Is creating two store the best way to get my items noticed?

[bcswift3_dolls]

My husband and I have an ebay selling Barbies and Cards for the last year. In the beginning, we were equally selling and showing the same about of product. Now, He has so many cards posted each day that no one notices our dolls. 

Should I create my own store or continue to sell in our main store with categories.  A new store will only show my products but I lose our name and good feedback.

Which is the better plan get my dolls noticed?

[inhawaii]

My opinion.

It doesn't matter.

One store is just fine.

Having another store just for your dolls will not get them seen any better.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Most stores do not get much traffic, so the question is why do you think you will get more sales with two stores?

To see your store traffic

https://www.ebay.com/sh/str/edit/stats

With 126 followers I get under 800 store visits/month

[fern*wood]

I personally wouldn't.  If you have your items in different store categories, if someone decides to check your store they can quickly sort out one or the other to look at.  

[dryophelia]

@bcswift3_dolls 

What level store do you have?

How many listings are currently listed in that store?

It may be financially a better idea to have two accounts.

[ebooksdiva]

Having a store has nothing to do with whether or not your items are seen. Interest in your items is what you want. 

[toysaver]

Most buyers don't shop by store, they use search for specific items.  It seems stores are more for sellers to organize inventory plus it serves as another revenue source for eBay.

I've read here of when one of a husband wife team dies and the other wants to keep the account and feedback but can't because the account is in the other's name.  

[bdmh-enterprises]

I mostly sell cards, but I've also always sold stuff my kids outgrow and my parents give me to get rid of. I've never had a problem selling dolls, clothes or electronics.

The vast majority of items are found by people searching for them not browsing a store.

I would also suspect you feel your dolls are being overshadowed by the cards because cards are HOT right now and a lot of other stuff is not. I still have a few American Girl items listed and they sold great at the beginning of the year, but have barely been looked at for the last 3-4 months. I doubt having a separate account or store would help. 

[christworks]

How many items are in your store now? To even open the first store, I would want 500 items and have plans to keep it at that level or grow it. If the answer is you have less than 500 items, my answer to you is no. 

If you have more than 500 items and plan to grow it to a minimum of 1000 items, then the next question is, do either the sports cards or dolls make up more than 2/3rds of your total inventory? If any category of items does, then a separate store may be worthwhile. In your specific case, probably for the sports cards more than your dolls (I'm sorry). Sports cards are far more apt to generate repeat buyers and it is repeat buyers who shop by store. Those people are not interested in your dolls and could be driven away from the sports cards.  If anything, your husband may want you to move out. But, this only applies, in my view, if you have at minimum of 500 items in your store and plan to grow to 1000 items or more. 

My numbers are subjective, but you get the idea. 

I think the bigger question to ask is, were you selling dolls before your husband put sports cards in your store? I know there are dolls that are in demand, highly collectable, and worth some good money. I'm not knocking the doll category at all. I have some listed. A lot of dolls, most actually, just aren't in demand or worth much. So then the question becomes, are your dolls just bad items to list? If they are, another store won't help you generate sales at all. 

In sum, probably the only person who could benefit from you having another store would be your husband. 

[gloryglorygifts]

Did you already open a second store because I only see 3 dolls listed and no cards. It sounds like the other store is already getting traffic, so imho, I would keep them all in the one store and make categories. This way, you don't lose your fb and followers and start from scratch. You have no way to know who is following you for either dolls or cards, so why start anew?

Good luck to you!

[pickapaper]

If people are looking for Barbies, they will put "Barbie" in the search box.  If they are looking for a particular kind of card, they will put that in the search box.  So, IMO, it won't matter if you have only have one store because if you have what they are looking for, they will find it.  And if you have your listings categorized, they can go right to your listings:  it's not they have to sort through all of the cards to get to the dolls. 

I have thought for several years now that Barbies don't sell like they used to, mainly because there are so many out there.  Just out of curiosity, I put "Barbie" in the search box, narrowed it to "Dolls" and it brought up almost a million listings.  That's a lot to look through, a lot of competition.  

[mam98031]

@bcswift3_dolls 

I agree with most of the other posts.  You do not need two stores.  The cards would not be hurting your doll sales.  People looking for the dolls would be searching for the dolls.  Just make sure you have your store categories set up properly.  

Since we can't see how many listings you run regularly per month, it is hard to say which store level you should have.  But if you are posting 300+ listings regularly per month, the Basic store is likely the best choice.   While you get 1,000 free listings on this store level, many of your listings would qualify for the extra 10,000 free listings.

You can keep track of what you have used on your Seller Hub in the Promotions Tile.

[onefootflipper]

I split my store in 2 to separate the cards and noticed absolutely no difference in total sales. This year I remerged them and noticed absolutely no difference in sales.

Browsing specific stores is extremely rare and advanced customer behavior and those customers know how to search within the store.

[bcswift3_dolls]

That was my experiment with setting up a free ebay account under a new name. 

[bcswift3_dolls]

Thank you everyone for your help and advice. This was my little experiment today and I think I'll close it and just stick to our main listing.