Thrift stores for the digital age: Eric Rader on bringing The Salvation Army online

[podcast_team]

Eric Rader is a long-time eBay user turned seller through his work with The Salvation Army. Join us this week to hear about his most unique eBay purchases, the process of taking a thrift business online, and how eBay tools helped his organization make almost $5 million for charity in one year.

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Georgea: Every seller has a story. I'm Georgea Mpampanis and welcome to our newest episode of the eBay Seller Spotlight podcast, where each month we spotlight sellers with a story to share with us, our guest. This episode is the e-Commerce Director for the Salvation Army, specifically the Adult Rehabilitation Center Command, where he oversees online sales and corporate partnership. Welcome Eric Rader.



Eric: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Georgea: Thank you so much for being here with us today. Tell us about yourself.

Eric: My name's Eric Rader. I work at the Salvation Army. I've been here roughly approaching eight years now. It's been a really cool journey and it's been a lot of fun and I've only been specifically dealing with the eBay side of things for like a hundred percent over the last, a little over a year now. And prior to that I did a lot of the marketing and stuff like that. But when I first came on board at the Salvation Army, actually during the interview process, I'm interviewing for a marketing position, a communications type role. And the person interviewing me at the time randomly says, Hey, what do you know about eBay? Which was kind of a weird question to get in an interview when you're talking about different marketing things. So I was like, I know quite a bit about eBay. Why are you stalking me online or something? And what they had said was that back in around maybe 2010, that time period, they had set up eBay accounts for all of our locations and it kind of had fallen apart a little bit. This was like around 2017, somewhere around there. A lot of them had kind of fallen apart just because of different reasons and they were looking for someone that was familiar with eBay to kind of do a little bit of a part-time job of kind of working through and trying to figure those out. So I said, no, I would absolutely love to do that. And so when I first started working here, it was maybe about 10% of my job. And then it slowly grew to about 20% and then up to about 50% or more and then everybody's favorite time in their life hit, which was called the whole Covid thing. And everybody was at home and nobody wanted to go anywhere. And then all of our stores shut down across the nation and we maybe had a handful that here and there, but the only locations in the United States that were actually making money on the thrift store side of things really were the stores that were involved on the eBay side, which was really, really good for me because I'd wanted all of our teams to be on this e-commerce thing and selling stuff on eBay. And the Salvation Army is a very old organization. It's hard to kind of get people that have been doing things a certain way to kind of pivot and do new things. But when they kind of saw the numbers that were coming out of the fact that only people were buying stuff off of eBay right now, it kind of opened a lot of eyes. So it was a good time to prove the worth of eBay to everybody. And since then we've got most all of our locations on board and we're doing amazing things and it's thanks to you guys.

Georgea: You know, a little thing about eBay when they asked you in the interview, tell me about your earliest experience with eBay or like one of your most memorable.

Eric: I'm one of the super old school users. I've been an eBay users since 1999. I remember back when we still had to send checks and accept checks and weird stuff like that. And so that was always interesting. But I would say a couple of notable things that I've purchased online, the last few cars that I've purchased, I actually bought those from eBay, one of which was kind of fun because I bought a truck in Texas and they shipped it to me in Nashville, Tennessee, which was where I was living at the time. And the person that actually picked it up, they had a prior engagement they had to deal with. So I had the guy call me, they picked it up on a Friday, calls me late that night on Friday and said he is delivering it the next morning. So I was like, oh man, I got overnight shipping on a car basically, which I thought was kind of a good success story for me. So that was that. But I think probably one of the most interesting purchases was we have a Labradoodle named Corduroy and I actually got corduroy off of eBay, which a lot of people are usually, it's kind of a funny thing, but he's 13 years old now, still very much a puppy as most labradoodles are. But we actually purchased him from the eBay classifieds, which was a thing that eBay did a while back when they were trying to compete with Craigslist and some other people. So this was around 2011, early 2011.

Georgea: How does that work? You obviously can't ship the dog?

Eric: No, no, no, no. What was funny is like we connected with the seller who was a breeder out of Clarksville, Tennessee. I was living in Atlanta at the time. And so we were gonna drive up there to actually pick him up and then the seller was like, Hey, I'll meet you in Chattanooga, which was about two and a half hours closer. I'll meet you there if you would like to pay an extra a hundred dollars or so. We're like, sure, why not? So yeah, we met the seller halfway and then came home with a new dog.

Georgea: And you still have him. You're beautiful little Labradoodle.

Eric: Yeah. He's a good boy.

Georgea: What were you doing before you got involved with the Salvation Army?

Eric: Other than buying lots of random things off of eBay, like most people, I actually worked in the agriculture industry. I was still doing the marketing side of things, but I worked for a crop insurance company, which was also a lot of fun. I mean for someone that lives in the middle of a big city like Atlanta, which is where I'm at, to be thrown into the crops of North America, whether it's in olive growing orchards and things like that out of California to corn fields in Kansas and pecan farms in Georgia. I mean it was really interesting and really a lot of fun actually.

Georgea: Very different. But you obviously had some transferrable skills, right? Because you had the marketing. What else were you able, what other skills were you able to utilize from your past work?

Eric: So I think that one of the things that I like to do is to figure out new technologies and new tools that kind of help push you along, essentially. So like in, in regards to the Salvation Army, I mean there was a lot of tools that I had come up with or ones that I'd found out about when I was working at the agriculture company that when I came over here, you know, they were like, okay, we're doing these things this certain way and I was able to say, oh well you know, I've got experience doing it but this is how I've done it. Or these are some of the tools or technologies I've used. And it kind of opened the door for just working a lot smarter than harder. And it's the same thing with like coming on on board with the Salvation Army and them saying, Hey, we tried this eBay thing it didn't really take off like it should have, can you help us? And I'm like, well, yeah, we can. And here's what I know about eBay. And at the time there was Terapeak out there, this was before eBay actually purchased Terapeak which is a great acquisition. It saves us money every month 'cause we were paying Terapeak money and now we're just paying all to eBay, which is fine. But tools like that. But there were lots of other things that just having a fresh set of eyes on something enables you to say, okay, we've got ways that we can do this a little bit better. That was kind of one of the biggest and best transferable skills is just the ability to look at thing with a new set of eyes and move forward with more efficiencies.

Georgea: Do you have some stats that you can share about the sales from eBay?

Eric: Yeah, absolutely. I think that last year, I was just looking at this a minute ago last year, where we're just shy of almost $5 million and that's with all the fees taken out and everything else, which was great. When I first came on board, I think our highest year was something like 1.7 million or something like that. And that's on roughly 14,000 plus items. And right now we probably have throughout the United States, I would say probably 50 or 60 employees probably that are fully dedicated to sourcing items in our thrift stores and warehouses and them placing those items on eBay for us, I mean we have job roles at the Salvation Army that actually have the word eBay in them. So you know, their official titles are eBay picker or eBay clerk or eBay coordinator and stuff like that. It's really neat to see kind of where we were and how we've grown and eBay now offers so many great tools for all sellers, not just us, but like when I first came on board with the Salvation Army, which like I said, it wasn't terribly long ago, we had probably three or four different tools that we were paying for on a daily basis or a monthly basis that would enable us to do the things that we needed to do and to research the items and to list more efficiently and things like that. And now eBay's really stepped up their game a lot. And I see it from a business standpoint as well because you guys are looking at all the tools that people are using and thinking to yourself, wait a minute, we could probably do that and do it better because it's all within the same platform. So it's been a tremendous help because once I kind of got involved a lot more and now we're training new employees that are coming on board and most people that we're hiring have some sort of background with eBay or they're familiar with it because we hire people that are these lifetime thrift shoppers and things like that because truly there's no better job for someone like that to have. And I know that those are our people, those are the people that are out there that love that thrill of the hunt. And to go in and tell someone, Hey, we're gonna pay you a decent wage and benefits to come in and do this all day long. I mean, it's a really cool thing. And you see the passion and the kind of things that we're doing and the kind of things that we're finding and not just how cool it is to go out and look for this stuff all day long, but the fact that we're actually helping people by doing it, it's huge. I mean, I have a 9-year-old son and he'll go to sleep and so my wife and I will be sitting there in his room while he's like getting ready for bed and my wife will look at me and she'll say, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm just looking on eBay. She's like, you don't need to spend any more money on eBay. And I'm like, no, no, no. I'm doing work. I'm making sure that we're listing things correctly and, and then trying my best not to bid on everything that I see. That's a good deal. But no, I mean it's, it's, it's really cool to have this as a job, but also to say that, you know, we're, we're truly helping people with these purchases that people are making.

Georgea: That's awesome. And I'm sure all those roles are gonna fill up very quickly, but for anyone else who can't get a job directly, I assume volunteers are always welcome. So how are some ways you suggest people get involved with the charity?

Eric: There's so many different aspects of the Salvation Army. We are out in, I think I don't know the exact number because it's probably changed since yesterday, but we are in pretty much every country on earth, with the exception of maybe four I think is what it was. We're anywhere and everywhere. And the best bet for anybody that wants to volunteer with the Salvation Army, there are always tons and tons of opportunities out there. Just go to your favorite browser or whatever search engine you want to use and just look up the Salvation Army. And you're probably more than likely gonna have one within a few miles of wherever you might be. Even in the smallest towns in America. We have thrift stores and things like that.

Georgea: Eric, can you tell us where listeners can find, maybe not you in your store specifically, but the Salvation Army Online?

Eric: If you go to Salvation Army ebay.org, what we did is we created a page there that has two things. It has links to all of our individual eBay stores. And this is actually something that I think another person over at eBay that you might know by the name of Brian Burke.

Georgea: We know a little thing about him.

Eric: He does this podcast that some people may have heard for the guy named Griff. Anyway, we actually met for the first time in Tampa, Florida. We actually hosted a eBay seller event there at one of our locations. It was awesome. It was a tremendous success. I mean, everybody had a good time. The best thing, and I really think that we should do more of these, and I talked to some other people about doing them, but when we had the eBay event in Tampa, Florida, we also put together a tour and we gave, you gotta think, these are eBay sellers. These are probably some of the people that live and breathe eBay stuff. And to bring them into a warehouse that is the size of two football fields with pallets and pallets and pallets of unsorted donations, it's it's truly like a kid in a candy store or an eBay seller in a gigantic thrift store. It was unbelievable. But the whole point of that was to say that one of the things that I asked Brian about at the time was to try to find a way that I could create something that I could show off all of our auctions that are happening in live like real time with one link, for example. I talked to him about it in Tampa and then I actually saw him again in Miami at a later date and I asked him about it and he was like, oh yeah, I was thinking about that. And he is like, I'm pretty sure you can actually put multiple sellers in the advanced search function and then separate it by comma. And I was like, oh wow, I didn't know that. I never really thought about that. So let's try it. That night when I got back to the hotel, 'cause I was visiting down there, I tried it out and I sent him an email and I was like, man, you're brilliant. You just solved such a huge thing for us. Because what we did with that information from that seller event is we basically created a website around it, because I'd mentioned before that the website, salvation Army ebay.org not only has links to all of our individual stores, but what we did is we created links to individual searches. So for example, if you are a buyer and you're looking for artwork, whether it's paintings or antiques or sculptures, whatever, you can click on one link and it will show you everything out of all 21 plus of our locations that every, every item that's in that category across all those locations, same things with shoes and anything. I mean, I've got probably 20 or so categories that are listed on there. And what we did is we reached out to a lot of our top buyers and said, what are categories you'd like to see? And then we created a category link so that they can, you know, go in and click on 'em one button and it'll show 'em everything that's ending on eBay in that category soonest. And that one thing alone has created a ton of new business for us, and we have, uh, you know, Brian and the eBay crew to thank for that seller event.

Georgea: So that's awesome. We're making it easier for buyers to go and find specific categories within the Salvation Army

Eric: And easier for me to do my job too, because now I can look and see everything that's ending. And you know, and granted, our people are awesome. I mean, they're so, so good at finding all these amazing things out there. I mean, we've had jerseys like sports jerseys that we find found, which I know is a huge thing for eBay right now, and the information you guys are pushing out there helping us find better things. But just last July we actually sold a jersey. It was a Miami Heat jersey that the buyer, we asked him like what the deal was afterwards. 'cause we honestly didn't know, but we had a jersey sell for $14,400. This was a jersey that had already been priced and was heading out to our store that had a price tag of $3.99 cents on it. And so somebody grabbed it, we listed it, and come to find out it was a game worn Jersey from Dwayne Wade from the Miami Heat, and it was purchased by a reseller that will probably get it authenticated and probably selling it for a million or more. Who knows? But yeah, I mean, things like that, we've had Rolexes. I mean, the people that donate to the Salvation Army they're super, super generous. And at any given time you could probably name some random item and somebody's probably donated it at some point in life. It's, it's almost like eBay. You can find anything there. You just gotta know when to look and what to look for.

Georgea: Exactly. Well, Eric, this was awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Eric: No problem. Thank you guys so much. I really, really appreciate all you guys do for us and everything you do.

Georgea: Eric Rader is the e-Commerce Director for the Salvation Army. When you buy goods from their eBay store, you help fund their Adult Rehabilitation Centers to heal and restore lives. We hope you'll join us in our next episode where we'll shine the spotlight on another seller with an amazing story to share. I'm your host, Georgea Mpampanis. The eBay Seller Spotlight Podcast is produced by Libsyn and podCast411.