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Whew! Glad those are per month.
Now, I see you have 1366 items in your store and in the past 3 months, you have sold 148. That’s a 12-week sell through rate of 10%, which makes your weekly sell-through rate less than 1%. That’s a little on the low side. I think that at a minimum you’d want to be at least 1-2% sell through per week, with some weeks up to 4 or 5%. Some people go much higher than that, but from what I’ve observed of people at least roughly following the J&R model, 2% is fairly typical.
So why isn’t it higher? ah. that’s the tough question. How often are you listing? Many people seem to see more sales when they are actively listing.
I think you’re harris tweed mens blazer is overpriced. I know some HT sells for a lot, but most of it seems to sell under $100. Plus your photo of the back of the blazer shows that the vent is all stretched out. That is something I learned to watch out for on blazers and dresses/skirts. I had two Jos A Banks Harris Tweed jackets a month or so ago, and I was only able to get 45 and 65 for them b/c they were a very large size – all the rest were going for $35-40. I’m no expert on this, it’s just that I recently discovered that not all HT is gold.
Etienne Aigner shoulder bag – do you have some way of telling if it’s vintage or not. The new EA stuff made in China is not worth much, but this one looks like it MAY be vintage 80s, and if it is, you should put that in the title. If not, lower the price. EA just isn’t what it used to be.
FLorsheim imperial wingtip brown – also seem overpriced given the comps and the fact that the heel has a lot of wear.
Fur trench coat – ???? That fur coat is not a trench coat. I have never seen a fur trench coat. You don’t want people coming to your listing looking for a trench coat.
Angelique shirt – it’s cool, but $65 cool? Not sure. Now, if you are doing “price high and wait” – remember that you may have to wait for a very long time, esp for vintage clothing. And so you need to build out your bread and butter items that sell a little more quickly. Or increase your inventory by a lot more. Remember, J&R didn’t start out as “price high and wait” – they were selling stuff for 9.99, and slowly worked up.
Pelle Studio leather jacket – this is not a trench coat :). Gotta remove that term. I have not had good luck with non-big-name leather jackets. And even with fairly big name leather jackets, it’s been tough.
SAS black shoes – $69 is too high. I’m lucky if I can sometimes get $44 for those – depends on the size. I know you have best offer, but for something like this that is almost a commodity on ebay, better to be closer to the actual expected selling price.
OK, overall your store looks fantastic and you have really nice items. I just think there is a significant portion of items that are priced too high (but also a whole lot that are not). So you might consider putting some items on sale to get things moving.
Once you’ve gotten the steady income level you want, then you can add more “price high and wait” items.
Just my 2 cents.
Cute, yes. But there’s no way I’m sitting on a stool with a mouse crawling around so close to my nether regions! Amatino, if I ever find one, I’ll sell it to you. 🙂
Are those average net profits per year? I hope they are per month or week!
Your store looks fine to me. Great photos.
weird!
BethGreen – you are absolutely right on the reduced stress of longer handling time. I have 3-day handling. I usually ship within 1-2 days, but knowing I have the buffer just in case is such a great feeling of freedom.
I’m not opted into Guaranteed Delivery either. And I’m not going to rush into Free Returns. Taking a wait and see approach on how things work out for others.I finally went to my first auction last friday night! Another scavenger milestone reached!
I didn’t end up getting anything. I was hoping to get these 3 box lots of vintage Crabtree & Evelyn things, but it was done in a “bid for choice” style and the person who got them paid about $35 each for them, which was a little too rich for my blood. What was interesting was that the auctioneer kept saying “you guys are getting such great deals bc not many people showed up b/c of the storm”, but to me, most of the ridiculously great deals were on furniture, which is not something I am ready to handle (carry, load, unload, etc) and re-sell at this time. So, if typically the prices are much higher than they were this time, this may not be the auction for me. There are a couple of other places for me to try, though, so we’ll see if another works better for me. Problem is that they are all 30-40 miles away. But I guess the lack of any traffic makes up for the distance!
The dealers there (I assume they are dealers by how much they were buying) were a bit intimidating and impressive at the same time. To be able to tell what will sell or not from such a huge variety of items is mind boggling. I guess one just keeps on learning little by little.
Thanks for the additional info, Sharyn. I ended up not going, b/c I was too tired from my all-day sourcing trip the day before. Hope they will have one again soon.
I still haven’t found any Quimper 🙁 or shell cordovan shoes.
Now I gotta go lookup what a fireball island game is!
“So as a buyer, you’re willing to pay more up front for an item for the ability to ship it back if you happen to not like it. And not get that money back if you keep it.”
Two points:
1) For Free Shipping/Shipping Included, you shouldn’t have to pay more up front. All you need is a shopping platform that pre-computes the total cost for you at browsing time, rather than at paying time. That’s not the way ebay has implemented it, of course, but the “Free SHipping/SHipping Included” concept itself is not to blame for that.2) Given the reality of ebay’s implementation of FS/SI, there’s a higher up-front cost for buyers who are closer to the seller and a LOWER total cost for cross-country buyers. If your purchases are randomly spread across buyers across various regions in the country, it should all balance itself out with the additional cost of FS/SI being minimal to zero.
I think your statement/question would be better applied to the Free Returns scenario, where there absolutely is a higher up front cost in order to maybe someday benefit from a Free Return. The answer is that it depends on how much the up front cost is. In an earlier comment, you said that for the past 3 months, Free Returns would have cost you $160. You sell about 40 items a week (conservatively). Times 12 weeks = 480 items. $160/480 = 33 cents. So, YES, as a buyer I would absolutely positively pay an additional 33 cents per item for “free return insurance/service plan.” And as a seller, I would even MORE absolutely not sweat it at all. But i haven’t done my numbers yet on this for my store – I have a feeling that mine might be higher, so we’ll see.
Jay,
There’s a significant difference between having shipping pre-added into the final purchase price and a permanent 50% off sale. The first actually does something useful – allows shoppers to just compare a single number when evaluating different items. It removes the task of managing and adding numerous pairs of numbers from the buyer, making things easier for the buyer. The second is just mind games. Mind games which many ebay sellers already play, which is their/our right. Many sellers run regular sales, or even have their entire store on sale all the time. Another mind game is to have all your prices in the format $X.99.But, lucky for you, you don’t have to implement either of these tricks/lies.
cool! I haven’t found either of those two yet myself.
Everyone knows it’s technically a lie and that it just means “shipping included.”
Customers LOVE shipping included. That’s the reason for the commercial.What T-Satt said.
Just make all your prices higher to pay for this customer experience. Or, as said in the ebay video ChristineR posted, self-insure.
As I buyer, it seems really weird to me to have free return shipping but not get refunded for original shipping. Does any other ecommerce site do that?
As a seller, I can work with it – just seems illogical. Seems more logical to refund all shipping or none.
I just sent in a return to williams sonoma. They sent me a shipping label, but it wasn’t clear whether the cost would come out of my refund or not. And I also have no idea (but am not optimistic) whether I’l get refunded for original shipping. After this exchange here, I’m now VERY curious to see what happens when they get my package back and process the refund!
Fun fun fun
Jay, you say “$7 return shipping cost” for a free return.
But don’t you also have to refund the initial shipping cost as well – making it a total of $14? Otherwise it’s not really a free return. No?In other words, I thought free return meant that at the end of the transaction, the buyer is not out any money. I’ve looked through some ebay pages trying to find a definitive answer, but I can’t find one.
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