I’ve posted a product today. Is a teddy, i only paid 12€ for one and I would like to sell 3.
Should it be like this?
I found that Google PPC charges were way too outrageous for us. Then, when they canceled my Merchant Account for missing a tiny piece of information. I went nuts. It couldn’t be appealed. Cost us $3,000 to have an attorney straighten it out.
That was then, this is now.
We don’t pay a cent in PPC charges. Google gives us fantastic placement. We’re always on the first page, and usually top the Seller list, or just below Amazon. This even happens when we don’t have the product.
I started working on my site during COVID, after Amazon closed my account over “bogus” complaints by a person that didn’t exist. No matter how bad it looked for them, they were going to silence the “whistleblower.” Eventually, they dropped all 67 charges, and I was able to get my account back.
I understand about selling online. We have more than 12,000 SKUs in our warehouse. The plan was to turn the family business over to the kids. While they still help with the inventory, I’m not sure they still want to take over. I am adding products as fast as I can, so I can figure out exactly what the business is worth.
I’m figuring at some point I will see if one of my competitors wants to buy us out, or put it up for sale. If it wasn’t for the internet, I wouldn’t have this problem.
5 Likes
I can see how that would be a problem in your industry. My biggest competitor has the mega bucks to buy us out, and I know he’d love to get his hands on some of our collectibles.
The bigger issue is the crap economy
Yes. That is a big issue. We’ve been mostly shielded from downturns in the economy in the past. This time things are really bad. People have stopped buying toys for the kids. It’s never happened before.
I know exactly where that is going and I am very glad we are old and hopefully the both of us will be gone before that fiasco unfolds.
I also know where this is going, and that it will continue to get a lot worse. Timing is really bad for us.
The young ones don’t have a clue of what is going to happen.
Our kids are savvy. They know what the future holds. So, they’re not making any long term commitments.
We can only take things one day at a time…
4 Likes
Feel very fortunate. Most of the children of parents that own a company have no clue that it is usually the 2nd-3rd generations are the ones that make it big time. They see the parents working hard all the time and want no part of it, you can talk all you want, lazy rules and it is even worse now days.
2 Likes
My observations specific to Walmart and not an independent reseller are this. Walmart is shooting off both feet trying to catch amazon.
When you go into the walmart they are mostly self checkout, think about this, the labor cost was too high to staff the checklanes. Now, they have “to-go” order pickers lined up packing product out the door and placing the goods in back of lazy folks’ vehicles.
That model is so broken it is not even funny, they are burning money from gross inefficiency its not even funny. The typical wall street retail investor is a “me too” type and they will be the ones losing all their money when it unfolds.
Not sure which one will hit the dirt, pretty sure it will be amazon they have NOTHING of value to the general population. At least walmart has walk in stores and could very easily convert back to having walk-in traffic. Since I lost the point, sorry, it is all about impulse sales, something that is poorly executed online. Walk-ins = impulse sales…The power of real time retail sales.
3 Likes
It was not long at all. Shopify makes it so simple. You just have to choose the options, and they do the rest.
I did have a problem with Shopify a few months back. Because I sell DC Comics, Star Wars, Hello Kitty, SpongeBob, etc., etc., they wanted to make sure I was authorized to sell them, and they were received from reliable sources. They closed my store until it was resolved. I lost my Google placement, and basically started over. It was a week or so until things picked up again.
1 Like
I can’t argue with that.
Walmart, from a seller perspective, is a joke. It so poorly designed, it takes forever to do anything. There are no seller “creature features.” I can guarantee their developers never spoke to a single seller when they designed this monstrosity. I know how that works. Been there, done that. There are few things they can fix right away to make a world of difference, but they are too stubborn even to accept suggestions.
I don’t do much there. As I’m working on my store I come across some opportunities on their platform, and I take the time to list them. But, because you can’t enter quantity when you add an item, you have to make a note so that you can come back and fix it. However, you have to search for it, because the inventory has no logical sort sequence. It changes from minute-to-minute.
Ugh. The things we do.
2 Likes
The C-Suite told them exactly how to play this out and they did a good job.
They only want sellers around to offset shipping costs, EXACTLY like amazon has been doing for many years. Playing sellers. Sole honeyhole is the brick and mortar stores, relative to that amazon is pimple on walmarts butt. Walmart is doing what ever to pop that pimple. If amazon would go down, I am pretty safe to say the walmart would shut down the grocery side of the website very soon after that. Then find a profitable balance between playing sellers and moving their own goods.
Walmart tried very hard to recruit us for their FBWalmart service. I agreed to use it IF my goods did not go into any warehouse in California or any other state that is planning a nexus issue. They never could agree to that so I passed.
2 Likes
I think about it from time-to-time, but always reject the idea in the end.
One of my competitors uses their WFS services. She doesn’t use FBA, so I’m wondering if I’m missing something?
At this point in time I highly doubt anything is being missed.
It might be worth a try, I always test if it does not smell.
As it stands now, my thoughts are too pull everything off of ebay that is not profitable and just let nature take its course, see how the Q1 2024 looks(that is our busiest time). I do know that when we run out of stock on ebay they do go over to our website and order so, how much that will help???
1 Like
Good point.
I’m too overwhelmed at this point to spend any time on eBay, and Walmart. Amazon too to some degree. If I live to be a hundred, I will never finish adding all of our products.
Right now I am working on 75 totes of our Holiday items. While I’ve got the process down to “warp max” I’m still only 1/2 way through XMAS #17.
I need someone to clone me. 
1 Like
Wow! That’s a lot.
Our warehouse manager wants me to teach his wife how to create listings. She worked for me for years. She just doesn’t have the skills. Nobody else does.
I could really use that clone.
At one time ebay was a honey hole.
I’m sorry they destroyed your opportunities. Is there no place else?
2 Likes
No, what appears to be quid pro quo relationships ebay and amazon have with the major search engines has snuffed out my company and pretty sure MANY others.
I was extremely lucky, we had an entire warehouse full of equipment. If that warehouse was not full we never would have been able to do a start up. Costs to get the machinery is so high its not realistic to consider doing a start up that relies upon online sales.
Also had a terrible headwind, the major players(distributors) in the market space I had chosen, they decided to black ball my company since we sold on ebay (this was before amazon). So like a fool I keep feeding the online market places instead of building sales outside of the marketplaces…Extremely huge mistake.
I should have just pulled the plug when ebay did the “ebay store” inventory to core search dump. Then to make matters even worse they pulled bold-featured-category listings, those were the $25 per category listings (its been many years so that might be the wrong dollar amount).
We had a designated rep back then, our sales manager had a good relationship with him. He finally admitted that those above him said it was not fair to others that my company was so successful…really…
Back then they were toxic, now they are even worse…If all you need is chump change then amazon and ebay are fine, if you are running a business that relies upon marketplace sales, run in the opposite direction.
1 Like
Similar here, I have thousands of products that are not even listed or sold anywhere online that require so much effort to sell:
In the past, there used to be so much less collectibles on the market and I enjoyed fishing for the best deals and rarest pieces.
But these days, there are so many new trends, new brands, new collectible toys and ranges getting released, it’s impossible to keep up with all of it.
I know that you @FunkyMonkey sell or used to sell these TY beanie babies. They are now sold so cheaply and by crowds of sellers.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to find and maintain a good and profitable niche that constitutes demanded collectibles which can be sold with a mark up and continue being rare.
Thankfully, I have a quite good niche which still pays off after 15 years - Japanese collectibles. Whenever someone asks me for a tip what to sell, I recommend the Japanese and Korean popculture, whether it comes to toys, fashion or beauty.
2 Likes
That squirrel looks really cool!
2 Likes
Isn’t that the truth. I am not into buying the new toys. I have a small group of “squishy” things," but they take so much space. We don’t have the space to store them. I have thousands of pieces of kids jewelry. They take so little space, they are still in little boxes in my dining room. The other thousands of products are here:
I still have thousands of Beanie Babies. It’s tough to sell them on Amazon because Ty never provided CPC Certification. So, I list them where i can, and won’t accept less than $13.95. There really isn’t a lot of competition.
The other “crowds of sellers” are clueless. They pick them up at garage sales and think there’s nothing to it. They don’t know how to classify them, have no idea what they are worth, and don’t even know their names. I’ve been listing the holiday Beanie Babies and Jingle Beanies for the past few days. They are so cute. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten so many of them.
My niche has been the kids jewelry. Yet, I don’t ever have time to list them.
The Webkinz are where the money is. I sold one recently for $1,750 that I bought for $7.50 from Ganz. I think I have the largest collection (or one of the largest) on “planet earth.”
Right now the problem is the economy. People stopped buying toys for the kids. That has never happened before.
2 Likes
Wow, you have so many products, much more than me. Are you storing them all at home? I have 3 bedrooms filled with kids jewelry.
Yes, it seems like more and more kids are just growing up glued to their phones or iPads. I have a small nephew who is 6 and he never plays with any toys. He only ever sits next to an iPad.
These days, it’s usually adults / grown millennials who are fulfilling their childhood dreams and buying collectibles.
My own customers who are messaging me are like this, where it’s clear they are the collectors shopping for themselves.
ASMR toys and collectibles for adults is the way how business is going to continue for me.
2 Likes
The pictures are of our 2nd, larger warehouse.
At home we have inventory in every room but the kitchen, and bathrooms downstairs. The four bedrooms have at least our personal collections, and my office has toys everywhere (that’s kind of fun).
We had a high-end collector of Webkinz place large orders a few times a year. Orders for thousands of dollars. We haven’t heard from them since COVID, so I’m hoping all is well.
1 Like