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Our main store is currently around 1,950 listings, our second store is at 1,103 listings, and third store is at 158 listings.
The second store is just for lettermail-only items, and is separate so that our shipping metrics arent impacted by the lack of tracking. The third store is for “replenishable” and new items only, and is separate so that people who were following our main store aren’t able to also see our amazon-type inventory.
Sales on ebay have been fantastic actually. We’ve been doing a bit of high-ish dollar consignment for a few people, and it’s pushed our numbers up substantially.
Amazon has been steady. It’s slowed a bit from the start of the pandemic, and from last Q4 (obviously), but numbers are still well above pre-pandemic numbers.
At this point, we’re as busy as we want to be…
Quick update:
We used Inkfrog to move the listings over to our account. Seems like it would have been super quick/painless, were it not for missing item specifics on a bunch of their listings.
The listings had to be moved to our account in Inkfrog, required item specifics fixed/updated, and then finally pushed to our ebay account.
Slowed things down a bit, but we got it done.
Perfect. Thanks all. I’ll look to Inkfrog once we iron out all of the details with them.
I figure we’ll have some clean-up with business policies/etc once they’re moved over, but not having to re-do the bulk of the work that’s already been done is a huge plus.
We sell quite a few vintage embroidered patches. Having this become an option would be wonderful. We’ve got a separate account that we sell patches and ephemera on via lettermail. That account only exists to sell those items and protect the TRS status on our main account.
We’re looking forward to the day we hit zero debt. Then we can take our time planning what to do with our cash. Having no debt means that if the world crumbles all at once, at least we don’t have much by way of bills to pay.
Ride on mower and ATV have lived in an 8×10 tarp shed for the last year and a half. Bikes spent the summer in the wood shed and the winter in the basement.
None of which is ideal long term, as it means we’re moving things around seasonally.
RE Jay’s question above:
Hopefully, by mid-2022 we’ve paid off our mortgage, paid off our line of credit, and paid the truck loan off early.
After that, we’ve got a list we’ll start chipping away at. We want to renovate our bathroom, put up a new storage shed (for atv, bikes, mower, etc), possibly buy a new-to-me motorcycle, and if/when possible, do some more traveling.
Long term, we’ll start banking money to invest. We’ve talked a bit about what that looks like, and have a lot of ideas. Airbnb/real estate, investing in local small businesses, retirement savings, etc. Ideally, we’ll add a few new income streams that aren’t tied to online selling (again, more diversifying). I’d much rather see us with ten or twenty small income streams than two or three big ones. We’ll likely also start saving money to eventually build a new purpose-built warehouse on our property.
Thank you. We’re pretty content. All of my rambling above boils down to:
We sell enough stuff on the internet to afford us a lifestyle of living in a small log cabin in the middle of nowhere, rarely stressing about money, not having to deal with office politics, and most importantly, rarely setting an alarm clock.
We’re registered as a corporation. The business paid us dividends totaling $80k over the year (so yes, this is the amount that we paid ourselves). The business also repaid our original shareholder loan of $16k (inventory, equipment, etc that was invested when we incorporated).
The total combined amount we received in our personal bank account for the year was $96k (before personal income taxes).
I’d estimate that I work 40-50 hours each week. That’s all encompassing (sourcing, listing, packing, shipping, prepping, driving, etc). My wife works slightly less, probably 25-30 hours each week. She spends some extra time keeping our household running smoothly, and also babysits our nephews one or two days most weeks.
Profit margins are generally better for us on eBay, but volume is definitely higher on Amazon. Main reason we sell different items on a number of different platforms is just for safety. If Amazon shut us down tomorrow for some reason, everything else could carry us. If eBay suddenly stopped working, we’d have Amazon and poshmark. I hate having all of my eggs in one basket, so even though we may miss out on some potential sales on one platform or another, we sleep better at night knowing that we’ve always got alternatives.
Our main eBay account is almost entirely used items, as is our second smaller account. That’s what interests us most. We still buy, list, and sell used stuff on a daily basis. The third eBay account is where we sell new and as-new items. Better sell through rate, lower margins. Again, diversity key for us.
Alright, finally time for a proper update here. This might be long, randomly laid out, and either too detailed or not detailed enough. I’m just going to let my brain dump as it sees fit. If anything is unclear, or missing, please feel free to ask.
2020 is behind us, books are closed, taxes are filed and paid. All numbers that follow are in Canadian dollars:
Final tally for the year was $687k in gross sales.
Net profit (before corporate taxes) was $177k.
Taxes were around $20k, for a net of $157k.
Of this, we took dividends of $80k, and the business repaid our shareholder loan of $16k (original inventory/equipment investment). The remainder was sitting in cash, inventory, and A/R (pending Amazon payouts).
Of the ~$96k that we personally received from the business, $25k was used for paying down our mortgage, $16K was used for paying off our 2019 personal income taxes (more on this later), and $10k was set aside to pay our personal taxes. The remaining $45k is what we lived on. We lived surprisingly well, considering $45k sounds low for two people for an entire year.
Personally, life in general is good. Wishing we were able to travel, but have started planning a 2-3 week post-covid trip to Spain. Not sure when it’ll come to fruition, but gives us something to look forward to.
The tenants that have been in our rental property for the last three years have given their notice, and are moving out as of June 30th. We’re on the other side of the country, so there are bound to be some pains in dealing with that. We’ve got some equity, and the market where the property is has seen a small uptick in home prices over the last year, so we’re leaning towards selling. We’ve got a realtor going to do a walk through this week to give us a ballpark selling price.
If all goes as planned, the mortgage on our primary residence will be paid in full at the end of August. At that point, we’ll still owe a bit on our line of credit, and will have three more years worth of payments on our pickup truck, but otherwise, no debt. We should be in a good position to be completely debt free by early-mid 2022.
As noted above, we had a sizeable personal tax bill from 2019 owing. It was a combination of things. All could have (should have) been foreseen and planned for, but obviously were not.
– I had ballparked our tax liability based on our last place of residence (income tax rates in our new location are much higher).
– I hadn’t taken into account the tax liability that arose from my final dividend and capital gains when I left my career job and sold back my company shares.
– We made more money on ebay/amazon than I had anticipated.
So far this year, and moving forward, our sales numbers are steady on Amazon in the US, and in the early part of this year, I focused much of my time to getting our numbers up on Amazon Canada. Combined, our gross sales are above where they were this time last year. Planning to keep working to push these higher.
My wife has focused a lot of her time this year to revising old ebay listings on our main account (item specifics, better pictures, etc), managing the inventory on our new ebay account (all retail arbitrage and replenishable items), managing our Poshmark accounts, and of course, listing new inventory.
I don’t think I mentioned it previously, but we started doing some ebay consignment for some other Amazon sellers. They have their returns, stranded inventory, etc sent to us. We list and sell it on ebay, and pay them 51% of the net profits (after fees, shipping, etc). It’s worked pretty well so far. We get good inventory delivered right to our door, usually in quantity (list once, sell 50-100x), and we don’t have to pay for it until a few weeks after it sells, so it boosts our cashflow. We’ve currently got three clients and may add one or two more in the near future. Our first “test” client started with us in late June 2020, and our net profit on his items was around $8500 for the remainder of the year. A few of those can really help push our totals up.
As of this moment, ebay stores are at 1428 (main account), 1125 (second account) and 149 (replenishable/RA account) listings. 90-day sales on these are $15,273, $1,545, and $19,394, respectively. Poshmark is doing steady business in the US (around $1,200-1,400/mo gross), and a few sales a month in Canada ($200-300 gross).
Hope I didn’t miss anything significant, or put anyone to sleep!
It’s definitely going to be a staple in my rotation now.
I’m a 14hr drive away, but judging from instagram, the new shop looks amazing Well done! One day (post-pandemic), I’ll get down that way for an in person cuppa…
Not sure if this is the best place to weigh in, but we’re HUGE fans of your Guatemala.
So far we’ve tried your Guatemala, Burundi, Southern Split, Brazil, and the Costa Rican Cedral. All have been fantastic, but the Guatemala is the one we keep coming back to. Not sure what it is about it, but MAN is it good…
I’m currently jittering my way through a few bags I picked up from a small local roaster, but I’ve got 2lb of your Guatemala “on deck”. I’ll be back for more (along with something else I’m sure) once I crack into it.
Wishing you guys all the best on the big opening!
Hey Jay, I WISH it was gross profit, but it’s gross SALES. At our current profit margins, I’d ballpark ebitda to be around $150-200k.
Also, keep in mind these figures are in Canadian dollars, so in usd, we’d be talking $400k gross sales for $120-160k profit.
I’ve been delaying updating the missing item specifics on most of our listings in hopes that ebay is working on things, and can reduce the number of obvious/redundant specifics that we need to update.
Not sure how long I’m going to hold out, but MAN some of these are painful (like Ryanne’s women’s clothing example).
Drinking Costa Rican this morning. PERFECT (for me).
First run with my new burr grinder today as well (had an older blade grinder previously).
For anyone interested, we’re running a Bonavita Connoisseur, and the new grinder is a Bodum Bistro. Neither is high-end or fancy, but both work great for our needs.
