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We take dryer sheets and cut them into 1″ wide strips and include them in any thing that we bag up. That seems to at least mask the odor. Also sometimes we will also throw a strip into the box that contains the sealed bag when shipping. Cheap enough, just fractions of a penny per strip.
mike in Atlanta
I know that you are very familiar with the North Atlanta area. If we went 20 miles from here in Gwinnett County that would place us over around Marietta. That would mean down I-85 to “Spagehtti Junction”, west on I-285 around the loop, then up I-75. That is about an hour trip one way, and if any accident at all, even a slight bump or car stall and you can make that an hour and half to two hours one way or 3 to 3-1.2 hrs round trip. Just murder in Atlanta to drive that distance. I was stuck in traffice on the top of Spagehtti Junction one time so I counted the lanes of traffic. There are 22 lanes that come together there. So I played a mental game of trying to figure out how many cars were stuck there. So I decided [for easy math to use a base 10] and said to myself each car is approx. 10 ft. in length [and we all know most are longer]. So 22 cars were side by side on those 22 lanes, then take a mile of 5,280 divided by 10 ft long so I figured approx. 528 cars in that mile times 22 lanes equals 11,616 cars in just one mile of traffic. AND that traffic was piled up for as far as I could see in both directions. Miles and miles. Atlanta authorities say millions of cars per day go through “Spaghetti Junction”. That is why Atlanta was hit really bad when earlier this spring that section of I-85 was on fire, then collapsed. And you knowing Atlanta, you know I kid you not.
This is one reason we do our scavenging and picking within a 10 mile radius of our home mostly. We would speed 4 hours out of the day going over and up I-75 or out I-20 east or west. If we travel, we just head up north Georgia way. We go to auctions more upwards than through Atlanta. The Atlanta airport is 40 mles South of us. Good luck getting there on time.
So three cars on your roads when you go to your houses. I just can’t imagine it. 🙂 🙂
Mike in Very Busy Hot ‘Lanta, as they say.
JFH .. So you think doing the Free Shipping is driving sales? That topic has always been a big back and forth here on SL. I see where Etsy is really pushing that feature also. The schools of thought are to weigh each item along with guestimated packing [which we do and are pretty good at hitting it right on the money] then rounding up to the next half pound, and then picking a spot 2/3 rds of the way across the USA [approx. 2,200 miles away] and look at calculated shipping to that area and then build that into the price of the item. Then use Free Shipping on everything. But the down side is when you run a 20% off Sale in your store and also accept an offer of another 10-15% even below that you are reducing the cost of shipping that you “built in” by the same percentage.
So there is the rub, and the concern for most who sell individual, unique, OOAK items.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Wow, that is a lot further than I ever imagined. So round trip maybe 35 miles plus if you hit both houses and do the triangle trip and then back home. Do you still have someone to do the cleaning and laundry for you at the Farmhouse? I think I recall you did have someone some months back. If so that at least save you from having to go and spend even more time doing that.
Looking forward to seeing the new building arrive and photos as it progresses. Suggestion: do a scaled layout on paper of the aisles and shelving placement. Consider traffic flow and the use of a rolling between the shelving rows. We use a rolling cart, have a pick list, and just go down the rows from low bin numbers to high and pull as we “roll along”. Our cart can hold up to 6 to 9 smaller plastic bins. We keep several just stacked under the top shelf. Pull them out as we roll along and fill orders. Then at the end of our trip up and down the asiles we just carry the bins to our shipping area.
Now don’t get me wrong, we only have about 6 16 foot long x 7 feet high shelving so not a big area, but the point is to get organized and create a “system” of bin placement, item numbers on each item, then those items placed in numerical bins.When you store items just reverse the process. Tag items with a tag that already has numbers printed on them, a short descrip or even skip that, and your SKU number. Put that on each item, log that item into your software as you photograph it, place in the “carry totes”, then place on the rolling cart in oder of low numbers to high numbers. Then just roll along and stop at each bin, open and place in the bin. We even have our laptop sitting on the rolling cart. As we place the item in the bin, we enter that bin number directly into our software and hit enter. Then search for the next SKU number, rinse and repeat. A system for everything going into storage and a reverse of the system for everything to be pulled out. Same system we sued at the large printing company, just much smaller.
Can’t wait to see how you guys get your “shit” organized. Ha-Ha LOL 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Definitely interesting as Steven s said .. to turn the mental visuals into a reality. For some reason I thought that Ryanne’s office was just a few yards off the main house in one direction and the Farm House [1st reno.] was in your back yard at maybe a further corner. I just didn’t put together you had to drive to it. I did know the new reno. house was down the road, but from the video, it looks miles down the road, especially with the time lapse sped up, seeing the bridge over the river.
So to settle the mind – visual question, just how far from your main house is Ryanne’s office [in yards or miles], the farm house, the farm house storage shed and the new house? At a population of approx. 4,900 you guys are going to be the “Land Barron’s of Luray – Page County.
One thing for sure, looking at the accumulation of inventory items, right after you order up the new storage building, in my opinion, you guys need to start thinking about a Inventory Organization System, a SKU number system and the method you will use to track it. If you start that process now and work on the tagging method then after the building is complete you will be ready to just move things into place.
Thanks for also letting us see the pretty country all around you. Bet is it gorgeous in the fall.
mike in Atlanta
Hey Jay… That’s a neat web site. Never heard of it.. 1st dibs. I book marked it. Especially the Sol Lewitt section. I have about 10 prints he gave me when I did his poster print edition for him back in the 80’s for his show at the Wadsworth Athenium in Hartford, CT. I printed the poster run for him of approx. 150 posters. The poster run was an original silk screen print of all hand cut stencils and hand made screens which I did for him in our atelier workshop in West Hartford, CT., of which I got to keep 10% of the edition as part of my compensation. While they are poster prints for the show and not his signed limited pieces, they still have art value and I still think I will be pricing them in the $250 or so range with MAO.
Thanks for the site reference.
Mike in Atlanta
I along with some other members here at SL “Subscribe” to the database service. The subscription allows us to see the prices.
Mike in Atlanta
Welcome Faoneybaloney .. check this link out and see if this is what you are speaking about. I did not see a link to a photo of your item but here are a couple of “SOLD” listings I found using a few of your key words. The cat sold for $925 in Aug. 2016, the Fish for $500 in May of 2016, and the “Bull” for $499.99 in March of 2014.
Hope these are what you are inquiring about and if so, hope this helps.
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=Alvino+Bagni+Raymor+ceramic+
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
the “Is Ebay Down” site is now showing that the spike in “reports has dropped back down to approx. what it was prior to 8:00 AM EST this morning. We can also now access our Seller Dashboard. Guess Ebay worked out it’s issues.
Happy Listing Guys … ABL
Mike in Atlanta
Great Sale Linda… Yep Steiff is a good BOLO. We have approx. a dozen ceramic dog pieces in our store but no Steiff. Have couple of Nippon, Made in Japan, and a McCoy at about $65 and a bronze dog at about $85.
Susan found a larger lot a couple of years ago and we have sold off most except for these. She said that the sellers were old vintage booth dealers who had closed down. She said they had tons of small ceramic animals in a make shift storage area in their garage. We got a business card from them. Might be worth a call back to see if they have any more left and are maybe willing to do a whole lot deal?
But Congratulations on that sale.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Yep, try to log in and get the spinning icon for a long while then a “time out” error message. I was just reading the reports on that link I pasted in. It seems that the outage is from Florida up to New York out to Chicago at this point. There is some help among the common complainers in there. But there is some suggestions on how to at least get your labels and packing lists printed work around. PayPal was also having issues it says about 20 hours ago. Don’t know if they are related.
Some of the commenters are saying they are using the phone app to access. Just checked mine and YES I can see my messages but have never used the cell phone app for printing labels. Luckily I stayed up late last night and got my packages all completed and they just left the office. Hopefully it will all get worked out shortly. Maybe some sort of new change or roll out is having a hick-up
Mike in Atlanta
Here is an answer that states PayPal’s policy. It may be of help to you.
If it is a higher price item we always just ask the buyer to go to their PayPal account and input the temporary shipping address there.
Hope this helps…
Mike & Susan at MDC Galleries in AtlantaHey Linda and Welcome Aunt Bet:
Glad you made it back in time to experience “the darkness”. We experienced one in Savannah back in the late 60’s I believe. Told Jay that it was sort of under whelming. But this time boy oh boy…It got dark a little while ago for about 120 secs. Wonder if that had anything to do with the great things that has happened today since then … ????
After the Darkness I discovered that …
• My computer suddenly has twice as much RAM
• Kim Jung Un and Donald Trump went out and got new hair cuts
• My car suddenly gets much better gas mileage
• It was announced that all the troops in foreign countries are returning home
• I can suddenly list 50 items per hour
• I got 20% of my inventory sold within one hour at full price
• All of my back log of unlisted items suddenly have been listed
• My knees suddenly quit hurting
• I grew hair on the top of my head
• I saw I had lost 20 lbs when I got on my scale
• I just got an email from the cable company and was told my cable bill was being reduced by $100
• Heard that 1500 Homeless people suddenly found a permanent shelter
• My check engine light suddenly went off
• My bank account balance suddenly had 6 extra zero at the end
• My birth certificate suddenly has a 15 year later date showing on it
• I suddenly won all my auctions that I was bidding on for the $.01 minimum along with free shipping
• Suddenly all of our photos turned the proper color with an all white background and in an aspect ratio of 1:1 [square]
• Looked in our bedroom closet and suddenly we see all of our Christmas shopping is done
• I looked in the mirror and suddenly I saw a face that matches my college graduation picture
• I just saw that all of my underpriced items in our store were highlighted in yellow and the prices automatically corrected up to the best higher price.Been married almost 48 years and that is a much, much larger wonder than the two minutes of darkness. Hhhmmmm!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 LOL LOL LOL Sometimes we just have to add in a little jocularity or we would all go bonkers sitting here listing 10 hours a day.
Just poking fun, I am not really crabby!
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Hey Wallabee:
Here is a web site that was created by one of the SL members and think he has been interviewed by J&R in the past. He is recommended by several members here. He has several “tools” to help determine how to ship, calculators, what box sizes to use, which are the best carriers to use for any one particular size item, etc. And they are all FREE. I used to use the Fitshipper tool all the time until I finally memorized most of the cut off weights. This tool will give you the cost based on the item dimensions and how much space around the object you wish to leave. It will give you the best box size to use, the various costs for all the carriers to ship by and from that you can determine the best method to ship by and include that in your listing.
Go there now and put in those sizes for the items you just shipped and see what the recommendations “would have been” if you had done this prior to uploading your listings and going live. Then play some “what if’s” with a few others you may have laying around or just put in some phony numbers and see what you get.
And may I state again .. all for FREE! Have fun 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries & Fine Art in Atlanta
