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MoCoyotes: That is an AMAZING ROI! You averaged less than $1 per item as a purchase price!
That is outstanding!
bcfol440: I totally hear you on what it takes to ramp up. I just emailed you my file for numbers tracking, and I touched on the forecast side that is the true meat of it. My full file has a section where I forecast the number of new listings per month, and using beginning inventory and STR I can predict your number of sales per month. Using ASP, you get your top line Revenue (with a forecast for Shipping Revenue).
Using your number of listings per month x your average COGS will give you an anticipated Purchase cost for the month (this is one of the real nuggets in terms of scaling up). I’m on the conservative side, so plan for the higher end of the range when forecasting purchases (better to have actuals win on the upside).
Forecasting Shipping Cost and PayPal fees are as a percentage of Total Revenue. eBay fees are a percentage of LAST months sales.
Then add any other costs you have: employees, supplies, warehouse, etc.
If you have a good history of your actuals, you should have a good idea of your future. If you are all over the map on things like ASP or STR month to month, it is tougher, but usually things smooth out over a given month.
Forecasting is more of an art than a true science.
almasty: “Ebay is not really conducive for such items sometimes. Maybe people will look for items like that more at an antiquarian book fair, or at an auction house.”
I think you are 100% right. I remember a great interview that Jay and Ryanne had WAAAY back in the day with a guy that BOUGHT high-end art on eBay to SELL at the auction house.
Great interview.
MyCottage: I hope so…🤞🤞🤞
I’ll have to do a “fun with numbers” project on this with data from the forums. Would be an interesting experiment.
I know of 2 solid posters to start with, possibly 3.
Stay tuned…
almasty: In my head, the biggest issue with finding an item that is worth $1000 that you can buy for $200-$300 is that once you get to items with that high of a value, it is hard to find someone that will sell it for that cheap. Would that be correct?
I’m thinking that these items are hard to find to begin with, and having a seller that either doesn’t know it’s worth that much or is willing to take that much of a discount is even rarer.
Do you think these types of scenarios are that rare? Or are you still seeing them but passing on them?
Amatino: Go official word from eBay…they can’t do this.
Amazon can do this on items that they own, as they can scan and add to the database. eBay doesn’t own the items, so they can’t do this. I asked if we could have the feature through eBay, but due to liability issues, eBay can’t do this. Makes some sense, that eBay may be taking on too much risk if this is misused and someone wants to sue eBay over this.
Best advice they had was including the serial number in an Item Specific and include a photo of the serial number.
Mike: And I thought I was OCD on getting data!
Are you now seeing the SKU on offers on the mobile phone? We don’t always get those. We seemed to for a while, then it stopped.
I hate not getting that data on a regular basis when looking up items on the mobile phone. Good info!
Wow!
Went to an indoor shooting range with my dad once. Funniest looks ever when he fired his .44 the first time….
Everyone else had that WTF!!! look on their face.
Yeah…it ain’t no 9mm…
😂😂😂
Mike: Paraphrase the front. (I ain’t that good)
“I know what your thinking. Did he shoot 6 times or only 5. In all this excitement I forgot myself.
But since this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and can take your head clean off…you gotta ask yourself one question…Do I feel lucky?
Well…do ya punk?”
Clint Eastwood…Dirty Harry Callahan
+1 Sharyn! My past too, as well as Veronica’s…
I have NO idea why that popped in my head when writing it…it just flew in there!
🙂
Mike: Congrats and good luck with the labor expansion!
Amen to what Mike says about proper use of the SKU. If you are planning to scale up and would need a SixBit/Wonderlister software, you HAVE to have a unique SKU on each item (we had some lots in our conversion that I had to work with).
So our SKU#’s are now like the below:
12345-6-WH-PM
We crossed over the 10,000 listings level, so we use a 5 digit unique number for each listing. We have a Google Doc that Veronica and I can both access that shows the next number available. The second section after the – is the location (in this case, shelf rack 6). The -WH would denote that it is in the warehouse (not in our house). The -PM would denote that the item is crossposted to Poshmark.
MMVI: Sounds great. Do you track your STR now to get an idea of what it is?
I’m seeing a theory (that I would love to prove out) that 10X return is usually a 4%-8% monthly STR (at scale), and that 4X-5X return is (or should be) a 13%-20% STR. Just a theory, but when I scroll around numbers, I seem to see this rough pattern.
I may have to see if I can start getting some data sets on this and see how things trend.
Let me know if you have any questions, and you can hit me up on my direct email.
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