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I had to do another Bandit run on Sunday (16.5 hours straight on the road), so I’ll have our numbers tomorrow. Listened to the podcast while on the road to my consulting gig, and had some thoughts.
Completely agree with getting the house as a place to LIVE, not just having stuff everywhere. Veronica especially is like this, where we make sure that rooms have a definite use, either WORK or LIVE. Our kitchen, living room, and bedroom are all living only, no work stuff!
You touched on a great subject, which is to cash flow your growth. You didn’t start with all the light kits, storage building, bins, shelves, etc. You did that a piece at a time. Sometimes those of us that do this full time and have this down forget that. But I would also tell others that are starting that they don’t need to spend a ton of money to have the same studio/shipping/storage solutions that many of us that do this full time do. Expand a little at a time, and use some of your profits to fund new storage, or better lights, etc.
I am also very interested in how to have a rural storage solution for Postal Pickup. Our future move to a rural location is potentially impacted by this fact. Any one that has postal pickup and is in a rural area (especially where all the mailboxes are at one junction (not at the house), I would LOVE to hear what they have worked out.
For the lady that called about having her sales stall out. I completely agree that the first step is to start tracking numbers each week (I would start with # of items in Inventory, # of items sold, Sell Thru Rate, and weekly $ of Sales. That will give you hard numbers to compare to.
After that, I would ask how many new listings have been put up this week? Last week? I see so much of our sales are affected by whether we are having consistent new listings. Then, for many items, I would look at what the estimated Selling Time will be. Are these long tail items? Are they seasonal? What is the estimated STR based on past listings (I look at the # of items in inventory and compare to the # of sold items (which is 90 days) to get an idea of how fast these items sell). Are prices still competitive? Are the keywords accurate? Lots of items to look at that may be either tasks that can help get the items sold, or that can show that she just needs to wait for the right buyer or right season to sell.
Thanks Linda. Yes, going better, slow but sure.
I like the new process of listing first thing in the day. Even getting 10 done in 2-3 hours is a huge boost for my productivity, in all parts of my schedule.
I talked with Griff as well (emailed directly) and he said that sizes in the Item Condition are useful with mobile (since Item Condition shows up in mobile but the Item Description has to be clicked).
Overall, I will only add the measurements to other areas if I can have a link in SixBit. I don’t like repeating the same information over and over. Plus, I get a few messages, but not enough that I want to add time to the process.
Adding something to everything to answer a sometime question is not efficient for right now. When that something can be automatically duplicated…perfect.
My Item Condition is linked in SixBit to also be in the Item Description. So I type once, but it shows twice.
How many items to you get done in an hour (prep to listing)?
If I can get a photo setup where I don’t have to edit, that would be a 1-2 minute savings per listing, but I can’t seem to get there yet. Even a new camera that would do that would be ROI positive in a few weeks…
Thanks. We are still a few years off, but I’m wanting to keep a number in my head if we find the right property, but not enough storage/office space to make it work. Our plan is to take our equity from our place here and own 100% our new place (no mortgage). A new building would be a 100% business expense, so if we HAD to finance to make the move work, I would put that on the business.
The Postal Route was the issue last time we scouted areas to look. Lots of places we liked would have been a 20-30 minute drive every day for postal runs (at least). The logistics of that (and a potential employee coming to the house) is what we have to plan for next trip. Still at least 18 months out from the move, but wanting to plan now…
We have been on a business account for a long time. My guess would be for tax reasons. We are set up as an LLC anyway, so it makes sense.
Congrats!
Any ideas from anyone on the extra cost to run plumbing? If we go down this route, we may want a bathroom and galley in the new building for us and employees to use (rather than have to go inside the house).
What is your cost on that building? This is something we may have to do when we move in a few years, though we are considering having a warehouse/office space in town.
The locations we are looking are more remote and may not be on a postal route, so we may have a dual location: Work space at the house as well as in town.
Poppintagzz: More questions.
I see you have your measurements in your Item Specifics and in your Item Description. Do you still get a lot of questions on measurements? Do you have to put your measurements in the listing manually 3 times (Item Description, Item Condition, Item Specifics)? Or do you have software that you enter once and it is done? Looks like you use a third party listing software.
I’m looking for that efficient solution where I enter once, and it shows in all three places. For now, I only put into the Item Description, but I still get the random question that they didn’t need to ask if the read the Item Description.
Poppintazz: Nice store, love your photos.
Do you use your phone or a camera? Also, like Amatino, do you photo edit?
I use my iPhone, and still have to edit for White Balance and Brightness. I use 3 soft boxes for lighting, but can’t seem to set the phone to 5500k to get the colors right sometimes (especially on lavender or salmon colored shirts). Twill dress shirts can also give me fits with too much shine.
Retro, we are just about at the stage of getting an employee ourselves, and we are looking at using your type of process. For right now, they would do photos on my clothing items, then look to expand out to Veronica’s items and shipping. My thoughts are this:
1) I source the items and prep them.
2) I create the draft listing in SixBit so that it has a SKU (that is our key) and most if the information I want in the listing.
3) Assistant takes photos and measurements and confirms the quality (meaning they make sure that if they find extra flaws, they add that to the listing)
4) Assistant does the photo editing and numbers the photos with the SKU #. I also have an order to the photos that I want to follow.
5) I add the photos to the listing, price and submit.For me, photos and photo edits are 4-5 minutes per listing. Overall, I am at about 9-10 minutes per listing for most items. If they can do my mid-low end items part-time during the week, I can use the studio for the higher end items myself.
Also agree on the computer. I have a laptop in the studio that I use now for setting up my draft listings. Plus, the photo editing software is on there now.
My best advice at this point then would be to list, list, list. Sales were spotty when we first got serious at the 300 item level (our goal was a sale a day), and we starting hitting 1 per day around 500. Then our goal was $100 per day, then $200. Now we are trying to get to $2000 per week every week. The only part we can control is finding quality items and listing consistently.
Since you are in so many categories, it may be hard to ride that momentum wave (same brand sales or like item sales) like we do, but getting the size of your store up will get you more consistent sales, at least weekly.
Good luck and keep cranking!
