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Amen Sonia!
We give 6 measurements on pants and jeans, 7 when I add the extra material to lengthen. Still get some questions.
Shirts are to have the sleeve measurement from the middle of the back at the base of the collar, still get questions for the measurement from the shoulder hem.
Just part of the game!
PS – Looks like you can only go back to May 1 2015 as of now (so it looks like they allow 3 years of data).
I would download all that you can, and then ask PayPal if they can send you the early part of 2015. Even if you can’t get that data, you can talk with your accountant to show a % of sales that are within your state for the timeframe you can prove, and then ask that they use that same % for the early part of 2015.
Good luck!
Tina, I did a test and I can download all of 2017 in one file (took about 10 minutes to run).
Give it a shot for each year and you should have what you need.
Tina, I just did a check. I use the PayPal download for my accounting.
In PayPal, go to Reports \ Activity Download \ and select your time period. When you download the CSV file and open in Excel, there is a column for the State.
That is your starting point, so it gets you the data you need. Now you just need to get that info all the way back to 2015. Rather than try to do this manually (that is still an option, but I think you can only go back ), call PayPal and see if they can send this to you.
That is the report you need, you just need it for that long ago…
Check if you can get a PayPal download of your transactions and see if that has the location of the buyer (based on the buyer address on file with PayPal). If you can get that data, you can sort by only the sales into your state.
I would start there.
Maybe contact PayPal for this type of a download if you can.
For us:
My workstation is just my office desk, which has a large enough side area that I can measure clothing. All listing is done there, then handed off to the photographer.
Veronica has a desk in her office, with the photo box behind her for items she will photograph herself.
Shipping is in the basement, with each of us with our own shipping table. Mine has two rows of shelves to store all Priority boxes, with the 100ct Padded Flat rate boxes at the end (when we get down to 100 PFRs, we order more). We can eyeball the other Priority items from the shelves, and we start stocking up for Q4 in August (order Priority items early!).
Poly bags for mailing are stored in a cabinet next to my shipping station. Clear polybags are in a drawer. When we get down to 100 9×12, we reorder 500, when we are at 25 14×16 we order 100.
Tape we order in a case of 36 rolls when we get down to 10.
Boxes are purchased by Veronica using the eBay quarterly coupon based on the sizes she needs. Bubble wrap when she gets down to the last roll, ordering at least 2 rolls at a time. Air bags we get for free on a consistent basis (thanks to another reseller and CraigsList). Packing paper we have a load of (literally a full truckload right now) thanks to CraigsList. Boxes I scavenge and we have neighbors that drop them by. Veronica breaks them down and stores them by size so she knows were to look.
Our shipping area is the size of a bedroom in the basement.
To add some flavor to the conversation on storage, I will ask the following questions:
1) Have you ever had something that was supposed to be in a location, but it wasn’t there?
2) How long did it take to find the item that was in the wrong location?
3) How did you improve to make that situation easier to resolve (or not happen again)?
As an example, when I started on clothes, I didn’t have a tracking method, just clothes in boxes by type (casual, dress, short sleeve, western, etc).
When I had too many boxes of each type (taking too long to find each item), I started numbering the boxes (C1, C2, D1, D2, SS1, SS2, etc).
To avoid shipping the wrong shirt (happened twice with shirts that were similar and in the same box), I have evolved to adding a tag with the SKU on the clear poly bag that it is stored in. This also has the storage location on the tag.
I don’t mix types of shirts in the same box (so western shirts and casual shirts are not in the same box) so that if a shirt somehow ends up missing, I only have to search boxes of the same type to find it, not search all boxes. At 50+ drawers/boxes, that would be painful…
While I love the “Happy Path” discussion on systems (i.e., when things work well), I also like discussion on how issues are resolved when things go wrong.
Amatino: Interesting. I have never put the measurements into Item Condition myself, but I have heard Griff on eBay Radio use that as an option a few times.
I used to have a lot of questions or issues with them, but it has really slowed down recently. Maybe just the waves, or maybe the change to mobile I discussed above (with the first part of the Item Description now showing on mobile, along with the Item Condition). I’m not sure when that happened, but I like it.
End of the day, clothing will always have this issue, and buyers won’t check, or don’t know how to check, or even if they do, they will return for lack of fit. That is just the name of the game we play with clothing online. And now with Amazon getting into the clothing game with Free Shipping and Free Returns, the pressure will probably mount.
For us, we will continue to work on getting solid margins, getting good STR, and let the returns happen. We know we won’t win on every transaction, but with a low return rate (3% or less), I won’t worry to much. Refund and move on to the next item.
The longer I’m in this game, the more I realize my happiness is on the 97% of transactions that work great, and not focusing on the 3% that don’t.
Always forward!
LOL!
Funny story. The first time, the buyer said he had a message that it was being returned. A week later, it arrives. He paid the shipping again, we resent it, it arrived no problem.
Second time this has happened. Both times from Russia, both times over 5 months old.
Amen on the baseball schedule Retro. I coached for many years, and club baseball at that. Every weekend from Mid March through July (except Mothers Day, Memorial Day, and July 4) was tournament season. 2 on Saturday, at least 1 on Sunday. And when my teams got good, it was 3-4 on Sunday. Long weekends…fun…but long…
And then Fall Ball starts at the end of August… 🙂
We run into that in waves. Only suggestions I have heard (but I don’t use at this point as it would slow down our process:
1) Put measurements into the Item Condition. This is because the Item Condition is displayed in Mobile, but the Item Description has another click before being displayed.
2) Put measurements in the Item Specifics.
Interesting on the first item though…as I was testing this on my phone, the first section of the Item Description is now showing on the phone. I have never seen that before. They must have made a change. So maybe put your measurements at the top of the Item Description.
