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I am so, so happy to see these updates still happening! We still love our Broadporch subscription. I need to go get caught up on all the recent happenings.
I was reminded to stop back here today after I gave someone the advice to listen through the podcast journey and try selling online before they tried to open a retail store.
eBay has taken a back burner to our retail store, but it’s still chugging along. We’ve learned so much and it started here. Thank you all for being so open and sharing knowledge.
Items in Store: 4521
Items Sold: 109
Total Sales: $3467
COGS: too much
Average sales price: $32
New Listings: 20ish
<p style=”text-align: right;”><span style=”text-align: right;”>90-day revenue: $49094</span></p>I see prices ballooning with the inflation and so far it has had a positive effect on sales. Of course locals grumble about marketplace listings, but the department stores keep going up in price and our stuff looks better and better.
Wish I had more time to share here. I enjoy reading through the posts. We hired 4 helpers for listing: 1 never showed up, 1 quit , 1 seems to be learning well, and 1 is great.
We’ve had a rash of negative feedbacks and return requests due to 1 of the former employees, but that has resolved itself.I visited someone doing $40k monthly in ebay sales and have decided to hire an experienced eBay VA to proof-read and correct the listings/pricing before listing. That is the current bottleneck with 420 drafts sitting in the folder.
Total Listings: 3598
Items Sold: 65
Gross Sales: 4,280.94
Net Sales: $2,843.48
Highest price: $1118 for 3 espresso machines
Average Price Sold: $65.86
Returns: 5 opened, 2 shipped
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: way, way too muchI currently have 420 drafts, but none are older than 18 days. I would not be too concerned about having 250 sitting idle.
That being said, I am trying hard to get our number down. It’s hard to keep up with 3 people creating drafts 🙁
We buy 2-4 truckloads per week. I never did pallets for the exact same reasons stated above. Too many hands and too little profit
We’ve had 11 returns in our last 364 items sold for 3%. That’s high and annoying. 4 of the returns were for new in box massaging heated blankets that you can currently buy at walmart or home depot. They didnt like them. We’ve sold about 120 of these. 2 of them were for squishy stress balls. How a stress ball can be damaged in shipping or defective is beyond me!
I agree, it’s more an amazon mentality. We purchase amazon returns, so we see just how they come back. Some are brand new, not even opened. Others were clearly very used but work just fine. People are people I guess.
Sad to hear this, but not entirely unexpected. I would imagine that after a long week of work, it was increasingly difficult to take the time out for the podcast. Erika and I listened to this every week for several years now. We have listened to every episode and learned a ton, but it has been more for the community feel than education for quite some time.
I’ve sold on eBay since the beginning, but didn’t start REALLY selling until a few years ago. When I found a niche by accident, I searched for a voice that mimicked how I felt eBay should be run. Jay and Ryanne were that voice. No hype, raw numbers, calm, sane, and reasonable–I’ve always liked the matter-of-fact style–This is how, this is why, it works for us and we don’t really care if you want to do it differently.
When Covid shut everything down, Erika and I were getting full-time income from this, but auctions had shut down and so did my other business. We began searching for new ways to source, which steered me into liquidation–WAY different than the old weird stuff, but still very much so scavenging. Last weekend we had sales of $37k at our little local warehouse. We are on a similar path here. Like the coffee shop, we have freedom here, but we also have very specific tasks that need to be accomplished every week. We ventured into employees after several years of bucking them, which has allowed us to ramp up quickly. We got the encouragement to do so right here.
For many, Covid was chaos and bad times. For us, we were never afraid of losing the other work because you both showed us that it was possible to thrive with eBay. We just decided that was the time to jump all-in. Before that, it was just a second job. We have no debt and really have built into this by rolling all the eBay money over, so we feel a real bond with you both and your message–even if you’re very weird people–pretty sure everyone in here is!
You did get us hooked on your coffee, so we are drinking Cameroon right now as we get ready to head to the warehouse for our last day before our weekend sales. Southern Split is Erika’s favorite, but I like to change it up. We do plan on visiting your coffee shop. Probably will just sit in the corner and drink it because it would feel weird to talk to famous people! We did have Resale Rabbit come in to our warehouse, so I got a selfie. Might have to do that with you as well.
I’d wish you good luck, but you won’t need it. You’ve built something that can’t be stopped, even if 1 leg starts to wobble a bit–as you’ve already proven with eBay slowing down recently.
Steve & Erika
I think the best part of this week’s podcast were the early references to there not being good garbage on the streets! Erika and I had a bit of a laugh about that. Successful entrepreneurs disappointed that they won’t have enough good garbage to scavenge while taking a break from being scavengers, coffee shop owners, and real estate moguls…couldn’t make that up if you wanted to. Very genuine!
eBay is super slow for us. The last 90 days we have only grossed $10k, which was about an average month for the previous year. There has been a lot more people at our beach and state parks here–we frequent the parks often and it is unbearable on the weekends. I am confident this is just a natural backswing after everyone was cooped up.
We focused so much on the local sales rather than eBay in 2021 and we FINALLY got the occupancy permit Monday! We are opening Thursday for 10 days straight before settling into Fri-Sun 10-4 as our regular hours. I’m nervous and excited. We have grown our FB following to almost 7,000 group members, but I worry that we will be too busy, or people will be unimpressed once they get inside. I’m sure you went through all the excitement and stress opening the coffee shop. I feel very underwhelmed by our place, our videos, etc—but we get nothing but positive responses. I’m still waiting for that crash back to reality and hoping it never comes.
eBay has been sloooow. The last 3 months are about 35% lower than prior, which is never a good thing. Part of it being the slow season, but most of it being the lack of new listings as we focus on our warehouse. Reminds me of when you guys were focused on other business and saw your sales dip. We all get out what we put in. $515 gross the last 7 days. $3300 in the last month. We were having weeks like that in December! Local marketplace sales were just a hair under $5k gross–far from it net–so that is going OK while we wait on occupancy permitting from the city. Lucky us, we chose to do business in the most strict municipality in the area. We do have the county small business economic development organization going to bat for us and trying to expedite it all. Never a dull moment.
Gargolfer–I’ve had many local auctions that went that way and it’s great for filling up your money piles with low cost inventory. I generally buy all the junk nobody wants and it has been worth it every single time. I’ve been itching to get back to an auction, but Sundays have been busy lately. I don’t care much for the online variety. Also very satisfying when you are the ultimate recycler. All of that was about to become landfill.
We finally tried Southern Split and Cameroon this week. I must say that I don’t usually like dark roast, but Southern Split is some great coffee! Cameroon is good as well–so smooth I question whether I am using enough sometimes. We are thinking about using your sample packs or subscriptions as a giveaway for some of our customers. Not sure exactly what the plan is, but we’d love to share your coffee with the locals here.
I’m sure we’ve all lost sales because of GSP costs up front, but no thank you on the customs hassle! I had the same issue with unlisted items, so we went through our inventory locations 1 by 1 about a year ago. Thinned out some stuff that we probably never should have listed, and got a few others online that were forgotten. Our process is to photo and store, list later. If we had questions when listing, some items slipped through the cracks and never were dealt with.
Our primary local customer at the warehouse are just consumers trying to do a cheap remodel on their kitchen and bathroom. Our ideal customers that we market to are landlords and house flippers. People that can buy a vanity 75% off and fix the leg that is broken. That sort of thing. We do have plenty of new product, but 75% of it is open box scavenge type items. We still do the auctions for our weird stuff fix–and that’s a lot more profitable on a per item basis. But the truckloads seem like easier product to train employees and scale with simply due to the barcodes. We don’t have so much research to do, but do a lot of repairs–that is the downside. I try to outsource a good amount of that as I do not enjoy cleaning carbs on gas powered yard tools.
Sales for us have been very slow for the last month. Only netting 800/week, but also know that our focus has been on moving warehouses and having a local sale. No new listings in basically 2 months, and very little for the month prior.
We did have a similar issue just 2 days ago with a wrong address–they did not include the apartment #. I contacted ebay for business through facebook and was told that I did my part and did not have to do anything else, but could request shipping through paypal from the buyer if I wanted to mail it again. I sent that info the the buyer, they opened a case and won the refund. I sent another message to ebay for business and it was overturned. I was paid and can relist it again for sale. I wanted to do the right thing and ship it back, but she wanted me to pay for her mistake–now I will get paid twice for the same item. Cannot complain at all.
As for 1099s–I have a lot of experience both receiving and sending these…more than 1000 in the past 15 years. They have always been for the total deposited/paid amount only. I don’t see any reason eBay would go with the gross and create tax issues for the government with unsophisticated sellers not understanding how to proceed.
Our warehouse is getting there. Local interest is through the roof. We brought in about 6 semis of product and have 2 more on the way. It won’t be perfect like your coffee shop, but nobody really expects perfect when buying this type of inventory. All in all, quite the feat with only 29 days prep time. I wish we could do perfect, but then where is the room for improvement?
I used to use yardsale treasuremap all the time, but I started noticing most were listed on fb instead of cl anyways.
There is a local estate sale company that prices basically at retail, then marks down day 3 and 4. Even at 75% off, the prices are usually too high to do well on. These companies keep as much as 70% of the proceeds. I love the family member cleanout estate sales and have done exceptionally well at some–and I feel the family can likely do just as well without the middlemen taking such a huge chunk.
Jumping on some of that special coffee–we prefer light roast, so that sounds good!
Busy week. Finally signed our warehouse lease, but it has been a very slow process. No clue when we will get keys, haven’t been told what to do with the check, etc. It is unreal how un-motivated they are to get someone in the building. Cannot wait until it is finished. Until keys are in hand, there is major stress.
We sell a lot on facebook. Generally the large things like you all do. It has allowed us to drastically increase our asp and we have even done 40 shipping orders through it. FB has eclipsed eBay sales for sometime now, but eBay is consistent like a clock.
I’ve gone to a couple auctions this year for fun more than anything. People have mostly tried to distance, but it’s not always possible. Very few people wear masks. I think the people who never stopped attending auctions, likely are not concerned with the virus. I am strictly in the “we’ve always had viruses” camp myself and have already had it, so the distancing is less of a concern for me. That being said, I did decline entry into one last year that was packed like sardines in a tiny room for an estate auction. No thank you. Virus or not, that was too close and there are tons of illnesses that could be spread.
Viruses aren’t likely to disappear. It will never be safe to go to an auction.
Items in Store 2470
Items Sold 54
Gross Sales $2103
Net Sales $1284
Local Sales: ~$4500Almost nothing spent on inventory over the last 6 weeks, but sales remain especially strong locally. Starting to get some of the buried items listed and it is flying out. It’s nice to see the sales continue, sad to see the inventory dip, but signing a new lease for April 1st. Focus has been on reducing the amount of large items before moving day and to that end, it’s been successful.
I know a lot of people who use property managers like to have 2 companies in case this exact thing happens. Perhaps you could find a different person to clean the coffee shop who would be available for emergencies with the airbnb? Hiring can be challenging, that is for sure.
So I went through and played with the tables last night. The old check box was an ADDITIONAL cost, the new tables have the total cost. So I went and added $3 for west coast shipping table…and sold a number of items to California for $3 shipping including a ceiling fan. Time to go back and edit that I guess
I know there are plenty of people here who use calculated shipping. I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would want to weigh and measure every item when listing–especially oddly shaped items? I don’t want to package and measure a whirlpool pump prior to sale… Do most people just take a good guess, or actually weigh and measure thousands of items prior to listing?
I have a couple flat-rate tiers that I use, so the additional for Alaska/Hawaii was needed for larger items.
I was unaware and need to check this out. Just had to cancel an item for Guam because the shipping was $56. I had it listed as Fedex ground, but only USPS ships there… It would have been under $15 anywhere in conus
