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That is really bad English, “I am glad you understands and appreciates all this, because this is a big deal for me.” It should read, “I am glad someone understands and appreciates all this, because this is a big deal for me.”
T-Satt,
I am glad you understands and appreciates all this, because this is a big deal for me. But, I think when I am finished I am in a much better place. I think it will do the following:
1. It will make clothes easier to find.
2. I will have confidence that everything I have on that rack is listed.
3. There is nothing listed that I won’t be able to find on the rack.
4. I will be able to print on my pick list that these items are on a garment rack.
5. Better use of space. Also saving a lot of space because of the new improved rack. I may get
another one to save even more space.
6. Uniformity among the bags which will make it easier for someone else to find the clothes.
7. Much better overall organization that gets me ready to scale the business – very important.Mark
Mike,
I do remember stamp collecting companies sending you stamps to look at.
I used to do that! I loved it as a kid. I still have those stamps stashed away in my stamp album.
Mark
Mike,
ebay may have an answer for this: Order x number of clothing items from 1 ebay seller, pick what you want, send the rest back.
What would ebay sellers do if that were to happen?
I think it could go 1 of 2 ways: 1. Sales increase greatly when someone does this with your store, or 2. They take advantage of it like you were saying and you have a mess of returns to deal with and very few sales.
I am not sure how that would work for us. Any thoughts from the clothing sellers?
Me, I do sell a lot of clothing and shoes and I might be open to this for a repeat customer, but I would be cautious about new buyers.
Mark
This past week I have felt like Benjamin Martin from the movie “The Patroit” as he expressed his feelings in the famous opening lines: “I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear.”
That is what happened to me this week when I started moving all of my listed clothing (and doing counts) on to a new double tier clothing rack – Extended Height Double-Rail Rolling Z Rack Garment Rack with Nesting Black Base by Metropolitan Display. You can find it on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Extended+Height+Double-Rail+Rolling+Z+Rack+Garment+Rack+with+Nesting+Black+Base+by+Metropolitan+Display
This clothing rack is a beast and I highly recommend it. You can really save a lot of space with this one if your ceiling will support it, you need about 81″ in height. But the rack was not the issue.
The issues were correcting bad practices of the past: (and I am calling the fix below “best practices” for me for right now)
1. Had to move the clothing from all sorts of different garment bags to my standard black, 33 Gallon Trash bag (from Sams Club).
2. All Garment bags have to have a sticker with the lot # on it and tape over it so it doesn’t fall off – preferrably from the printer, but a hand written one will do.
3. All Clothing must be on an appropriate hanger with a white marking tag that clearly states the Lot\item #
4. All Clothing must be listed on ebay (ok, T-Satt, you got me on this one. The very first item I checked was not listed and there have been several more.) I had to set those aside to relist.
5. If the clothing is listed on ebay, it must be in the garment bag. Good on this so far.
6. Merge these garment bags with the ones on the other clothing racks so that they are in order by lot # (same as container #, but on a clothing rack. My COGS lookup table will keep track of which items are hanging up and spit that out to my pick list report.)
7. Put all the new garments bags neatly and tighly (but not too tight) on the new rack location so as to conserve as much space as possible.
8. As I am going through the clothing and it has be listed more than a year or so, decide if it needs re-priced. If so, note that and reprice later at the computer and of course add the sku\container # in the right spot when you do that.
Are you exhausted yet reading this? I didn’t want to touch these items more than once, so I figured I would cover all my bases when I went through them. It is almost like starting all over.
It wouldn’t be so bad if this were just for 15-20 items, but this is for several hundred items. I am still making my way through all of this.
Mark
2018-08-19 – 2018-08-25
Site: US / Feedback 1161 (Red)
Neutral Feedback 2.00
Positive Feedback 425.00
Total Items In Store: 2430.00
Items Sold: 13.00
Cost of Items Sold: 50.00
Total Sales: 544.93
Total Fees 92.63
Net Sales After Fees: 452.30
Highest Price Sold: 169.99 (Bible)
Average Price Sold: 41.92
Buyer Shipping $ 130.96
My Shipping $ 0.00
# Days so far 6.91
Avg. Daily $ 78.86
Proj. Week $ 552.03
# Items Listed 8.00
$ Listed 289.92
ASP $ Listed 36.24
ebay Final Value Fees 57.11
ebay Fees Allocated 11.90
Paypal Fees 23.62
Fee % of Gross 17.00
# items being watched 1073.00
# items watch count >= 10 17.00
Avg. Item Hit Count 506.00
Refunded # 1.00
Best Offer # 4.00
Best Offer $ 103.00
Best Offer ASP $ 25.75
Money Spent on New Inventory: 59.00Ok, I went a little crazy adding to this report, but I can actually think of more things to add to it. I could add the names of my sales that are active, items that sold via promoted listing, YOY, $ spent on materials, $ spent on contractors, mileage, etc. Then give a net $ of what you took home at the end. But of course this still wouldn’t give you a true net number because I would need to add a percentage of my monthly expenses: ebay store $ per month, GoDaddy, WL, and Storage Unit fees. This goes back to that cashflow discussion from last weeks podcast.
Note: that I entered the description of highest price sold: “(Bible)”, actual amount of “Cost of Items Sold”, and “Money Spent on New Inventory” by hand, these were not calcualated by the report.
So, now I know where to find all the data in WL for these data points in the report. That sets me up for the end of the year report and for other drill down analysis as needed.
I will post below about my “cycle count” experience.
Mark
Joe,
I must say that this is ridiculous for Paypal to make you pay. That is what they are there for. If someone charge $200 unauthorized to your Visa, would Visa go after the store and make them pay more money? Of course not. Visa picks up the tab, that is why business’s pay them 3% per tranaction. Why is this any different?
What good would it do to have a receipt, that only proves that you shipped it. Even if you had proof showing that the package was delivered, they are not contesting that. I have all my tracking numbers for every package in Wonder Lister, but what good does that do me if USPS only keeps it for 90 days?
I think Paypal needs to pay up, that is why we pay them 4%+ fees per item.
I have one outstanding like this. I guess that is why I am so mad about this.
Mark
In my previous post, I said – “Now you either have to put that in a field” – this is confusing.
What I meant to say is that now you either have to put the cost you paid for the item in another field of the listing as part of the item listed for all 1050 items that you have, or do a lookup.”
Mark
Joshua,
For COGS, I mean that you have to have a method to get the actual cost that you paid for that item.
So, if you have a unique identifier in the sku that is good. Now you either have to put that in a field in Wonder Lister as part of the item listed for all 1050 items that you have, or do a lookup. I chose to do the lookup route. I created a COGS table with the same unique identifier as the sku, then I join to the COGS table and get the price I paid for the item. The COGS table is being created by importing all my spreadsheets that already have all this information. In the spreadsheet, I also have what I call the Buy Lot #\item # (every sale I buy things at gets a BL #). So, if I load that information in, then later I can get the following: date I bought the item, address, miles driven for the sale, type of sale that is was: Garage Sale, Estate, Auction, etc. (haven’t been consistent in tracking this to this point), etc.
After you get all that set up, you can then add your COGS to any report. I am working on that right now.
Mark
Joshua,
The setup is easy, they do most of it for you.
The main thing is getting your container number populated. If you already have that then you are ahead of the game. If not, 1050 listings is doable to go back and populate that. This is the key so that you can track COGS. You also have to have a plan for COGS.
Mark
I can’t really see what is on that Union Tag.
Mark
Joshua,
Wonder Lister is a no-brianer for cost as long as you don’t have more than 2500 listings. It is $5\month up to 1000 listings and $10\month for up to 2500 listings. There is also the time factor. You will have to devote a little time to getting familar with WL. And if you are going to do some querying and creating your own tables, then that will require a lot more time to get familar with the Wonder Lister tables and where to find all the data.
Wonder Lister captures all of your data in a SQL Server database and then that sits on your PC. When I went through the setup, I requested that they set me up with SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio). SSMS allow you to access all of the database objects that Wonder Lister allows. You can query the data from here and create your own tables, procedures, functions, etc. My only caution would be not to alter, insert, update, or delete from any of the Wonder lister objects – leave those alone and create your own under your own schema.
So, there are some up-front barriers (time & some money), but I think the results are great. I am going to end up with an Enterprise System where all my data is stored in one place with automatic backups. I will be able to answer any question about the business with a query or possibly a little more. For time, you could do a little at a time. That is what I did. I took me quite a while to figure out all their data and make sense of it. I have had to fix old queries that weren’t quite right.
Mark
SellingCoolThings,
Can you post a pic of the Union tag? You can sometimes narrow it down to a date range based on the Union tag. I have done that a number of times and will be enough if you can’t find your tag.
Also, try to find the Lee tag. Here is a reference but doesn’t show your tag: https://vintagefashionguild.org/label-resource/lee/
Here is an image page on google, but still, I don’t see your tag:
https://www.google.com/search?biw=1920&bih=974&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=m7F8W9–Ac3TjgSO75ywBA&q=vintage+lee+jeans+tag&oq=vintage+lee+jeans+tag&gs_l=img.3…4409.9328.0.9591.11.9.2.0.0.0.167.748.7j2.9.0….0…1c.1.64.img..0.1.167…0.0.3rZkXx74gy0#imgrc=_
Mark
Mike,
Ok, just let me know when you are ready for the pick list report or that WTD report.
I am really interested in that WL Etsy interface. I have around 700 vintage items that I think would sell well on Etsy and give me another stream of income with hopefully relatively little work.
Please give any updates that you get on the Etsy interface. I am waiting in eager expectation!
Mark
Mike,
The WL team does not expose any of their code. They don’t want me to change the data in their tables from the backend. I figured that because they have to keep track of what data has changed and send that up to ebay. If I am changing the data out from under them through the back door, I could get messed up data. So, I am fine with them telling me to stay away from changing data on the backend. That will protect both myself and them.
Mark
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