 8 then marking that up 35% more and adding it to the price, we also are having 15% and 20% Sales running every five days, we are now nameing all of our photos and when they are being used in other places is google crawling the photos, I sure see a lot showing up now in Google images and some being picked up on Pinterest [funny that when we are doing research on some of our items we are seeing our own past sales coming up as benchmarks..[haha], we are starting to use the MDC Galleries name on almost everything we write, so who knows what will be the one driving force that increases sales. Add in the plain fact we had thousands of items pulled from closing down those booths and now we are starting to mfg. a few of own own products and art work plus now opening up those art portfolios of prints I made for dozens of New England artists.So keeping good numbers or not, it would be impossible to nail down exactly what will be the increase in Sales. Now if no increase in Sales, that would surely point to the fact that “NONE” of the above would have helped, but I really doubt that will be the case. We are at approx. 920 items and by fourth quarter expect to be at around 1,500, 1,750 or more [hopefully]. That alone will surely drive Sales up by using your own mantra. List it and surely somebody will come if unqiue enough. There is a buyer for everything at some price, sooner or later.
So I hear what you are asking, but unsure if there will be anything to report other than Sales have increased, and if we do everything listed up above, I think, with fair sureity, that Sales will increase… even if we have to eat a few returns. Like I said in another post about employees who used to steal anything not nailed down, that a 1% loss on 18 million dollars in Sales was a $180,000 loss and that was off the bottom line. Also we had quality control issues that resulted in returns and re-prints. We always priced our proposals for our world class accounts high enough that if we had to reprint there whole job we still would win. America..What a Country!! We had to produce almost $720,000 or more to make that up. It was a fact of life, it is in all retail and mfg. formulas, and a fact of life.
So I probably can tell you right now, we will have an increase in Sales, how much unsure, but we will. But what will be the actual manuvers we are taking that will drive those Sales, may not be able to say.
I used to love our one salesman in charge of the Walmart account. It was over 1 million dollars per year and his annual commission was $100k plus and he claimed landing the account was due to the fact he was a 10 handicap golfer but always lost to them when he played. his charm and personality. LOL. But I fired Walmart as a customer, too demanding and we lost money on them. Operations 101 and the salesman, he was gone also. But what was it that made Walmart come to us, price, quick turn around, capability and large capacity.
So if we figure out what are the real driving forces in Sales increases during the coming year you and the SL community will be the first to know, for sure.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Think u missed the “free” shipping. If I charged a buyer $30 for something with free shipping. Ebay has no way to know if I sold a $1 item with a $29 shipping charge built in or a $29 item with a $1 dollar shipping cost built in. So what is Ebay going to charge me for the return of the item?
With free shipping how does Ebay decide on what the costs will be for shipping.
Changed my business policies this afternoon. Only took about 15 to 20 minutes. Clciked on Free returns and also un-clicked the restocking fee button. We have already had 30 day returns for about a year. So now, free returns, no re-stocking fee and just like Jay and Ryanne, will just wait it out, keep tracking the numbers and see.
We are also moving more toward free shipping on things under 3 pounds or so. We just use the zone 8 amount, then mark that up to account for Sales and offers and letting it fly.
we will just see how it goes.Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Tina: Just thinking… what about items with free shipping. What will be the rate for the return, especially since the buyer will probably not have a scale to use or if they let the post office weigh it, what about an over size box being used that may push it into DIM Weight costs. Just thinking out loud! Hhmmm.
ChristineR: Someone once said, ..”your profit is in your buying”. That seems to be true in a lot of our sold items. If the market will only bare about a $50 dollar price on something, then better to have bought at $5 than $22 dollars. I know it seems basic but many vendors out at those antique malls we used to have booths at still think they are doing just fine buying at $10 and selling for $20. Little do they know.
Oh by the way… you asked me months ago to let you know how the Etsy transition [cross posting would go]. Well very slowly we have cross posted about 190 items into the Etsy Store. It is the quickest by far because we primarily just do a cut and paste for now until WonderLister gets their Etsy interface completedand we do a fairly detailed Ebay listing which contains almost everything we need for Etsy listing form anyway. We have made a few sales, better than Bonanza and Truegether and the such, but not on fire. We still need to begin to work within the teams and groups, but we are also working on our Shopify Store with the WonderLister Tech team and will be going live with that not too much longer.
thought I would just let you know.Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Amen T-Satt. You can fill in the pulpit anytime.
yep.. We are all in this together and SL has been a great place to learn from, iron out the kinks and even just to get a pat on the back and words from those experienced TRS+ guys that say, get up, dust off, get over it, embrace it and keep moving forward.
In golf and business a very basic rule is to just keep the ball moving forward toward the hole! 🙂
Well put and I don’t disagree at all. Pointing out issues and helping resolve and taking about possible out comes is truly the nature of SL. While I have a corporate background, my forte’ is contemporary fine art, have a MFA degree and aught on the collegiate level. So I am by no means a corporate worker bee any longer.
So, giving an opinion on just don’t worry too much about up coming changes, go with the flow, be flexible and make the needed changes in a quick fashion seems to be inline. But there is a difference between what may this mean, what are possible solutions as compared to the old “whow is me I am doomed and can’t see how I am going to survive” approach.
I too have asked many questions on SL and gotten great feedback, help and suggestions. By no means did I mean to imply to stop inquiring, asking, seeking and reciprocating. i meant it doesn’t help to put one’s hands up on each side of your face. drop your jaw and cry, “I am doomed, I am Doomed” Ebay is killing me.Sure, I know what Ebay is doing and why. Very much so, and it doesn’t bother me, I would be doing the same. So, in different words, besides getting and seeking advice and related conversation, in the end, we will or in my opinion, should just get on with it.
A lot of time can also be lost on forums if one isn’t careful. We knew a friend who listened to Utube vids, read blogs, posted tons and she went well over a year and really never got many things listed.
Just saying.. no malice intended or implied.
This is not our first “seller update” rodeo. Boy you got that right. ….
“5th level of despair”… Love it. Is that anything like the 12 Elements of Turmoil?
I saw a humorus item in front of a cash register the other day. It was a small sign that read “For Complaint Dept. Pull Here”. It was attached to the round pull pin on a hand grenade. I laughed.
The cashier said everyone comments on it.
Jay, it is not just the Amazon way, it is a business approach methodology way. And as far as “eating the cost”. Think like an operations guy. Ask the question, what is causing the returns? If it is anything internal, find it and fix it.
If it is too short of a description like only having “size 42” as the only copy in the whole description box. Well check out the listing of what was returned and see if it was better described would it have maybe not been returned. Or is it better Item Specifics or if one can’t figure it out then sure, maybe, eat it and move on. Once that returns are placed into ones Chart of Accounts [COA], as a line item then yes, accept it as it is IF in the relationship to the over all picture that a P&L provides you are within acceptable margins. Then account for that in the pricing structure and those loses are made up as someone replied, by adjusting prices. Sell 1500 items per year at a $1.00 higher price provides one with a $1,500 retained earnings to be applied to those misc. items. And as T-Satt mentions, if those returns are less than the $1,500 there is even more profit left over.
When we as re-sellers of vintage items are finding inventory for $5 and less and selling them at 10, 15 or even 20 times the money, then there is room to spare.
Just my opinion.
Yep… and as i said in my reply to T-Satt. Run your business like a corporation. Just do what Ebay wants and knock off the belly aching. Just “Do It”, “Gett ‘er Done” and move on with making money.
The biggest suggestion I could make to anyone who wants to really run a thriving online business is to go through the book, “Ninety Days to an MBA”. and get a grasp those principles, and then apply to your store on a smaller scale.
As Jay always says, if you want to dowse yourself with grief just go visit the Ebay forums and one can fall into the depths of gloom and despair really quick.mike in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by
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