eBay

doug@ebay · ‎08-14-2018

In episode two of the Selling on eBay Podcast, we discuss the latest news including the wildfires, recent tariffs and e-commerce, and sales tax. Next we review the Seller Meetup calendar. From there we take a call with the creator of the eBay seller viral dance video and hashtag #eBayDoyouloveme. Then we have a chat with Steven Hong with tips on pricing your inventory. As always we also take call-ins from 888 723-4630. #ebaypodcast

Oh, come on, is this thing on? Did I forget to turn this on? I didn't really. Oh. Oh good. I'm Griff. I'm Alan Aisbitt. Filling in this week for Audrey Tracy, and this is Selling on eBay. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. For the record, this is show number two, show number two? Geez were growing legs. Griff, I have no idea what that means, but every week on selling on eBay, we'll bring you news and advice from eBay sellers, employees on industry experts on how to grow a business on eBay. And don't forget we're still taking your calls just like on the old eBay radio show. Our hotline is open 24 seven. Just call 888-723-4630 that number was, is and will always be. 888-723-4630 and your question can be about anything related to selling on eBay, but what about buying on eBay? Well, I suppose buying too, but do people really need help Buying ? Spending can be difficult sometimes, not for me, of course, not for Griff. So coming up on today's show, we'll talk pricing with eBay. Steven Hong will take your phone calls and much more so shall we get to the news and we shall.

At the top of our news stories today. Wildfires.

That's right. Griff. eBay is closely monitoring the path of the wildfires engulfing our nation sellers who may be affected. Please stay safe that’s what's critical right now. Take care of yourself, family and community. If there is any disruption to your business, please contact eBay customer service at 1-866-540-3229. To request protections against incidents that may impact your seller performance status. So what this means is stockouts due to fire damage or unresolved cases with buyers will not impact your performance status, and also your late shipment rate will not be impacted.

And if you're able to, there are a few things you can do now to help protect your business, communicate with buyers whose items have not yet been shipped, and let them know your situation.

Make sure to end any auctions and take down any buy it now listings before they result in a sale.

We will not charge a fee for ending a listing early.

And if you're an eBay store subscriber, place your store in vacation mode and extend your handling time on all items to when you think you can get back into business.

For more information, you should visit eBay.com/community and check out our latest announcement.

If you don't have direct Internet access, don't worry. eBay can help you make the necessary changes. Please contact customer service as soon as you can at 1-866-540-3229 That's 1-866-540-3229. And update them on your situation. They can make the changes for you over the phone. Now for sellers who want to help and recovery efforts for families affected by the fires and I want to remind people just in one fire alone in the North Bay, there were a thousand homes so far lost, and that's just right at this moment.

It's a lot, so you can join the eBay for charity program and help raising much needed funds. Now this is selling on eBay for charity. So Alan, let's talk about another topic right now. Let's talk about tariffs. Sellers have been asking about those and how these tariff, this tariff war that seems to be developing might impact their eBay business.

Okay, well, I've got some news. So after campaigning on protecting American jobs from foreign competition, President Trump and his administration have announced and implemented tariffs on a number of products that are imported into the US. So far, Tariffs have actually been implemented on $85,000,000,000 worth of goods, including solar panels, washing machines, steel and aluminum and a variety of Chinese products.

Wait a minute, what's aluminum? Oh, is that aluminum? Okay. I think it's ironic that we have like an Irish guy talking about the impact on American businesses.

I'm happy to help!

Well, we're a global company.

That's it.

So go on

Thank you. So a number of countries have retaliated with tariffs on US products bringing the global total of goods being targeted to $165 billion dollars. Additionally, the tariffs on two more groups of Chinese products to total, $216,000,000,000 have been proposed by the administration and it is also in the process of investigating tariffs for important autos.

Alan, what does this all mean for ecommerce?

Well, let me tell you, okay, so far the impact on consumer goods has been relatively limited, but with supply chains that are more globally integrated than ever, The real impact of these actions may not be clear for some time. Meanwhile, the eBay team is engaging with policy makers every day telling the story of small businesses that are trading globally. I'm talking about the importance of free trade. So sellers, make sure you stay tuned to eBay main street for more news on this topic as it develops.

And now onto another topic that's top of the news and on sellers minds and that's talking sales tax.

Now this is from an article on Biz West, which is a website and it's by a writer named Ryan Sanger. I want to make sure we give him credit. On June 21st the US Supreme Court decided for the state in South Dakota versus Wayfair Inc, reversing two of the most significant court cases regarding sales and use tax and those are Quill and National Bella Hess. In both Quill court versus North Dakota and National Bella Hess Versus Department of Revenue of Illinois. It was decided that a retailer must have a physical presence in a state beyond just shipment of goods to a state in order to have something called nexus. And that's a responsibility to collect and remit sales and use tax. However, this has all changed. In South Dakota versus Wayfair, the Supreme Court decided that in this increasingly electronic world, physical presence is no longer required for nexus. This is a game changer. This is huge. In order to simplify the court decision, Internet retailers will now have to start collecting and remitting sales tax in all the jurisdictions they sell into.

Not only will this add a flow through tax burden, it will also add potentially hundreds of filings to most businesses and interstate commerce. Now, while this case specifically relates to Internet retailers, it’s sure to have wide ranging implications to all facets of interstate commerce in the coming years. There are some small silver linings in this case, believe it or not. The Supreme Court did state in its decision that it feels the thresholds South Dakota set are within reason. Now those thresholds are $100,000 of in state sales or 200 separate transactions into the state annually. They also ruled that unreasonable thresholds could still be found unconstitutional in future cases, so for that to happen, a case would again have to make it all the way through various appeals and then make its way in front of the Supreme Court. Now that said, there will hopefully be some sort of checks and balances regarding states and the thresholds they enact. South Dakota's law also prohibited retroactive application of the requirement, and I want to remind sellers we're only talking about two states here and one state in particular, which is South Dakota, but this also sort of reverses the nexus ruling. That was the Illinois case years ago. One of the more important results of this supreme court overturning Quill and National Bellas Hess is that it has opened a door for Congress to now write new legislation providing a national standard for online retail. Some forms of this legislation are already starting to move into congress and over the coming months, this will be an area for business professionals to watch as new law signed in by Congress could drastically impact the future landscape of interstate commerce as a whole and internet retail, that's you eBay sellers in particular. Any lack of action by Congress will provide the states and local jurisdictions the opportunity to enact laws and enforce as they wish, and that could be a bad thing. So Congress do your job. That’a lot of bad news, wildfires, tariff sales tax. There's a lot going on this week! So should we jump into something a little more fun? Yeah, make me happy. Or lighthearted? Sure. All right, Let's talk about sellers. So let's visit our eBay seller meetup calendar. Yeah, I was so hoping we'd continue this old eBay radio segment!

Why is this a surprise? You do write the scripts after all. I know, don't say anything, I was just winging it. So these are upcoming meetups that may be happening in a metro area, Or a Prairie for our more down home sellers. Yes, Praries too. Meet ups are regular events that are managed and scheduled by individual sellers across America. Don't forget Canada! And Canada. Yes, of course. Okay. And Australia and Australia. And so thanks for reminding me. Shall we begin? Let's do it. First up, it's the Chicago area, eBay and ECOMMERCE sellers meetup group. Yay. It'll take place on August 16th at their regular location at Jimmy's Char House and that's in Elk Grove village, Illinois. It's going to happen from six to 9:00 PM. You can RSVP to this meetup at their meetup page or we'll give you more details in a moment, so stay tuned. Now I am thinking about steak so the eBay sellers in the Denver Metro area. The meetup will take place from a 5:50 till 9:00 PM on Friday, August 17th, and that takes place at John and Pams place in Denver. You can register at meetup.com/EBay-Denver. And a meetup that's near and dear to my heart, the New England eBay and ecommerce sellers group meet up will take place on Tuesday, August 21st from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM at the Roundabout Diner and lounge that's smack dab in the middle of I-95 in Portsmouth New Hampshire. If you miss the exit, just hang a louie, get off at the next exit and then hang a lefty and you'll be there wicked fast.

Wow. I was wondering what happened to you there. You've kind of gone back to your roots for a moment.

Whoa. Where was I? Okay, I'm back. Yeah, alright you can see all of our upcoming meetups on our brand new community page dedicated to meetups and other in person events where eBay is either in attendance or the topic of an event. The page is located at eBay.com/meetups . Each event on the meetup calendar has a details link where you can find the date, time, location, and signup information for that meetup.

And lastly on the news, our special correspondent and current cohost, hey, that's me! Alan Aisbitt, but I was going to say your name, but if you don't want me to, that's fine. Anyway, Alan has a special news story, so take it away. Alan. Today, I have a story about a viral Instagram trend this week that eBay has noticed and I'm delighted to say that we've been joined by the creator of this trend on today's podcast. So I'm going to welcome in Krissy. Krissy. Say Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me! Hi. How's it going? Thanks for joining us today. So, Chrissy, I want to kick it off. So you started a vital Instagram trend. #eBayDoyouloveme and it featured some fantastic dance moves. So, could you tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to create the Hashtag? Well, it, it was a couple of different events. I was driving home on Sunday, 10 hours from California, back to Portland Oregon with my teenage kid and over and over 10 hours. All I heard was this, this song from Drake, In my feeling. And the hook line is Kiki, do you love me? And I'm singing along and I'm changing the lyrics because I'm a corny mom that does that. And I'm like, eBay do you love me? It kinda like stuck in my head so I get home, I'm ready to do my shipping because I've been gone for three days and I need to get my packages out and I opened up my eBay and I only had one item to ship because I'm waiting for payments from a lot of other people so I was like man, I'm all in my feelings. I've only got one package to ship and I was like, I'm going to make a parody video because this is hilarious because I'm corny and I think it's hilarious. My kids did not think it was hilarious. When do kids think that anything their parents do is hilarious except when they have like a pratt fall? No, I even showed them. I'm like, look at what's happening. Everybody's making these videos and they're like, yeah, that's not cool mom. So I was like, because I really, I really connected with the Instagram community and in social media with the resellers, so I knew that people would get a kick out of this so I just filmed it really quick. I, you know, me dancing along with my one lonely, eBay package, switching up the words and I also knew that my reseller friends are just as fun as me. So I said I'm going to challenge them to a reseller dance challenge. eBay, do you love me? Let's see what you guys could do with your packages. And of course it totally took off. Everybody started posting their videos. I think we all joked around that we got nothing done on Monday because we did nothing but refresh our feed to watch the new videos that were coming through and just really laugh at everything. It was really good to see the community kind of come together and have a good time and joke and laugh when you know it's, it's kind of a stressful time, you know, it's summer back to school and people are going through personal stuff with the fires, slow sales, seller update. I saw one, I guess I must've been out of the room because no one asked me to be in it. Even the employees did one! Well, that was the great, great thing is that eBay did their own. We loved it! That was a lot of fun. So like you, I don't think a lot of work was done around eBay on Monday. We were watching all of the seller videos too to be totally honest. A yeah, you inspired us to, to hop in a room. So we got, we got a bunch of employees and we filmed it and um, we had a lot of fun. I think it was a great thing, you know, a lot of us were coming. We're still kind of on the tide of eBay Open. We're reinvigorated and we had a lot of energy. We're ready to get back in our business. But for those who didn't get to go to eBay Open, this was a way for eBay to connect with them. .And I think it was really great for the people that made the videos to get recognition from eBay and a little shout out and say like, yes, eBay, loves you and thought, like the whole community was just super stoked that eBay even recognized that they watched the videos and then made the followup video.

We totally love our reseller family, especially on Instagram. You guys just bring so much positivity. So yeah, keep it up and we'll be jumping on the next viral craze as well to make sure that the eBay employees, and maybe next time we'll invite Griff.

I don't think you will. So Chrissy, what are you going to do with your first million now that you're an internet celebrity?

Well Duh, I'm going to reinvest it so that I can relist it so I can make it into 2 million and 3 million on eBay! That's what I wanted to hear! That's one smart woman.
.
I'd encourage all of our podcast listeners to jump onto Instagram and checkout #eBayDoyouloveme. Do you want to share your Instagram handle? Maybe you might get some new followers

I have two Instagram handles. One of them is strictly only reselling. It's called reseller revolution. And the other one with the video there actually posted is frugal underscore living and I encourage everybody to hop on Instagram, Instagram account, follow the resell and community. So knowledgeable. It's so inspiring. Great to have a network of co-workers through Instagram and it's a great place to be

And how long have you been selling on eBay, Chrissy? My son is 14, so 14 years. But full time for three years

That's a long time! Thank you. That's great to hear. So you're son grew up on eBay?

Actually, a lot of Christmases and Birthdays have been built from eBay sourcing and shopping as well. My son has a Supreme addiction, so we do a lot of Supreme shopping on eBay.

What is Supreme? I just know Diana Ross and the Supremes, of course I'm showing my age.

So you're just showing that you're not a millennial because Supreme is like the clothing line to have If you're a 14 year old boy.

Oh I knew that.

Number one trend in things on eBay. You'll see Supreme collaborate with somebody else. Yeah. So on the eBay.com home page you can see what's trending.

Do they make a clothing line for the elderly? You could probably wear it.

Okay. Well that way we could ruin it for the kids and they'll have to look for something else.

You will take the value.

Hey, look what I just picked up at the store! It's a pair of, It's a pair of Supreme pants kiddie. What do you think? They don't look good. Hiked up to your waist, grandpa.

So one other thing I'd like to call out is that eBay is actually offering shipping supplies to sellers who upload videos. So if there's anyone out there who hasn't yet uploaded a video, nows a good time to hop onto Instagram, but make sure you use the #eBayDoyouloveme under details there. So if we see your video, we will send you out some shipping supplies. So let's keep it going. Keep up the positivity. So great to watch.

Yeah, Super Fun. Thanks for doing that. guys.

Yeah. Cool.

So I was just wondering, Chrissy, is there anything else you wanted to add before we sign off?

I think it's really great that eBay connected with the community with the followup and the video and the offering of the shipping provided. A lot of time, It feels like we are resellers that we're working on this platform, but it's really like one sided, the only hear the voice of the other resellers, so to hear the voice of the platform I think was really refreshing and inspiring and like I said, I think a lot of people got really energized from it and excited about it and reconnected on a personal level with eBay. It showed that you know, that they have a face and that they're human and they can play along and have fun just like us.

We have terrible dance skills just like everybody else. Sellers, and you have all heard this at eBay Open that Sellers really are the lifeblood of eBay and as I sat in the office, we were all sitting around watching the videos and It's so great to see, you know, Sellers are the reason why we come to work everyday. So thanks a million for, for posting the video. We appreciate it. We're going to continue watching all the new ones that come in and thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. It was such a pleasure speaking with you.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks Chrissy.
Up next on selling on eBay. Pricing with Steven Hong. Don't go away.
One of the critical factors in the eBay selling success equation is knowing how to price inventory. As a seller, you want your prices low enough to attract buyers while at the same time generating the healthy margins you need to make in order to keep your business viable and growing. Recently I had a conversation with Steven Hong. He's the senior manager for pricing, buyer and deals here at eBay and he shared some interesting insights into the science behind pricing. So Steven, we're going to talk about pricing today and pricing is a complex topic for eBay sellers. When we talk about price guidance, what exactly do we mean?
So when we're talking about price guidance on eBay, what we're really talking about is eBay's recommendation for the right price to maximize both the sales as well as velocity. So it's some people, I think the misconception a lot of times is we're trying to drive down the price. Griff, you and I did a Facebook live a while back talking about the same subject and I read the comments afterwards and a lot of people are commenting that you know, a lot of the efforts that we put in are around trying to drive down the price but that's not necessarily true.
What we're trying to do is find the right price at which we're maximizing the sales value and the sales philosophy.
So we're not trying to force a rush to the bottom.
Yeah, we're just trying to make it attractive to buyers.
Exactly.
Where is the first resource a seller should check when they're attempting to determine what the current market value for their product is?
Yeah, it's a good question. I suspect we probably have a lot of long time sellers here listening to the podcast and traditionally what we've seen sellers do is simply just do a search on eBay and they'll look at the live listings for the product that they're interested in listing. Kind of look at which items are doing well in search, what the right prices are, kind of get some tips on the right content, ideas around how to do their images so we still think that's a good way to go.
A good first step here and then while they're doing the search, they'll also do a filter by sold items, so not only what's live but what's actually been selling. What's the price it's been selling at? A good thing there to look at is sort of the implied demand because you can get a sense of how many units are selling in a single day. Really working on enhancing some of the intelligence that we're giving to sellers in some of our selling platforms. So if you go on seller hub into the growth tools, some of you will already see the price guidance. This recommended price by eBay and we're planning to do just a lot of improvements there and the algorithms and some of the intelligence that we show them.
That can't be easy because it's not as though the entire inventory of eBay is already structured data.
So there's so much variation in differentiation between otherwise maybe similar products, so price guidance can be really, that's a challenge for us in those categories.
Yeah, it is and it's certainly a big project, a lot of resources and investment there, but we think it's worthwhile because we really want to make sure that sellers are equipped with the best and right data to inform performance.
So you talked about live listings and sold listings on eBay as a research destination, but should sellers be looking outside of eBay? So for example on Google shopping, Where else would you advise people to look and no holds barred? We can mention any marketplace or anything.
So I think the answer there is an absolute yes. We know that we live in a really competitive environment here. I mean just when you start thinking about the buyers that are on eBay, you have a wide mix of them.
So you have your sort of loyal eBay shoppers that come to eBay, do all their shopping on eBay. We also recognize that we have a lot of shoppers that shop across retailers that do a lot of comparison shopping and not to mention eBay's been putting a lot of investment into marketing offline, and so we get a lot of shoppers that are coming on eBay for the first time that are used to going to their other favorite retailer of choice. That being said, what we really encourage sellers to do is kind of think about the entire market. We encourage you guys investigating, you know, all the other competitors. Platforms like Griff, you mentioned Google shopping. There's a lot of tools out there to inform your pricing decisions.
We've talked about this in the past and I know that price is one consideration for a buyer. Is it always top consideration and I'm begging the question because I actually know how my own behavior is.
What are the other considerations when you're talking about price guidance, that a seller should keep in mind that may reassure them that they don't need to rush to the bottom in order to attract buyers?
Well when you think about buyers, it's really helpful to think of value as an equation. Of which, pricing is a big component of that, but there's a lot of other things that are in the equation when it comes to a decision choice. Griff, You mentioned things like shipping, free returns, service levels. These are all things that are taken into consideration in a purchase consideration. I also think of not just shipping prices, but sort of shipping service levels. The handling time. Uh, a big piece of consideration for shoppers on eBay is seller rating. That translates to buyers as a form of sort of a confidence signal, so if you have a high rating, you're a proven seller and if you had the same price, same service levels as your competitor, but you have the better rating, it's going to sort of be a tiebreaker breaker in that decision.
Is time on eBay a consideration with buyers? Do we know if buyers actually looked to see how long is a seller been operating on eBay? Does that factor into their decision process?
We kind of go in thinking back to the different types of buyers that are shopping the platform. Certainly the eBay loyalists, those that are very familiar with the platform can kind of pick that out when they're making their purchase decisions. How to identify who the seller is, what their rating is. So there's a certain subsegment of buyers where that's a critical component of the purchase decision. That's not to say there's plenty of new buyers that might not be as familiar with the ecosystem, so it's kind of a mixed bag. But I think that is a pretty key component of the value equation.
So you do all this work and you get your price guidance and it's working for you and then time moves on, but we know that prices change.
If the marketplaces that we serve were static, this would be an easy job. I suppose, but how does a seller with a lot of listed inventory keep up with the fluctuating values and trends of his or her inventory so that they make sure they're continuing to sell at the same volume?
This answer, might quite honestly be unsatisfactory at the moment, but right now on site, it's really just a function of monitoring your prices and changing them regularly. It's a brute force. That being said, if you do a quick google search, there's a lot of third party tools, plugins that work well with the eBay ecosystem and enables things like dynamic pricing.  This is a point of investigation for our team here. One that, uh, you know, we're thinking about how do we include some of these features and capabilities in the core platform, Platforms like seller hub, enabling things like dynamic pricing. And so this is certainly a space to continue to watch. You know, we're really looking to invest and make some big improvements in the Seller experience here. So having the right price guidance, Steven, when at time of listing is really important, but isn't it even more important to have some guidance or understanding of value and price at the time of sourcing?
Definitely. That's probably a big part of their business already, They have robust tools to kind of think through the purchase procurement decisions. Some of these same tips that we kind of gave around how to think about pricing, these should be taken into consideration earlier on and when they are thinking about sourcing. Something that folks may not be aware of is the seller hub tool. If you take a look at the growth tab, there's actually some data given around sourcing guidance, so not only for items that you've already listed, but you can actually dig into new products, new categories that you're not actually familiar with.
Kind of get a sense of what's in demand, what are the brands, what are the right seasons to sell in? So it's an interesting place to kind of take a look and do some research.
I have a shelf in my garage and product that I've sourced that I didn't bother to do any research at the time of sourcing. I thought I would go by my quote unquote intuition and I overpaid, so I'm just waiting for these things to either rise in value or I'll just liquidate them and get the cash back. But I realize now how important it is to have some idea of value before you go out to start sourcing product.
It happens to all of us.
Griff, I guess it does.
Steven, how does shipping factor into item value? And should shipping costs or service be a consideration at sourcing time?
Shipping is certainly a big part of the value equation both for buyers and for sellers.
Free shipping is increasingly becoming a retail standard and even on eBay, we do find that a lot of our sellers are adopting free shipping as sort of standard practice for all their listings. At the same time, we recognize that, you know, not everybody's going to be able to kind of support that type of a service level, but to the extent possible, I mean we would highly encourage you to think about listing with free shipping or kind of baking in the price of shipping into the price itself. From a buyer standpoint, when they see the free shipping signal, it does factor into their purchase decision.
Do you have any information or data that you can share about the popularity of the various search results sorts besides best match. For example, the usage of the sort that I, I know I use all the time which is lowest price plus shipping.
That's certainly a popular one. We do find that a lot of our buyers are using those filters and kind of honing in on the particular service levels, like free shipping on handling time. So yeah, it's certainly something to take into consideration.
And Steven, I mentioned service before because I'll look for the best value. I think that's a given consideration of any buyer, but then I want speed of service. Specifically how quickly is the item going to arrive? And if it's something I don't need right away, I may be willing to wait a week or two. Or if it's coming from another country longer, but I oftentimes end up spending more money willingly, just to get the item faster. So that's another consideration. And price guidance I assume, is being able to provide those options to your buyer that they can make a decision about how much they want to spend or what quality of shipping, if they need the item quickly or not.
Like I said, it's a value equation and so for some buyers they'll pay a premium for that fast shipping, so even if you're not able to list it for free, I think it is important to kind of list that as an option even if the cost is going to be passed on to the buyer. If you're able to support that service level.
So we know what could happen when two or more sellers have identical products engage in a price war. So how does a seller avoid a rush to the bottom while at the same time, making sure that their unsold inventory is moving and as small a loss as possible.
The misconception is that to win the sale, you have to have the best price, you have to have the lowest price.
And that is a misconception.
Yes. The fact is that there are certain scenarios in which it makes a lot of sense to match the lowest competitor or sometimes even price higher.
Some of these examples might be situations where the product you are listing has very high demand. So you think about new product launches, collectible items or rare items, limited run items. Now, I've really been getting into sneakers lately and a lot of these shoe companies will drop very limited quantities of specific shoes and in those scenarios there's no need to race to the bottom. There's a premium that can be charged because it's a scarce item.
You and me both. I've just started collecting athletic shoes that are rare. Yeah. I don't know why this happened. I think we're both turning into Imelda Marcos. What should a seller do in a situation where he or she can't lower the price anymore than it's been lowered, but they want to get rid of the item? Is price guidance now no longer a factor? Or is that something that should still be top of mind as we're venturing into the liquidation loss area?
What are some of the things that a seller should keep in mind at that point?
Griff, you and I talked about this last time on Facebook Live and I think it was actually you that brought up the idea of bundling items together into lots and I think that's a great idea. And so in the situation where you have a lot of inventory on hand where the value is depreciating, that's probably a situation where you can bundle items together and try to find a single buyer that might be able to take that off your hands. Not only in sort of lots but maybe thinking about bundling supplementary items together. So you think about devices plus accessories, augmenting the value there. If that doesn't work, you can try, You know, if you can't drop the price, think about maybe using other tools to improve visibility. So like things like promoted listings.
That's always an option there. And then one other idea is you might want to consider selling it at a loss now because if it truly is inventory that's depreciating in values, there's the notion of sunk costs where you're not going to be able to recover value anyway. So it's better to sell now at this loss versus at a heavier loss in the future.
Oh, so I see. So controlling the loss by not waiting until the loss increases.
Correct.
I know that we use the phrase in retail called long tail. So I bought a 2003 Murano brand new, which I've kept. And right now it's worth virtually nothing really. I mean it's a great car. It has low miles, someone would buy it, but if I can just hold onto it until 2028, I believe it's 25 years and now it becomes a classic car and it starts to go up in value.
So this is the kind of consideration for people like you and I who buy sneakers for example, is planning to hold onto them so that your pricing can come into play later. So you're holding on the inventory for a longer time. Not everyone has that luxury. Most people need to keep that thing turning, so if they want to stay on top of the current value. So how long should a seller sit on unproductive inventory before resorting to a lowered price scheme or a sale scheme or liquidation?
It depends. I think about some extreme cases. Think about perishable items. Clearly that's going to depreciate over time and very unlikely that it will appreciate in value. And so for a situation like that, I mean you probably want to sell. Again, the notion of sunk cost now versus in the future, but then you think about the inverse extremes. Precious metals, collectibles, these things will appreciate or sometimes fluctuate in value over time and so there's not a sense of an urgency to sell that right now. And then there's a lot of things in between in that spectrum. Something that fluctuates in value quite a bit, items like seasonal items.
Oh yes. Yeah. Right. So I'm really into snowboarding. I was just going to say ski equipment.
Yes. Winter equipment, winter sports. If you try and sell that right now, you're not going to maximize the same value as you would if you were to sell later on in the year, say late fall, as people are gearing up for the snow season. Right now, might be a good time to sell your pool equipment or pool floaties, which seems to be hot.
So if I do have a selection of, for example, winter items like snowboarding or skiing, it might actually benefit for me to take them off eBay and then reintroduce them when the time is right, so to speak and just before winter.
Yeah. It's certainly a strategy to keep in mind if you have the ability to kind of put those things on layaway, storage costs aren't exorbitant, might make sense to kind of just hold onto that for a better shopping season.
Is unsold inventory considered an asset or a liability to a business?
It really depends on the category of inventory or you're sitting on. If it's commodity type stuff that was prevalent and easy to find. It's probably better to sell it now versus holding onto it and having that depreciate in value, but if it's something that's truly scarce or a rare, there's not that sense of urgency to sell right at this moment.
Steven, are there other options for liquidating dead stock that don't involve taking a huge write off that comes with a fast liquidation sale and if so, what would they be in your mind?
For example, we talked about it before. Bundling products. That can be a great way of liquidating and are there other things that sellers should consider? I think that's probably a really good way to think about liquidating is bundling and trying to kind of move large lots of inventory at the same time. And something to kind of watch here is, I work closely with our business and industrial team here. They're working on some innovative solutions around B to B transactions, getting creative with sort of payment options. And the reason I bring that up here is because today, I mean the payment option is well known Paypal. But in a future state you can imagine business buyers that want to make very large purchases that need other types of payment options available to them, so they're kind of trying to make more options available to enable larger purchases, larger transactions.
I'd take advantage of that. I've got currently an inventory of men's shirts, that half of which I just need to get rid of. I hate to just take a total loss, but I'd love to bundle them into like a lot and sell them to another business so the they can sell them. Yeah. What should a seller do in the way of discovery or research prior to committing to an inventory purchase in order to better guarantee that they will be able to make a profit from that inventory? Should sellers be staying up to speed on trends on marketing and retail trends? What buyers are buying and if that's the case, how? How do they do that?
There's certainly loads of resources available to folks online. Uh, you know, I mentioned the growth tab on the seller hub. It's a good place to start, there's no shortage of data and research available to sellers, but I think what's important there is there's this notion of paralysis by analysis. And you're never gonna have the perfect information and, and sort of I think going into when you're selling a new product or selling in a new category, going into it eyes wide open, recognizing that there's a learning curve there.
And so you're trying to, you know, the most simplest equation that's intuitive to most sellers. Sales minus your cost of goods sold is your profit. But it's about maximizing profit over time. As you learn the categories, as you learn when to make those purchases, those procurement purchases, when's the best time then to flip that and maximize your sales? And sometimes you know, let's be honest, we're going to make a bad call or we're going to take a loss on items. You think of it sort of as tuition and learning the business. Right?
Exactly. So I think it's about the attitude that you have.
A very wise old man once told me, he was an antique dealer. He said, you'll never learn from your successes in this business, but you will learn everything you need to know from each and every failure. Every time you make a mistake in purchasing that knowledge will help you make a success in the future. None of us want to make mistakes. I think we're all kind of perfectionists in a way, but it's kind of necessary to make a few of them in order to grow.
Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly.
Steven, I want to thank you for joining us on our show and we look forward to revisiting you in the future and talking more about pricing and inventory on eBay.
Cool. Thanks Griff. Appreciate it.
You're welcome.
You've heard a lot from us so far today.
Now let's hear from you. 888-723-4630 is our number. And Griff, Take it away.
Thanks Alan. Let's go to our first caller.
Please state your name and tell us your question or comment. Thanks for calling.
Hi, I'm Martha Oberman, Harwell Dallas and my question is, one of our Dallas area post office distribution centers had a mercury spill and has been closed since Wednesday and will not open until Friday. My question is do we stand at risk for late delivery? Especially if we have guaranteed delivery because obviously packages aren't getting processed in the Dallas Fort Worth area at that particular facility.
That's a great question and first off, we need to point out , who sends mercury through the mail? It's a hazardous substance. Don't do that. I'm sorry to hear about your distribution center. There is some good news in this. Well, not for the center obviously, but for either guaranteed delivery or any other shipping metric. As long as you can show that you got the mail into the mail carrier's hands within your promised stated handling time and there's an acceptance scan, then you're covered. Even if the package is late delivered for whatever reason. And this and this includes guaranteed delivery. So in a case like this, if you're, I'm assuming the distribution center isn’t a drop off location? So the regular post offices in your area are slow.
No, this particular location is where the, it's one of the major distribution centers where they cross it. The mail goes from the post office branches to the center. Ah, okay. Yes. So you'll be fine. Your buyers might not be. In which case, my suggestion by the way is if you know your mail packages are going through that distribution center is to maybe send a note to your most recent buyers telling them that there may be a delay in the delivery because of this unfortunate catastrophe that the distribution center had. But as far as your seller metrics, your acceptance scans will indemnify you against any marks against your metrics. And if a buyer who purchases something, purchased it through an eBay guaranteed delivery search results sort and they are unhappy with the late delivery for whatever reason, eBay will take care of them. With either a reimbursement of their shipping from eBay's pocket or there's other things that they'll do for buyers, a gift card to make them happy, but there's no impact on the seller in this case at all.
That's great to know. I heard it on the radio this morning. And I thought, Oh No, I better go check on my deliveries. But maybe other people in the Dallas area need to know this.
Well, I thank you so much for alerting us to this and I'm sure people who are living in the Dallas, Fort Worth area who aren't aware of it, who sell on eBay, are going to be very grateful that you called. Well thank you. Thanks. Good luck with your new podcast.
Thank you, Martha. I hope you'll listen and give my best to Herb.
I sure will.
Okay, take care.
Bye. Bye now.
Bye.Bye.
And let's move to our next caller on our hotline here. Uh, welcome to the selling on eBay podcast. Can you please state your name and your question or comment?
My name is Christina and my comment is I sold a cabbage patch doll. The lady offered me $90 and I accepted and she paid. And then she wrote back and said she'd like to cancel the order because the postage is too high.
Oh Geez.
Yeah, and so then yeah, so eBay notified me and they said, should I or shouldn't I? Yes or no? Am I going to cancel? Of course I said, yes, I will cancel, which I did, but now my question is, do I have to relist it? Or does eBay relist it for me?
We don't automatically relist it. We leave the decision up to you. But you can, from the moment the item is canceled, you can immediately relist it. And if you go to a seller hub and look for your sold items, you'll see there's an action option for each of the options and you can choose realist and it'll bring up the item in the cell form. You can make any changes if you want and then you can relist it and it will be live on the site again.
Oh, great. That answers my question. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. We're happy we could help you, Christine.
Thank you.
Okay, take care and thanks for listening to the selling on eBay podcast.
Let's go on to our next caller.
Please state your name and your question or comment.
Name, Chris Smith. My question is, what can we do about refunding shipping charges when you are forced to cancel a label when the customer calls you or messages you a few hours after a sale and asks you to cancel when you've already shipped the item? I have one day shipping and I also have free returns. So if they want to cancel that's okay. But I'm getting a lot of money tied up in shipping labels that the funds are not returned up to 21 days. And I've had very few ever returned or refunded to me. So it is a cost. Granted , it is a cheaper cost than the cost of shipping which is free and the return which is free, but it's still yet one more cost. I was wondering if there was a way we could expedite the refund of those labels. Thank you.
Thanks for that question. Let me see if I can answer it for you. So unfortunately there's really no way for us to shorten the time it takes to get a refund back for a voided label that's been sent through USPS. Right now, We're kind of at their mercy. But in addition to that, the money that goes through Paypal as well, so there may be an extra day or two. I will definitely bring this back to eBay and we can find out whether or not there's a way in the future to maybe make this faster, although it would be a disservice to you and I think unfair for me to make a pledge or to raise expectations that this is something that could be done. I know it's a bit of a hassle. I've watched those cancellations. It sounds like three cancellations in the last nine days or recently is a lot of cancellations, but it may be just an aberration and check it from there. But thank you for your call and that's our call in segment for this week. You can always join us and our next call in segment by dialing our number 888-723-4630. That’s 888-723-4630. Follow the instructions. Wait for the beep. Leave your message. We'll get back to you. Thanks again to all of our callers for our second podcast. We look forward to your call next week. 888-723-4630.
Well Alan.
Yes, Griff?
That's our show for this week.
Oh really?
It's over so fast.
Yeah. Time flies, When you're doing a podcast.
You better tell me what's up for next week then.
Well, we're going to talk to a few sellers about getting ready for the holidays, sourcing inventory supplies, getting your employees in shape. All that. You know, the holiday season for buyers starts in November usually, but for sellers, that season starts a lot earlier.
Like September? No, more like June or even May. And we'll have more news stories next week. And phone calls. Remember, 888-723-4630.
You can call that hotline anytime of the day, any Day of the week. Yes, indeed. 888-723-4630 and you can subscribe to our show as well. Just follow the instructions on the selling on eBay podcast, community page, eBay.com/sellingonebay.
Alan, read us out won't you? Sure thing Griff. Selling on eBay is created by our community team here at eBay. Director of community, Brian Burke, our Editor in Chief on host Griff, Our lovely and talented cohost and creative consultant Audrey Tracy. Esteemed marketing and social manager for our show Liz Austin and we mustn't forget our very own community tech manager and king of Instagram, Mr Doug Smith. And of course community manager, this week's cohost and all around decent bloke from Dublin. Yeah, I'll have a pint! Alan Aisbitt. By the way, Nice job. You did pretty good. Thank you Griff. Selling on eBay is produced and distributed by Libsyn and Podcast411.
On behalf of eBay, I'm Alan Aisbitt.
And I'm Griff. And we'll be back next week with a fresh new episode of selling on eBay. Until then, happy sales to you until we meet again. Millennials. Just look it up.
Should we go grab a few pints?
Let's go. I'll see you at the bar.
See ya there Griff. Or is it the pub?
First One's on me. Oh, thank heavens. I didn't bring my wallet.
You never do.
Alright, Make sure you shut the light off as we're leaving. Bye.
Okay.

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Episode2 || Pricing Inventory, Seller Dance Video, Weekly News