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There is money there, but know going in that suits and blazers are a long tail item, so make sure that you can store well. We are in a dry climate, so mold isn’t an issue for us. I fold (I have a particular folding method for Sport Coats that I 100000% recommend you learn), put in a clear polybag with the SKU tag attached, then put in plasic bins with lids. No dust, moisture, or anything else on the item.
Fall is the season for these things, so get them on now!
Should be a 3x-5x return on a $13/item purchase of 25 items.
This supplier was all singles, but variations on a theme, so I could do listing 1, copy it, make a couple of tweaks, and do listing 2, so it went quick. We have done some multiple quantity buys from ANOTHER source, but that is drying up as we now see the Dropshippers are playing in that sandbox. Easy to see when their eBay photo (only 3) are the EXACT same as the original web site…
We haven’t done consignment in a LONG time, and after the saga I posted on the other thread shows, I would hesitate to do this again. Good money, but a LOT of stress on this one…
PS – I want to say I loved the part of the Podcast where you talk about the auction world, the bulk sourcing, the retail game in general. The time vs capital. That WHOLE conversation should be listened to a few times. You guys hit a lot of great pearls of wisdom there regarding the business side of this game…
Thanks Jay.
Right now, it is bundles of retail returns. First purchase was good, so I need to see if a second is solid before it becomes a decent source of supplementation to our normal yard sale/thrift store sourcing. But I would like to move up at some point to buying overstocks/wholesale as a new stream of income, especially if I can do it from just about anywhere and have it delivered.
Our piece of the consignment was 15% after fees. Seller just didn’t know where to go to get rid of this. Parting out would have only been about $1000. That was in our minds at one point, to try and buy him out and we sell ourselves, and that was about all we could do and still make it worth our time. He also didn’t want to sell this a piece at a time, so hard to find a market for an ENTIRE collection.
Just had to wait on this one. I have sold 3 of these, from $90 to $140. Just all depends on the buyer…
BCFO: Thanks. Got the acceptance yesterday, and the bank info is set up, so looking to get paid today or tomorrow.
PS – Can you reduce the inventory on a listing rather than delete it on Poshmark? When we get a sale on eBay of something that I crossposted on Poshmark, I have been deleting the PM listing. Well, we got a sale on eBay, but no payment on an item, an hour goes by, and I don’t want a double sale, so I delete the PM listing. Then they cancel the eBay sale. So I have to relist on PM. If I could “expire” or put the inventory at 0 in this situation, it would save me some time.
Any thoughts?
Week of 10/7-10/13
Total Items in Store: 2,748 (Up 58% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 110
Number of Items Sold: 111 (Up 34% YOY)
(Includes 1 Etsy, 1 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 1 Poshmark)
Weekly STR: 17% (Down 2% YOY)Total Product Sales: $3,548 (Up 45% YOY) – RECORD SALES WEEK
Cost of Items Sold: $797
Highest Item Sold: $140 – Hart Schaffner Marx Gold Trumpeter Navy Blue Pinstripe Suit
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 24-17Clothing
# Listed: 1,705
# Sold: 71
STR: 18%
ASP: $27.38Shoes
# Listed: 425
# Sold: 18
STR: 18%
ASP: $50.26Hard Goods
# Listed: 618
# Sold: 21
STR: 14%
ASP: $31.79Etsy
# Listed: 172
# Sold: 1
STR: 3%
ASP: $18.89Poshmark
# Listed: 45
# Sold: 1
STR: 10%
ASP: $100Business Improvement for the Week – Start new purchasing streams. First sale on the items in the new purchasing stream. Looks good, and looking to make another purchase this week.
Business Improvement for the Week – Cross-posting to Poshmark. Had our first sale, and should receive the cash early this week. Gotta get used to the Poshmark way. Listing is easy, but had a “bundle” of just one item sent to us, and then a message that just said “trade?”. No. Plus, a LOT of lowball offers that I just counter on. Looks like this is going to be better for women’s than men’s, but since Veronica has a good amount of women’s shoes and jeans, I may start to throw those out there. Not doing much on the social side, only doing shares a little right now.
So, if I could ask the Scavenger Life community for a favor, I need lots of prayers this week. The $5,000 Dicken’s Village that we sold last year was picked up for transport this week. Need lots of prayers for a safe delivery this week! This has been a total saga, almost done. Hope it is over soon!
If anyone wants to hear the CRAZY week on this Dicken’s Village, let me know and I’ll put it on a separate thread…
10/11/2018 at 12:21 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #50041Jay: We are similar with our photographer. We sometimes pick up some lower end items as we know we can crank them out and that keeps him busy. We still make money and we can try to focus on more high dollar sales when possible.
10/11/2018 at 12:20 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #50040Love this whole discussion. I think this is where most of us see why businesses try to have different levels of products in their store, low profit quick movers that keep the cash coming in and keep buyers coming back, and higher end home runs that make great profit when they sell.
As a secondary issue, make sure each listing has a unique SKU number on it. This is ESPECIALLY important with similar looking items, like shoes, jeans, shirts, etc. We ran into this yesterday, when we grabbed the wrong pair of shoes during shipping (we thought we know which pair it was before we checked the SKU). We double checked before we shipped, but it could have gone out incorrectly.
Before we started putting the SKU on the item, we shipped the wrong shirt twice…
I will second what So Cal Joe says. Start when you are small. Keep it simple, but START.
10/11/2018 at 12:07 pm in reply to: (Almost) Quarterly Ebay Sales Report from a bloody beginner #50034Ostap Bender:
Your process is correct for determining the estimated STR for your item. As to which is correct…it depends. I try to keep things more generic (brand and model), but sometimes important factors are added, like fabric. Measurements, color, and pattern are other factors to add in to get more focused.
For me, it will depend on the number of results as you dial in. I would say you can trust your market research if you say with at least 100 current listings. If you get smaller than that, I’m not sure you have enough of a sample to make a reasonable estimation.
10/11/2018 at 8:57 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #50000Jay: Excellent point…and smart man!
10/11/2018 at 8:56 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #49999I love the conversation on hours, especially for anyone that has considered going full time, or even as a part time job. Time is the one resource we cannot get more of, only spend, so make sure you are making the most of it.
Now, let us all not forget the future income stream coming from our past work. Let’s take Jay and Ryanne for example. I believe that Jay said that they currently have $475,000 worth of inventory listed (retail price). To be conservative, let’s say that they reasonably expect to sell that inventory at 60% of their asking price, so $285,000 is listed. Let’s further say that 20% of their inventory is unsalable (will have to donate).
That leaves them with $228,000 of inventory over 6,400 items. If you take out fees (15%) and shipping supplies (1%), they have a future net profit of $191,520 coming…
If Ryanne can ship (on average) an item in 15 minutes, that is 1,600 hours of shipping to do (that is 40 work weeks of 40 hours/week!). And they will be making $119.70/hour in the future, just shipping the inventory that they have listed. Even if Ryanne takes 30 minutes per item to ship on average, they they have a future income stream that will pay them $59.85/hour.
Not bad…
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