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@Winchester: Very nice on the Amazon deal. What type of margins to you net on that?
Congrats on your daughter Mark! Very cool!
Week of 03/24-03/30
Total Items in Store: 2,989 (Up 59% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 135
Number of Items Sold: 102 (Up 48% YOY)
(Includes 3 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 5 Poshmark)
Weekly STR: 15% (Down 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,877 (Up 62% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $850
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $249
Cost of Items Sold: $583
Cost of Labor: $264
Highest Item Sold: $110 – New Spyder Legend Stryke Jacket
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 8-5.Clothing
# Listed: 1,791
# Sold: 79
STR: 19%
ASP: $26.24Shoes
# Listed: 630
# Sold: 16
STR: 11%
ASP: $37.78Hard Goods
# Listed: 568
# Sold: 7
STR: 5%
ASP: $28.62EBay
# Listed: 2,989
# Sold: 94
STR: 14%
ASP: $25.67Etsy
# Listed: 226
# Sold: 3
STR: 6%
ASP: $32.54Poshmark
# Listed: 642
# Sold: 5
STR: 3%
ASP: $73.40Loved the part of the talk about watching your items. Veronica said she remembers when she used to do that. But that was back when we had less than 1,000 items listed.
Knocking on the door of 3,000 active listings. Strong sales week, in fact, most ever clothing items sold in a week. Gotta crank hard early this week, as we are visiting our son at York this weekend.
Doubly: Since I live in the numbers world, I get your thoughts and your nerves when they are down and your happiness when they are up. What I have learned to apply to my thoughts are that the numbers…are just numbers. They are data and information, and the important part is how I react to them.
So if something is lower than you like, what do you do? The important part is to take a rational step that can help with the situation. And sometimes…it is just slow. Just part of the job. But if something isn’t what you want, put your efforts into actions to help. As Jay says…nothing like listing to make a positive change in your life.
One piece of advice on your numbers: don’t compare this year to the average of all of last year. You had some high times last year, and that is baked into last year’s average. I would look at your weeks and see if you have a seasonal curve to your sales. For us, we are highest from Oct-Mar, and Jul-Aug are going to be the low point. So when I do comparisons, I compare the week this year to the same week last year. This way, seasonality is removed.
Just something to consider.
“Working for yourself can feel like being dropped out of a plane…into the ocean…and having to very quickly build your own boat…out of the flotsam/jetsom floating by…while storms are raging…and your radio is broken.
Good news is that if you can build a little life raft to get through the first storm, you quickly learn to build a better boat, and then a better one. You learn the ocean. You get used to the storms. You learn to survive on what floats by. And you learn you can talk to others for help/support.“
One of the best things written in this forum…
Anytime Tony!
This is the area that I am trained in, so it comes naturally to me. I was a Cost Accountant for 20+ years, so tracking metrics on a business is second nature to me.
But basically, anyone can do it. The most important part is to have the data to start with. So I have data on our business by day, by week, by month, and by year since 2015. Having the data is the first part, and that is simply having the discipline (and desire) to jot into a spreadsheet the important metrics on your business.
The next part, understanding the data and making sense of it, that is a bit more work, but something I can help with.
Anytime you have questions, let me know.
@Retro: This makes no sense. You paid for a 4lb label and the actual weight was 3lb 6oz. You paid correctly! We always round up to the nearest pound on our shipments, and we have never received a +/- adjustment.
Yeah…an extra 8 in there…
$1,891…
🙂
@Rhianna: No, we haven’t been, but it is on our radar. We aren’t planning to go to eBay Open this year with me already planning to be gone on the hike, and I have thought that this would be a better use of a business trip than eBay Open. We already know most of what eBay can talk about, so we want to move up the chain a bit.
I would love to hear more about ASD and if there are good deals there. I think that some areas may be too saturated, but like all sourcing, people may look for different things.
I’m not sure that eBay is making anything in profit on us on USPS. We see the same Commercial Plus pricing on ShipRush that EBay provides. I think that eBay just allows us to get the discounted rates since we are buying through them
Look at the brands and then look at what your ROI is on the purchase. If you are spending $1k to profit $4k-$5k, I say do it.
When these situations come along, I remove emotion. Either the numbers work or they don’t. Don’t force it either way. If the numbers work, act on that.
I have Veronica do this as well. Yes, sometimes when the dollar amount is high, you get nervous. But either the numbers are right or they aren’t. The volume shouldn’t matter (at this level…if we are talking $15k, then yeah, other things come in to play…).
Hey Tony.
Excellent question, and I will give you the data as I have it for our store. There has been a lot of talk on the forum about STR degradation as your store inventory rises. Lots of thoughts as to why, all of which are probably valid, but no proof for any single reason.
I think old inventory is definitely a part of that degradation. Some things are just a bad buy, and will sit in inventory and not sell. I think the long tail nature of some things are part of it too. Some things can sell quick, but some take a while, even in clothing (vintage, sport coats, etc.). Clothing also is seasonal, so sweaters decrease your STR in the summer, and short sleeves shirts and shorts decrease it in the winter.
Ok, so our STR history (full store)
2015 – 28%
2016 – 16%
2017 – 19%
2018 – 14%
2019 – 14%I believe that 2016 was so low because we went to Panama for 4 weeks, no new listings, and that really killed our July and August STR (10% each). I still hold that new listings consistently are the way to go in that sense.
Now, as to clothing specifically, I only started tracking that separately a little over a year ago. For the first part of 2018, our STR on clothes was 17%. This year it is 15%. I think our pricing was too high in some categories this year which I believe we have corrected, but we have also started to more more into more long tail areas as well (sport coats, suits, etc.). The return is good, but they take a while to sell, and seem to sell more in the Fall/Winter.
What I do for that is when I forecast, I forecast a lower STR than the past year. Right now, I’m forecasting about a 3% lower STR than the past year to account for that. I hope to be better on the upside, but hope isn’t a strategy. This will then give me an idea on what our store will generate in the future on what should be the low side, and I plan sourcing, personal spending, etc. accordingly.
Hope that helps. If not, let me know some specific questions and I can try to help. You can hit me up directly at tsatterf@yahoo.com as well. If that doesn’t do it, I can give you my cell number and we can talk. There are a few others I have done that with as well.
Week of 03/17-03/23
Total Items in Store: 2,961 (Up 56% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 141
Number of Items Sold: 73 (Up 18% YOY)
(Includes 1 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 7 Poshmark)
Weekly STR: 14% (Down 3% YOY)Total Product Sales: $18,891 (Up 11% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $302
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $115
Cost of Items Sold: $289
Cost of Labor: $270
Highest Item Sold: $75 – Disney Parks Stitch Jumbo Large Plush Toy
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 8-4. Awesome sale, purchased, listed, and sold in 1 weekClothing
# Listed: 1,798
# Sold: 51
STR: 12%
ASP: $24.01Shoes
# Listed: 598
# Sold: 11
STR: 8%
ASP: $35.73Hard Goods
# Listed: 565
# Sold: 11
STR: 8%
ASP: $24.90EBay
# Listed: 2,961
# Sold: 65
STR: 10%
ASP: $24.87Etsy
# Listed: 221
# Sold: 1
STR: 2%
ASP: $19.90Poshmark
# Listed: 625
# Sold: 7
STR: 5%
ASP: $36.43Will listen later!
Amen sister!
Backups for the backups…that is how we roll in the Shire! 🙂
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