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I don’t think creating your own competition or items bought in multiples is the primary explanation. STR = (sales)/(total inventory). STR drops because the denominator keeps growing as long-tail stuff piles up in your inventory.
Brian, know we’re getting into the weeds, but just to be clear, there is no diminishing marginal return to LISTING that I am aware of. Putting one additional listing into a 1 item store is exactly as valuable on average as putting one more listing into a 10,000 item store.
The phenomenon is just the non-linear growth of monthly sales with *inventory size*, which is quite different. Really, the phenomenon is just that you’ve already *got* most of your returns out of the inventory of yesteryear.
Maybe I’m being pedantic here but just want to stress, there is nothing diminishing about the return on work that you put into reselling.
J&R, obviously it’s your business but my impression is you’re jumping through a lot of hoops for top rated seller, when IMHO your target demographic buying like, vintage teak jello spoons for $75, doesn’t give a hoot about fast shipping, as long as it’s reasonable. 😉
Morning all!
Pretty quiet, but acceptable, week of sales for me.
Sales: CAD$604, 5 items, COGS: $88 –> Item profit: $414
Expenditures: $319 –> After-tax cashflow: $75
Listed: $995, 7 items
Hours: 6, $13/hr
Notable sales: receipt printers lot of 5, $300; security cameras lot of 5, $200.
Scavenging: only big scavenge was a drill bit sharpener for $115, should bring around $1000. My other expenses were for shipping/packing and storage materials, which I stocked up on this week.Through my day job, as of Thursday next week I am being seconded to a small town about 45 minutes farther away from my house than my current job, which kind of sucks. It’s only for a few months but it means a 2.5-3 hr round trip commute every day. I am expecting my scavenging to suffer somewhat due to less free time, but I agreed to it because I want to get some contacts at this other company, and because a new skill set is being offered.
06/29/2018 at 5:18 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44047Thanks for the explanation! I’m going to track mine, just to see if it gives me any ideas. ATM I think the vast majority of my variance in sales is literally due to what I’ve listed in the past 30 days or so. (About 1/3 of my sales are within 30 days of listing.)
06/29/2018 at 4:43 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44037I’ve never used a poly mailer in my life. All boxes, and the (very) occasional bubble mailer.
06/29/2018 at 4:37 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44033Also, do you calculate it in dollar terms, ($sold/$in inventory), unit terms (units sold/units in inventory), or listings terms (sales/listings total)?
06/29/2018 at 3:59 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44023T-Satt, if you have a moment – you seem to use sell through rate as a key metric. Wondered if you could enlarge upon your reasons for doing so… why do you care about it (as opposed to: net cashflow, item profit, $ listed which are the things I tend to focus on).
It seems like STR is geared towards sellers for whom storage space has become a serious bottleneck. Do you agree?
06/29/2018 at 3:50 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #44020Wow, the sterling silver part alone is amazing.
One of my first big picks was when I had a “flatware” alert set up on my phone. Lady posted two sets of silver flatware for $100, one of which is this awesome one called Wallace Grand Baroque. the listing didn’t say sterling or the name of the sets, but I figured it out from the pictures. Couldn’t get there fast enough (it was out in the sticks but I happened to need to drive that way for work).
So far, made $900 off that pick and still have 20 pieces of solid silver flatware left to sell.
This is my retirement plan.
These are items in the original box. Sometimes I ship directly in that box but I usually re-box or at least kraft-paper wrap to preserve it. Maybe a little sharpie wouldn’t be the end of the world though…
Storage is one thing I’ve been working on lately. I’ve been putting smalls into clear plastic tote bins (the kind with the interlocking lid) labelled 1, 2, 3, etc. Then I record the bin # in my spreadsheet. They’re just going in in chronological order, basically, so I have to look up the item to know which bin it’s in, which is fine. It works pretty well… for smalls.
Where I have more difficulty is bigger boxes. Because I tend to rearrange their placement a lot when more room comes up on the shelves, they move around everywhere. And they’re pretty nondescript.
I think the solution is to move them within 1 shelf only – i.e., up and down but not between shelves (or change the spreadsheet when I do. And I’ll have to number all my shelves too… weekend project I guess.
06/25/2018 at 6:16 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43502I’ve sold fine china several times and done OK with it. In retrospect, I wish I had listed it all in big lots. As it is, I listed in 2’s and 3’s and inevitably there are some pieces that just sit, forever. And storage becomes a problem as the longer it sits the more likely I’ll break it accidentally when looking for another item.
06/25/2018 at 12:53 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43434Pretty good week for me. Only, I spent way more than I planned to.
Sales: CAD$1240, 9 items, COGS: $145 –> Item profit: $897
Expenditures: $524 –> After-tax cashflow: $285
Notable sales: 4 security cameras $12 –> $200 (I think I got them so cheap just because they were grimy!), 2 cases of nicotine gum $30 –> $270, bacterial colony counter $27 –> $182
Notable scavenges: $320 for 300 Police/EMS uniform pants (I posted about this earlier in the week). If these things do, in fact, sell at all, I should do great at $1/unit cost. 4 nice like-new PDUs (basically fancy power bars) for $5 each, should go for at least $100 each. Also got a car diagnostics tester thingy for $80, should get $500-900.
Listed: $1755, 28 items. Finally broke 400 listings total.I feel like I have hit a milestone in that I now have so much good stuff to scavenge that I’m now more limited by money than time. Before I really got into auctions I found it hard to get good items worth the time, and so I always had the cash to buy them; now I find so much good stuff that spending is a big issue. It feels stupid to turn down an item that I know I can get 10x cost on, just because I’m trying to control the credit card spend.
Thanks for your suggestions all! I think I will be implementing them.
Pricing is high (though note that’s CAD$50). I just always start high to see what happens. I think the price point for these is really CAD$30 which if they sell would put me in the black after 10 sales.
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