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01/29/2019 at 8:01 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 396: Guaranteed Delivery? How is that working? #56060
Just listened to the ‘cast, and a couple of things I loved from my business perspective:
Mostly, the talk about Tony’s lessons learned. How he paid off his debt, now he makes sure his purchases will sell (gotta think about your purchases as INVESTMENTS!), and most importantly…KNOW YOUR NUMBERS! I know it can be boring and dull for those that don’t come to this naturally, but understanding how the dollars flow, what your business does…that is so important.
Somewhat related, I liked the part about how Jay and Ryanne use clothes as a supplement to their hard goods. Whether it is clothes or something else that sells quicker and can provide small cashflow, having different items that sell at different rates can really help your business.
01/28/2019 at 7:19 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 396: Guaranteed Delivery? How is that working? #56046Week of 1/20-01/26
Total Items in Store: 2,415 (Up 38% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 53
Number of Items Sold: 76 (Up 46% YOY)
(Includes 2 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 6 Poshmark, 0 Mercari)
Weekly STR: 13% (Even YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,092 (Up 63%)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: $593
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $214
Cost of Items Sold: $471
Cost of Labor: $129
Highest Item Sold: $150 – Chippewa General Utility Copper Caprice Bridgeman Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week (edged me out by $20 late in the week!!! 2 Weeks in a row she has done this!!!) and Veronica leads for the year 4-0.Clothing
# Listed: 1,520
# Sold: 47
STR: 13%
ASP: $26.04Shoes
# Listed: 434
# Sold: 12
STR: 12%
ASP: $40.21Hard Goods
# Listed: 461
# Sold: 15
STR: 13%
ASP: $22.65Etsy
# Listed: 180
# Sold: 2
STR: 5%
ASP: $29.81Poshmark
# Listed: 360
# Sold: 6
STR: 8%
ASP: $45.65Mercari
# Listed: 88
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0
Poshmark is continuing to show more sales. As I type this, we had two more sales today. The time spent crossposting is proving to be valuable. Seems like sales are now more consistent now that we made Posh Ambassador status as well…Going to listen to the ‘Cast tomorrow while listing….But congrats on the $1000 picture sale! I saw that on the podcast details. Well done!
01/25/2019 at 9:20 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55866Thanks for the info Mike. Go kill it on the houses!
That would drive me crazy, as I like to do a quick reconciliation every day or so to make sure SixBit and eBay/Etsy/Poshmark are in sync. I recon the Awaiting Payment, Awaiting Shipment, and total running listings to each platform to make sure nothing is missed.
01/24/2019 at 2:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55789Mike: Just curious then the difference between SixBit and Wonderlister. In SixBit, the Sales section has three parts: Awaiting Payment (sold not paid), Awaiting Shipment (paid not shipped), and Fulfilled.
Does Wonderlister not break those steps out?
01/22/2019 at 7:35 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55635Jay: Yes, we list almost everything as 30 Day listings. We do some GTC if it is multi-quantity.
Yes, SixBit does the relisting for us, saving us a lot of time. The downside is that it isn’t a “true” relist, as it still seems to eBay that the listing keeps the prior history. So you get the bump for “ending soon” and “newly listed”, but not for it being a BRAND NEW listing to eBay when you auto relist.
When we shut of the auto relist and then resubmit the listings, then we can select “Send as New”, and SixBit will resend the listing as a brand new listing. Like “Sell Similar”, but since this is a database, you don’t have the potential screw-ups.
So what we are doing is looking at the items more fresh this trip. Examine pricing, examine the listing description, title, and DEFINITELY the categories and item specifics. We will do this type of work every 4 months so that we don’t get behind on markets changing. I really didn’t deep dive on shirts last year like I should have. That has killed our STR. Changing that now, though our ASP will drop, we are going to move that low dollar stuff out (and then not rebuy).
The big thing in the last few weeks has been the REALLY old stuff that has moved after we have done the updates. Last week we sold 11 items that were a year old, 6 of which were clothing items I had just tweaked. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but that is for clothing…
For reference, I did a data dive: we hadn’t sold that many 1 year items since November. And we sold 8 items that were over 500 days old. So 10% of our sales were items over 500 days old. In clothes…that shouldn’t happen…
Plus, those items are older than that, but they got a “creation date” in SixBit in July 2017 when we moved to SixBit.
01/22/2019 at 7:18 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55631Seam Store: Thanks for the info on your numbers. Jay beat me too it this week, but that was my question too, as in how much of your sales goes back to the consignors (your COGS just seemed low to me, and I was thinking that the consignment payment was the difference).
So rough math would be that your consignment “COGS” is about $500-$750 per week, right?
Geoff/Inglewood/Jay: Great conversation, so sorry I missed it the last few days!
I think that if you have a second stream of income, or lack of time is an issue, then going for the 10X+ long tail is the way to go. Maximize your return per hour spent, and you don’t have a need for daily cash flow (to pay all your bills).
When you go full time, I think having those constant sales are more important. Small, everyday sales can add up and help fund other projects (or just pay the bills). If you are just long tail, then you need to either have very low cash needs or a very large inventory (preferably both!) so that there is a consistent flow of cash for everyday expenses.
I think this is why Jay and Ryanne are successful with their model, and why commodity folks are in the churn and burn. We are trying to have a bit of both, having commodity items fund purchases of long tail while still paying the bills everyday. I don’t think churn and burn is what you want to do forever, but it is a great way to start and has it’s place…
@Sonia: When you give the partial refund through PayPal and then the return stays open, does that give you a ding on your “Cases Closed Without Seller Resolution”? metric on your Dashboard?
01/22/2019 at 1:46 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55604We had seen our sales volume and Sell Thru Rate drop over the past few weeks, and compared to last year, the drop was more pronounced. Normally, yeah, we sell a few older items here and there, mostly hard goods.
But there were a lot more items that did sell this week (clothes and shoes) that were older items that we had just made changes too since Jan 1 when we started. So we got back to where we should be by selling out some of our older items that we just updated. Plus, it was good to really look at the current sales prices of some items and brands that have become saturated. I could see where I need to reprice items to get sales to come through since the market has shifted.
01/22/2019 at 1:08 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 395: What Lifestyle Is eBay Supporting For You? #55599Week of 1/13-01/19
Total Items in Store: 2,500 (Up 47% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 23
Number of Items Sold: 80 (Even YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 3 Poshmark, 0 Mercari)
Weekly STR: 13% (Down 7% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,159 (Down 4% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: $0
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year – Down $97
Cost of Items Sold: $455
Cost of Labor: $0
Highest Item Sold: $125 – Chippewa General Utility Copper Caprice Bridgeman Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week (edged me out by $10 late in the week!!!) and Veronica leads for the year 3-0.Clothing
# Listed: 1,558
# Sold: 58
STR: 15%
ASP: $24.88Shoes
# Listed: 444
# Sold: 11
STR: 11%
ASP: $39.72Hard Goods
# Listed: 498
# Sold: 11
STR: 9%
ASP: $25.37Etsy
# Listed: 174
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0Poshmark
# Listed: 311
# Sold: 3
STR: 5%
ASP: $32.67Mercari
# Listed: 87
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0
As a follow-up on our revamping of listings, there is definitely something to it. Sold a LOT of older items after updating the listings. I’m sure part of it is the algorithm seeing these as new listings, but also a big reason is that we got pricing in line, we got the items in the right categories/item listings, etc.Poshmark is continuing to show some results as well. We achieved Poshmark Ambassador status this week, and we definitely saw a huge jump in our followers as a result. Sales are becoming more consistent, so I will continue to crosspost as we go. Like the caller said about Mercari, the crossposting on Poshmark is fast since we have SixBit (quick find on the photos, copy/paste, etc.)
Going to continue our process of revamping listings until the end of the month, then we have 3 months until we do it again. This is why I like tending the garden rather than list it and forget it. Sometimes, things change and you have to change with it…
01/16/2019 at 1:08 pm in reply to: Promoted Listings : Starting a new campaign with a lower rate boosted traffic #55264Interesting. I have had ours on a continuous cycle as well. I may try ending them and starting a new one soon. If I do, I’ll let you know…
Marie: Yes, your STR is 1.1% for the week.
Your week on a monthly basis would be 4.8% (5/7*30)/445.
That means that if you had sales all month like what you had this week, you would sell 4.8% of your inventory for the month.
Mark: Not a formula, but I go by gut.
I look at the sales curve for each month in prior years. So, if I wanted to have the exact curve and the exact STR in the future, I would forecast the exact same STR each month that it was last year. But, if I’m seeing (and I have) that I’m at a lower STR currently, then I will lower the STR in the future by 1-2% than what that month was in the prior year.
So if March was 14% STR last year, but I’m seeing that my STR in Dec-Jan is lower than Dec-Jan of last year, I will forecast 12% or 11%, whatever smells right.
So I use the past as a sales curve guide, and the current for a reality check.
Solid numbers Brian!
Shirts have definitely slowed down. Big glut in the market I think, and values have come down on what is selling. Supply and Demand….can’t fight it…
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