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[Rick]

Amatino – I sent a reply the other day, it doesn’t look like it went through.

As far as the buyers go, all of my properties are about 5 hours north of where I live. They are away from the cities & in the country by where my Mom lives. It’s way more affordable than where I’m at. My Mom & I have a little restaurant up in her area so she knows a lot of people in the town. She vets everybody for the homes & so far I haven’t had any issues at all. It’s mostly blue collar single men or single mothers with kids & they are super thankful for the opportunity to have something of their own to call home.

[Rick]

Shortcut, you can do it!

[Rick]

@ MDC Galleries – managed to list 37 items tonight from 11:10 – 12:13
I think a lot of your processes can be streamlined & made a lot quicker & in turn very beneficial to your business.

http://i.imgur.com/pmG4xXQ.jpg

[Rick]

Hey Jay, if we can schedule something that would be fun to do.

[Rick]

MDC Galleries, I’ll try to explain my process as best as possible.

You have a very thorough process. Me not so much.

I source items daily, I bring everything back & stack it on a table. At any given time I have 5-7 days worth of inventory in the queue. Mostly for if it rains on the weekends I still have 35 items to list on a rainy day or if I get nothing at the flea market or come up empty.

I pull 35 items, have them measured. I photograph 35 items on my camera. They are all stacked in correspondence with the measurements on the paper & are in order. I take 4-7 pictures or so of each item. Pictures probably take around 20 minutes total for 35 items.

I bring the items next to the computer & sit them next to me in the same pile with the paper with measurements right next to me.

Mostly everything I source is something similar to something I’ve already listed or have sold in the past. So for instance if it’s a Miami Dolphins jacket, I search football jacket in my eBay store & click Sell Similar. My template will transfer over & I just change the team name from the previous listing, change some measurements & item specifics & that listing is complete in 2 minutes after the photos upload. I can list an item in 2 minutes, so listing takes me about an hour roughly to list 35 items. 1 hour – 1 hour & 15 minutes or so.

After I list all the items, I separate them to go in totes.

For example:

Concert shirts I have broken down in alphabetical order. I have 4 or 5 totes. A-D, E-J, K-S or whatever is may be. The artist goes in that bin.

I have bins for:
Basketball Jerseys
Football Jerseys
Baseball Jerseys
Button Ups
Polos
Ralph Lauren Polos
Mens Shirts
Long Sleeve
Etc
Etc

I have a few bins that are brand specific for certain brands that I buy a lot of. I don’t have a special numbering system & what not. I rarely misplace items & have a pretty good memory of where the items end up.

Jackets & coats go in a separate area & are hung up by brand and/or style.
I have a section for items brand new or at least still in the box, I have a section for items that are loose. I have small bins for smaller items (iPods, little gadgets, etc).

If an item gets stored away in the same place every time things shouldn’t get lost.

So as far as my system goes, it takes about 20 minutes for photos & about 1 hour – 1 hour & 15 minutes to list 35 item every night.

In the morning, I take a picture of the screen of my computer of each item I sold the previous day/night & scroll through the pictures & pick the items. I make sure to capture the date the item was listed in the photo so I know if it was recently listed it should be near the top of the bin, if it was listed months ago it will be closer to the middle or the bottom. It’s a good head start on sorting through the bins.

Ralph Lauren shirt, football jersey, Kids basketball jersey, Taylor Swift shirt, Long Sleeve button up, Sports shirt, etc. All of those items have their own bin.

I buy clear plastic bins so you can look through the side for colors which makes it a lot easier. It takes about 1 minute to pick each item start to finish, if there are 40 items in the morning it takes less than an hour to gather everything up, takes about 20 minutes to pack & print and the items are out the door & stacked up nicely behind the Post Office for the bulk drop off.

If you have some further questions feel free to ask.

[Rick]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

Jay as far as the eBay business goes.

I have 1 employee (my cousin who’s in college). He helps me pick & pack the items as well as take measurements. He comes in the morning at 7 am & we pick and pack the items, then while I print labels he measures my 35 items for the day that I will list in the night.

I pay him $10 an hour, he works about 12-15 hours a week. He just packs clothing so it’s very quick to pack. If it’s not clothing it goes in a USPS Flat Rate Box. Average about 30-40 sales a day so we can knock it out in 2-3 hours most days. Mondays are the worst because it stacks up from Friday, but we get through it.

I don’t have a warehouse per say, but I used to. I was paying $400 a month in rent for a storage unit once I outgrew my house. After about a year, I purchased a duplex that was in foreclosure for $167,000. I now use one side of the duplex strictly for storage/packing/printing/photos, essentially the entire eBay business. I rent out the other side for $1,250 a month. Both sides are 1,200 square feet so now, in my mind at least, I “get paid” to store my items. There’s no furniture in my side really. The bedrooms are full of clothing, closets, hallway closets, are all storage. I have some food in the kitchen, the living room is where I take photos & the dining room area is where I have desks set up for printing & packing. To get a 1,200 square foot storage unit would be thousands of dollars a month so I think I am ahead of the game right now.

I do all the sourcing myself. I buy everything from thrifts, flea markets & garage sales. I source seven days a week.
Monday – Thrifts
Tuesday – Thrifts
Wednesday – Thrifts
Thursday – Flea Market
Friday – Thrifts
Saturday & Sunday – Flea Markets, Garage Sales & some Thrifts.
I don’t buy in bulk too much, but I do sometimes. I’m always around at the flea markets, so you make connections with guys who buy storage units or guys who get a lot of stuff. So, there is at times when I do purchase in bulk, but the majority of the items are sourced from thrifts & one offs. I don’t really have any widgets that are replenish-able.

I have the same route every week for thrifts. I hit thrifts after I pack for a couple of hours & then use the second half of the day to check in on tree jobs or computer jobs. Come home at night, take photos & list.

I know it seems like a lot, but between picking/packing & listing items I probably spend 5 hours tops a day running that portion of the business. 2 hours or so sourcing & the rest I’m doing other things. eBay runs itself, offers come in on my phone & I’m on the road doing other things.

As far as Amazon goes, I just pack a shipment every Sunday night & don’t have to do too much else as FBA covers the rest.

Not sure if photos will show here…

Just to lend a little proof as it’s easy to just come in here & type things.

http://i.imgur.com/DImv6hg.jpg

Here’s the new toy for the trees

http://i.imgur.com/fKSzh4F.jpg

Here’s a link to the truck in action the other day
http://i.imgur.com/V2WngSc.jpg

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by Rick.

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