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In PA, yes.
I did consignment on ebay in the first couple years I started selling. Then in 2008, the PA auctioneers won a dispute against eBay that resulted in a ridiculous state law requiring all online sellers who were selling for commission to get an auctioneers license.
Well, an auctioneers license requirements were absurd for someone just selling junk on ebay. Something like 18 months of classes, a long apprenticeship at an auction house, learning to do the chant and everything. So I simply stopped selling for other people.
In 2016 a good friend of mine in NY was having amazing success with his consignment business, so I decided I was just going bite the bullet and go to auctioneer school. Might meet some cool people and great contacts. So when I looked into it, I found that they had just revised the law and added a new section to the law to include “online trading assistant” which no longer required the crazy unnecessary training, but rather just a few official registration fees and documents like announcing the business name, registering as trade assistant, becoming bonded and paying $200. What a relief, I was kinda starting to like the idea of the auctioneering….but I don’t have time for that.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
Shortly after I became licensed to do the consignment, I started having major back trouble. So, for fear of overselling my physical abilities, I never made an official announcement or ad for my services. Most the consignors I have, have reached out to me either just out of curiosity to see if I sell stuff for other people too, or by word of mouth.
+1
If we end up getting a part time apartment next year, I will need to drop ours to 3 day handling. I’m curious also to hear how a slower handling time would effect sales. Obviously I would lose TRS+ discount, and also would become ineligible for Guaranteed Delivery program.
That sucks. We missed a cruise vacation due to Hurricane Matthew, the cruise still went, but we couldn’t get into FL to get on the boat. It was a total shock, especially when you look forward to something for months, or maybe even a year or two. I think it’s important to quickly pick up the pieces and try to throw together a backup vacation plan as soon as possible. When it happened to us, I sent my wife to a small overnight yoga retreat that she was having to miss because of our cruise. I spent the time organizing a pet friendly road trip to Up State NY and Niagara, we ended in the Finger Lakes at a tiny little AirBnB efficiency cabin in the woods, where our dog could run free on acres and acres of horse paths. It ended up being our favorite vacation ever, and we will likely be headed back to that same cabin for our 4th year next month.
Week Sept 1-7, 2019
Items in store: 4408 Listings for 6303 Items
Items Sold: 109 transactions for 121 Items
Gross Sales: $8071.09
Highest Price Sold: $393 …. Kiton Suit
Lowest Price Sold: $4.99….Shoelaces
Average Sale Price: $66.70
Cost of Goods Sold $360, Plus consignment payout, roughly $840
Number of new items listed this week: 95 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $0
Repeat Customers: 13
International: 29%Almost a new record for the week. Great start to September as far as sales go, though I didn’t get close to hitting my listing goal this week. I tweaked my back Monday and lost two days of productivity. Grr.
Picked up a new consignor this week. Sounds like it may be a fellow thrifter/reseller with a death pile cleanup-type situation, so we’ll see what he sends.
I have used it occasionally since it recently became free, but I usually just use completed listings for my stuff. I do like that I don’t have to leave ebay now to use it, maybe I will get more use out of it now.
You can find eBay’s Terapeak dashboard on the seller hub under the Research Tab.
09/05/2019 at 10:26 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67417Mine used to be called “The Something Everything and More Store” but when I switched to mainly clothing I noticed that by a strange coincidence I could abbreviate the name and still keep it relevant. Also when I purchased my domain name, http://www.theSEAMstore.com was a lot easier for potential customers to type than http://www.thesomethingeverythingandmorestore.com lol
09/04/2019 at 4:33 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67387It’s doable, but first I would like to pay off my mortgage and pay for my wife’s expensive masters program. We may have to rent (or purchase) a second home for 3 years while she is in school. I’ll have my plate full with those things for a while. I wish we could do it in the opposite order, buy a space and downsize the house, but with only 4 months until her classes start, thats not much time to work out all those details, and I don’t want to add stress to her life during school with essentially two major moves.
Also, Health insurance and self employment tax eats up nearly 50% of our monthly profits. Ooof.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
09/04/2019 at 3:37 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67385Not in the slightest. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of MD which is all farm land, and had never even heard of basic brands like Brooks Brothers until maybe 9 years ago.
The first item I sold on ebay (2005) was a broken camera I found in the parking lot at work. I was immediately hooked…of course. I started selling everything in the house that was not nailed down, and when that ran out, I hit the streets looking for more stuff. I grew up thrift shopping and yardsaling with my grandmother since I was 6 years old, so finding other cool stuff came as second nature to me. I focused on toys from the 80s and earlier that I knew from my childhood, typewriters, antiques, collectibles, a ton of vintage cameras and lenses….and really just anything I could to make a few extra bucks….except I avoided clothing.
Then in the summer of 2010, I noticed 3 pairs of vintage Florsheim wingtips on the shelf at the local thrift store. I recognized the name, and figured they looked nice and someone would like them. Well, I don’t know if anyone else here remembers, but shoe sales were really hot back then. I sold them all to the same buyer in under 12 hours for $115 a pair.
From that point I started researching, thrifting, and selling as many pairs of dress shoes as I could. I liked that pretty much all the shoes could ship in the same size box, and I never had to worry about not having a large enough box to double pack a typewriter or electrolux. I begin phasing out the other inventory, and focusing mainly on shoes.
In 2011 a fellow shoe seller on ebay reached out to me and and asked if I ever considered selling other menswear since I was already building a pretty good regular shoe following. I expanded my research and thrifting to all things menswear. I joined a few menswear forums to help with my research, and met some great gents along the way who have become friends, mentors, customers and consignment clients.
By 2013 I was selling probably 98% menswear, and it was going pretty well pulling late nights and weekends, while working my office job in the daytime.
In January 2014 I left my job to do this full(er) time.
In January 2015, I outgrew our 3 spare bedrooms and had overflow piles in the living room. My wife hated it. Either the stuff had to go or I did….so I got a business loan and added an 1100 square foot office above our garage. Happy wife, yada yada. I designed the office like a 2 bedroom apartment/in-law suite, pre-wired for appliances in case I ever gave up on ebay and wanted to rent it out.
May 2018, my wife left her job to do what she loves, Yoga. It was an enormous pay cut, but her happiness is more important and eBay has filled the gap.
Today. I have 5 more months until the office loan is paid off, but am beginning to outgrow the space. I think I could reasonably operate a 10,000 item business out of the space, but it would be quite cramped.
What’s next? I would love to run a brick and mortar vintage shop in town, and just might do that in a few years when my wife finishes her masters program. At that time she will probably be in the market for a business space of her own, so maybe we can buy a building to split.
09/04/2019 at 2:29 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67380Thanks, I’d been selling for 4-5 years before that, but only casually. Believe it or not in 2014 when I left my “real” job, I only had 80 listings. However, at that time I was only running auctions and had a much higher sell thru rate.
09/02/2019 at 3:29 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67267In 2010 I got laid off when the company I worked for sold to another company. After a couple weeks of discouraging job hunting. My wife gave me $500 from our savings, and said see what you can do with this on ebay.
Still going…..next I’m gonna try to pay for her masters degree without carrying student loan debt or paying interest. I may be crazy, but I know I can do it. I may have to hire a helper.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
09/02/2019 at 3:22 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67265There are 3 things in this business that really stressed me out at one time.
#1, arguing with buyers and ebay reps about returns which, amplified by my dangerous mix of wit and sarcasm, which would sooner or later get me in trouble. So I now offer free returns and rarely have to worry about a debate.
#2, Spending 30 minutes looking for one item when there are 25 left to ship. In 2015 I began utilizing a simple inventory system on every item listed. It’s a simple date code style that basically works chronologically and sorts easily.
Code format – YYMMDD-###,
Example :If I listed 30 items today the last item would have the SKU 190902-030, with an additional unique code at the end if it was a consignment item.I didn’t worry about back-sku-ing the previously listed items, just focused on moving forward, and now I think there are only about 5 items remaining with no SKU from before I started using the system, and I can put my hands on anything in my store in about 15 seconds or less.
Storing items chronologically is not for everyone as it requires frequent condensing as items sell. It also could prove to be quite difficult for those selling a broader variety of items in many sizes, unless you are pre-boxing everything or have an unlimited storage space.
On the plus side, it allows me to see quickly how long I have had an item in stock when I get a best offer that may seem low at first. Also it allows me to easily run tiered % off sales based on how long an item has been listed. Additionally, the SKU is physically applied to the item, and ends up on the outside of the box when packaged. Then when using bulk label printing with the Custom Label/SKU option, the SKUs are printed right on the label for easy package matching. Which helps to eliminate the #3 thing that used to stress me out about ebay….shipping the wrong item to the wrong buyer.
09/02/2019 at 1:54 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67254Not particularly difficult, about 2 hours a month maybe.
First..all consigned items have a consignor code at the end of its sku number. Then I set an automatic monthly CSV download for paid and shipped items. Then it’s just simple filtering and sorting on Numbers/Excel. It takes me about an hour to figure out the payout from previous month on the 1st, and then another few minutes to back out any returns that may occur before payout on the 15th. Another few minutes to generate PDF invoices for each of my 7 clients, send out and thank them again for their business. 5 take paypal which is super simple, and I write checks for the other 2.
The consignors reached out to me, most I know from online forums, 2 were sent to me from a fellow consignor who couldn’t take any more clients, one is a regular buyer on ebay for many years.
09/02/2019 at 12:47 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 426: Our Financial Lives Are Tied To The Mysterious Whims Of A Website #67248Don’t get it twisted. I do have my actual consignors, who are paid out monthly for sold items, that accounted for the $8752 chunk. Their stuff remains theirs until it is sold and I take my cut off the top before all fees. I don’t own this stuff, I’m just the pipeline to the buyer.
On the other hand, I sometimes have potential consignors that don’t want to wait for the stuff to sell, so they get a lump sum at a much lower rate. I evaluate everything, and only pay for the stuff I plan to sell. If they accept my offer, I pay them immediately and the stuff becomes mine.
I’ve met a lot of people through many years networking on forums, through random people reaching out though ebay, friends of friends. etc.
I get stuff to sell any way I can, as cheap as I can…aside from stealing it.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
The_SEAM_Store.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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