Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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Items in Store 1121
Items Sold 16
Total Sales $429.00
COGS $50.00
Total Profit $379.00
Average profit $23.69
Average sales price $26.81
New Listings 8Ugh, this holiday weekend sales sucked! I did a 40% off sale on all items that were older than 1.5 years. 320 items were part of the sale and I sold 1 single item. I also got multiple insultingly bad offers on sale items that I declined.
One item I had to cancel and relist to get it out of the sale because a buyer in the northwest corner of Washington was making offers – the item had free shipping. I would have lost money! Thank goodness that person was sooo cheap that they didn’t just use Buy It Now for a whopping $2 more, which would have still been less than actual shipping.I only sold 3 items total over the holiday weekend.
Turns out this is a trend. Last year I sold 2 items over the 3 day memorial weekend. In 2017 I sold 5 items. In 2016, 4 items.
I’m pretty sure I ran a sale last year as well.
In other news, I expanded my DIY repertoire of skills by replacing my front porch steps this weekend. The stringers and step boards were rotten on one side which had become dangerous. The steps were also poorly designed – the top step was only 3″ lower than the porch. We got used to the studder step required for the top step when entering leaving.
The new steps are properly designed with even steps of the proper height/depth all the way up. The problem: We still have that muscle memory of the old steps that we have to unlearn! The first step when leaving is a doozy when my brain is still expecting only a 3″ drop.
This is fascinating data!
Doubly is WAY down this week and you are way up. Similar stores in literally the same location, but with a drastic swing in sales. Interesting.
We got a TJ Maxx at our mall just over a year ago. They are loaded with Nike, Ralph Lauren, Guess, Lucky Brand, etc. All at a fraction of the price of other stores in the mall.
$14.99-19.99 is their sweet spot. It definitely makes me nervous as a used clothing seller. My Ralph Lauren mens shirts don’t sell at all anymore.
Seam, your numbers always appear too good to be true. I’m quite envious!
I love looking through your sold listings.Thanks for being so transparent about your processes and your willingness to answer questions.
Avoiding yard sales is one of the reasons I started to take ebay more seriously about 6 years ago. My wife would want to do a yardsale. I wouldn’t as I would be the one out there in the heat most of the time and I’d be the one to pack it all back up. All for $80-100 in sales. NOPE!
So the last time we ever considered a yard sale I picked out a handful of items we were going to sell and listed them on ebay. If I did good I could just take the rest of the junk to goodwill and not do the yardsale. I made well over $100 on just a handful of items and off to goodwill I went!
It’s funny because shipping is the thing that kept me from doing ebay. Now I am an uber shipping nerd and it is one of my favorite aspects. Lol!
Yep, I never engage with shipping complainers.
My canned response is “I input the actual weight and dimensions of item for the shipping calculator. Shipping cost is what the post office charges. Thanks.”
There is no point in arguing a black and white open/shut issue. You have facts and reality, while they operate in lala land. You can’t ever win that argument.
I’m also not a big fan of pre-packaging. I did that when I first started and had a quick turnaround on items. I maintained an inventory of 80-100 items – all prepackaged ready to go. I still have 2 of these pre-packaged items sitting on a shelf in inventory. Lol!
I like to inspect items before I pack/ship. If they are pre-packaged I feel like I am rolling the dice, especially if the item has sat for 16 months or more.
Your idea is sound and likely the best idea for most people, but if you have well established processes and have good self control then it really doesn’t matter if you use rented storage for listed or unlisted inventory.
Personally I would argue that rented storage is better for unlisted inventory. That way all of your listed inventory is near to your shipping station at all times.
Then you have a small staging area for a couple days worth of unlisted inventory at the home/office that you replenish from the rented storage. All new unlisted inventory gets cycled into the rented storage.
Of course, the problem with this method is that pesky self-control thing. I think you guys definitely do no fall into this category though.
Yes but it is still VERY important to have ample light. Otherwise your cell phone camera will be forced to overcompensate with slower shutter speeds and higher ISO. Without good lighting, your pictures will get slightly blurry and grainy.
iPhones are optimized for shooting in good natural light. They have a fixed aperture and will try to hold low ISO at all costs. So shutter speed is priority until you get to the limit of handheld phototography and then ISO goes up.
It really is a brilliant automatic system if you think of the technical aspects that allow such an amazing camera in such a small package.
But to say lighting isn’t important with a cell phone camera is not accurate at all.
Take this item for example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Byrd-Cloth-Vintage-bucket-Cap-Fortrel-Polyester-Dobbs-hat-wrinkle-crease-free/173868492981?hash=item287b5ea8b5:g:omgAAOSwSldcvdxl
The first two photos are grainy due to high ISO. Crank your lighting up and alot of that graininess will go away.It’s actually not too bad. The male mannequin is hollow plastic so very light. I just prop it up against the back of my photo area or lay it down flat. I don’t bother with the stand. Pants go on and off pretty easy.
I use clothes pins for larger sizes to make them fit the mannequin.
As for a quick way to photo pants, don’t worry about stuffing the legs. Just fashion a form for the butt/crotch area. It can be as simple as a grocery bag stuffed full of more grocery bags. My wife has done the in the past for the “butt shot” of jeans. It works very well.
Ha! I was just thinking about the bike drop off thing this past weekend. Figured maybe I could mount a bin on the back of the bike to make runs. I have a pretty easy bike path to the post office that is actually well over a mile shorter than by car as there is a bike/walking path to cut into the next neighborhood that exits to the main road right next to the post office.
I don’t really like doing carrier pickup. The carriers are already stressed to the max and even working on Sundays now. Doing alot of pickups they run out of room and have to make more trips back to the post office.
I got an offer on a pair of shoes within minutes of listing for double my list price from a 0 feedback buyer.
I countered with the actual price and added a message stating “you offered double my asking price”.
Never heard back from them.It is definitely counter-intuitive. One of my local Goodwills used to be this way. The main lady was hateful and despised resellers. She felt like they were basically stealing! I’d engage her in conversation and blow holes in her closed minded ideas. It was fun.
Then one day I checked out and her demeanor had changed because the reality lightbulb had finally turned on for her – resellers spend a TON of money there! She thanked me and said “I was hoping you’d come in today. You always help me meet the sales quota for the day”.
Why wouldn’t you want resellers? Most of them don’t complain, pay the sticker price if it makes sense, and are polite. I get to know all the people at my local stores.
I return my carts after I unload in the car. I remove all the hangers and even put them back on the hanger rack for them. I prefold and sort all the clothes so they can easily handle them. I’m a model customer.
There are perks to being a polite, helpful, and “spendy” customer too!
There is high turnover, but occasionally I get an employee that will hook me up.– I’ve had one store hold back huge box of high end mens shoes that were all size 16 and up. They knew I’d take them all and they wouldn’t have to take up valuable shelf space with them.
– Another store they will go in the back and quickly price things they know I would be interested so they can get them out for me to buy.
– Another store the e-commerce manager will pull out a bunch of clothing racks for me to look through.I have started accepting more and more initial offers. If they are at least “in the ballpark” I have been accepting unless I know the item has a high probability to sell for more. For many of these items it may have been the first offer in over a year of listing time. Am I really willing to risk losing a potential customer and wait another year?
I have more stuff than I can list and can acquire an exponentially larger amount if I so desire, so I’d like to keep the sales velocity going if at all possible. to clear up storage space.
Scavenging is definitely therapy. The excitment of finding a rare item. The thrill of a great deal. The accomplishment of scoring a big haul. I’d do it all the time if I could get away with it.
Scavenging is great therapy…too great sometimes.
I’ve throttled way back on my scavenging. I used to go to multiple thrifts during the week. Now I maybe do one a week. In April I did none. I do 1-2 hours of yard sales most Saturdays – just a trip down the main drag. No marathon days from 7am-1pm, which would be pretty easy to do around here.
All that therapy led me to having a giant backlog. That would have been fine if my day job would have ended as I expected, but it didn’t. It would also be fine if I had time to list it all, but I don’t. I make WAY too much money for way too little work to walk away from my day job.
I’m slowly chipping away at the backlog and also keeping up with the new stuff coming in.
I’m slowly but surely finding the balance that works for me. I’m committing to myself to list the new stuff I get as soon as possible, and then do some of the backlog before buying more stuff. I commit myself to sticking to higher dollar items and only get $25 and under items when they are a quick flip and easy to list.
I don’t want to completely quit scavenging because I want the tax write offs associated with it and there are always excellent things out there that I’d kick myself for missing out on – like the brand new high end DVD recorder I got yesterday that will be a quick $100 profit). I considered skipping that scavenging trip but did it anyways so I could claim the 45 mile round trip as business travel. It paid off.
