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Week of 04/21-04/27
Total Items in Store: 3,190 (Up 56% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 115
Number of Items Sold: 107 (Up 12% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 12 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 15% (Down 7% YOY)Total Product Sales: $3,219 (Up 21% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $180
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $370
Cost of Items Sold: $609
Cost of Labor: $249
Highest Item Sold: $100 ā Cougar Paws Work Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 11-7.Clothing
# Listed: 1,911
# Sold: 65
STR: 15%
ASP: $25.87Shoes
# Listed: 689
# Sold: 31
STR: 19%
ASP: $36.94Hard Goods
# Listed: 590
# Sold: 11
STR: 8%
ASP: $27.48EBay
# Listed: 3,190
# Sold: 95
STR: 13%
ASP: $27.88Etsy
# Listed: 232
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0Poshmark
# Listed: 759
# Sold: 12
STR: 7%
ASP: $40.00Excellent about the theme this week. The In-Between (not to be confused with the Upside-Down) is where the money is made. And for most of us, that is where the WORK is. And that is also where the money is made. And making solid processes in the In-Between to make that efficient, that is so important when making that leap to full time…
@Rob: Ditto what Jay said. We have auto accept EXCEPT in the cases of something being wrong. We may want to refund rather than pay for return shipping on an item that we don’t (or can’t) resell.
@sonia: I can accept that. We all start at a different point in life, with advantages and disadvantages. Some are cultural (the culture of our family and friends), some are economic, some are genetic.
The good news is that the largest two predictors of lifelong success are intelligence and perseverance. Those are both traits that we have a lot of control over (notwithstanding those that are born with very high IQ).
The even better news is that we are blessed to live at this time in history and in this country. We are living in the most upwardly mobile accessible economy in history. Heck, even in the world this is the best time to be alive. Extreme poverty rates worldwide have plummeted in recent decades. Obviously individual results will vary, but on the whole, we are blessed to be where we are. In reading and studying history, as well as how many in the world are currently living…we have it very, very good.
None of this is to say that life is perfect now, or even fair, but at this time in this country, we have it the best that it has ever been.
PS – And some obstacles can be blessings. Countless times people have succeeded BECAUSE of their obstacles. They may provide motivation to improve, or they can provide the impetus to look at a different route to success. The number of people on Shark Tank that are dyslexic is astounding. This is detailed in Daymond John’s book “The Power of Broke”. And a great mindset for using that is laid out in the Stoic Philosophy in “The Obstacle is the Way”.
@Jay: For me, I don’t care that the wealthy own more than others. Income inequality does not bother me. Meritocracy will always have this occur. A very small percentage of people can play in the NFL, MLB, NBA, etc. A very small percentage bring in the most money in Hollywood. Only the best in the business world can build a Facebook, an Amazon, a Netflix. The Pareto Principle exists in humans:
As long as people are unequal in their abilities, we will have inequality in income and wealth.
Should we try to force equality of outcome, we are denying that their is inequality in competence.
I can’t play in the MLB, I couldn’t make Facebook, and I damn sure can’t act. I vote with my dollars everyday to pay those that I feel are competent, and I try to provide value for the money that I am paid for.
The rest doesn’t bother me.
@Jay: Nope!
One thing to think about for this country though. Most Nordic countries have a tax rate that is close to 60%, and the highest tax rates are on anyone with a $60k income or higher. They don’t just “make the rich pay their fair share”, they make just about everyone pay those high taxes. The only way that they can support this model is by having a very large tax base and a very large rate.
That will be a hard sell: Telling Americans that $60k is now the highest tax bracket, and that the tax rate will be 60%. Even at the lower tax brackets of 32%, a vast majority of Americans will have to pay more in taxes. Considering that 44% of Americans pay no Federal Income Tax, flipping that model will be a hard sell. And don’t get me wrong, I would LIKE more Americans to pay more in Federal Income Taxes. Having 44% of the country paying $0 in Federal Income Tax is troubling.
I know that you and I disagree on this point, and I do NOT want to have this forum talk much on these topics (this ain’t what we are here for…politics is for Facebook…). So, we have to agree to disagree.
Love ya man!!!
@Jay: Sweden isn’t Socialist. It is a free market economy (in many ways with less restrictions than the US, like no minimum wage) that has a very high tax rate and lots of government programs. It affords the high amount of government programs with a high tax rate.
Nothing free, they just pay a lot for those benefits.
Congrats Retro!
@AtomicStar: I just finished rereading “The Obstacle is the Way”.
Very timely to what you just said, but also to this entire subject (as well as most challenges we face).
I completely agree, though I also take it a step further. I constantly try to KILL our business ourselves. I create the obstacles that can kill us, and look for ways to overcome them. That exercise really helps for me. I create the stress from a problem, then look for how I would overcome it.
And we WOULD overcome it. Persistence is part of it, but Perseverance is even better.
@MDC: Excellent analysis as always Mike!
Reminds me of working a Long Drive competition once. Guys were flying in from all over the world to the Denver Qualifier. Dropping a chunk of change over and over and over for another round to try to qualify. I finally asked how many of these actually make a living at it. The answer? 10%
Playing poker in a casino, I have talked to many rounders and other leather butts. How many make a living at it? 10%
It is like a skewed Pareto distribution…
But so interesting how in many parts of life, that the Pareto distribution reveals itself. There is some law of nature to it. This is why I can understand how you have to commit to a craft and put everything into it to make a living at it.
You have to get to the top 10%…
Although…I will caveat that with clothing. I’m slowly saving sweaters and flannel shirts now, and working like mad to get to short sleeve shirts and shorts!!!
I do try to list in season as much as possible to drive velocity, but once it is listed, it stays listed.
We sold some Halloween stuff in the past couple of weeks. You never know when a buyer is looking…
Reminds me of hunters and fisherman. A large exaggeration to maybe keep them from doing it themselves…
@MrsAmyLynn: Thanks for the info. If possible, can you see if you have the ability to download your Managed Payments transactions into an Excel, or CSV file?
PayPal and GSP are still our major stumbling blocks, now that SixBit is no longer an issue. But I dialed down our accounting to 15 minutes a week, so I need to make sure I can cover that part as well.
Thanks!
@MrsAmyLynn: Thanks so much for doing this!
I sent the message below to Griff at eBay a couple of weeks ago, and he has completely ignored it. Maybe you could put what you know to my questions? For #3, do you have a download to an excel format that you can use for each transaction? I have a set up now that I can tweak, but I don’t want to manually enter each transaction again…
Griff:
We have not made the move to Managed Payments yet as we still had some concerns with some obstacles to overcome. As full-time sellers, we could not handle the potential disruption.
Going into the Summer of 2019, it may be a time for us to make the transition (after PayPal is added in), but we still have some questions, and I’m hoping you can assist.
1) Is there an anticipated timeframe that GSP will be allowed under Managed Payments?
2) When deposits are made into our bank account, is there a detailed report on each deposit that breaks out the types of revenue? For example, when I do my inputs into our accounting system with PayPal downloads, I can see the breakout of Sales Revenue (price of the item), Shipping Revenue (shipping price paid by the buyer), Sales Tax Collected (if there was sales tax we collected and will have to remit to our home state of Colorado), Fees (in this case, it would be the 2.7% paid to eBay for the transaction). To keep our books in order, can we get that breakout?
3) Refunds – When we have returns, I’m assuming any refunds would be netted out of any funds available. Is that correct? Assuming also that these amounts would be shown in a report I referenced above.@call_me_raoul: Yep…sounds like our breakdown! š
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