Invest In More Inventory??

[meme6253]

With Sales as Sluggish as they are, & The Condition Of The World, Is anyone still considering in Investing In Even More Inventory, Or Just Try Revamping The Old??, Myself I would consider more Inventory, But only if I can get it Extremely Cheap, But I am Revamping Many Listings With Fingers Crossed

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

At this point, I'm not planning on making any changes to what I've been doing. 

[luckythewinner]

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@meme6253 wrote:

With Sales as Sluggish as they are, & The Condition Of The World, Is anyone still considering in Investing In Even More Inventory, Or Just Try Revamping The Old??, Myself I would consider more Inventory, But only if I can get it Extremely Cheap, But I am Revamping Many Listings With Fingers Crossed

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That's a bit of a broad question.

If sales are sluggish, a business should always do some objective analysis to try to determine why sales are sluggish.

If the root cause is that no one wants your items, neither revamping listings or buying more of the same inventory will really address the issue. In that case what you really need is different inventory which requires a different round of objective analysis to find better inventory.

And with respect to getting inventory "extremely cheap", shouldn't that be a goal for every business all the time? 🙂

[titipeo]

Everyone adjust differently, its all based on their current circumstances. My inventory is varied & comes from distress, abandoned goods, cost is minimal, but I have no control on availability. 

[bashort]

yes

[collectfest]

Agree with you. I'd only add has nothing to do with present political events.

[richards*collection]

Compared to me your doing great, your sales are steady, maybe you should charge more. If you could show, on paper, a investment, or improvement, on your shop and inventory expansion it would justify getting more hot wheels. I would say if I wanted to invest in hot wheels, I would buy yours. Any lots you can buy up cheap, sure, but if I were to buy all you have today, the value of them will be double in five years I think. Hot wheels are very interesting to me, I have been looking and looking for something that will sell regular like those. I would invest.

[onlinecentral]

I looked at your active listings and then clicked on Sold, on the left. I did some math and a single digit percentage of your inventory sold in the past 90 days.

I agree with Lucky in message 3. Most of us sellers (including me) need to list faster selling, more desirable items in other categories. We can decide if buying inventory makes sense by considering the Evaporation Rate. We can click on Sold, on the left.

I would spend less time revamping existing listings and more time refining my business model.

[dnasilver]

Sales have been booming for some and sluggish for others. We all deal in different items of which each and every one of those needs to be analyzed independently to determine the decisions we make for tomorrow, next week, next month and years ahead.

[hawkwind5454]

A lot of variables enter into that. I'm always looking for items to resell. Am I going to be having a box truck back into my driveway, and drop off pallet, after pallet of items? Uhm, that would be a no.  I have always been in sales and have always been able to work around the ebb and flow of selling.... I have never seen this before, however; The pandemic, the politics, the economy.... Sometimes, it just flat out goes beyond examining what one can do, to roll their inventory. Sometimes a good share of *you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink* is going to have to enter into the equation, kike it, or not. One not only needs items to sell, one also needs potential buyers to buy. I just don't think the latter is lucid enough to go hog wild on buying inventory right now. I will do some, but basically, will be doing a lot of the wait and see strategy. 

[m60driver]

Actually, my sales have rebounded a little bit.  But many of the old bread and butter items I use to pick up at garage sales and estate sales I no longer bother with as a direct result of the increase in postage, not world events that are being impacted by the rise of The Dark side of the Force, which is clearly in ascendance.  If someone can come up with a better metaphor then have a go at it.

[glasser]

For what I sell--art glass 95% of the time--continued inventory purchasing never stops (unless no cash 🙂 ) as you need to buy things when the opportunity arises as you may not see again at a good price for a while.

[collectfest]

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@onlinecentral wrote:

I looked at your active listings and then clicked on Sold, on the left. I did some math and a single digit percentage of your inventory sold in the past 90 days.

I agree with Lucky in message 3. Most of us sellers (including me) need to list faster selling, more desirable items in other categories. We can decide if buying inventory makes sense by considering the Evaporation Rate. We can click on Sold, on the left.

I would spend less time revamping existing listings and more time refining my business model.

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thanks, good post, I am guilty of spending too much time revamping. I have plenty of inventory that will sell.

[iart]

We'll continue to look for high quality, rare and inexpensive books and paper items to sell.

We'll be branching out to other items as well - but they have a much lower profit level.

At the same time, we're trashing a lot of our older stock, along with our less expensive items.

Then, we'll be reducing prices on some items to speed sales while we increase prices on other items to cover increased shipping costs  and fees.

In short, we're a mess.

[dirk12955]

Tagging on:

Revamping old or listing new?    I do both.    Listings get old,   They've either been seen or there's something 

wrong with them to keep them from being seen.

I've been on a buying spree.    IMO new listings bring new buyers and also bring renewed interest from past 

customers that have seen what I have over and over again. 

I've made 200-300 listings recently and try to make 30 new listings per day.

December was terrible and I made hardly any new listings.     January was up 30% from December.     February is up about 22% over January.    List,   List some more.

So buying and  listing has paid off.    I see no other reason for an increase in sales of 52% from December to February.

You can't sell from an empty shelf.    The listings get stale and boring after a while.