Our sales are down as well. eBay has decided they will allow foreign sellers (China mainly) to flood this platform with items that drastically undersell our items. Many of the overseas sellers have learned to create eBay accounts, falsely claiming they are located in the USA. I see this sometimes when ordering items on eBay. It arrives China Post or EMS, but was supposed to be coming from New York. Our business is primarily new Clutch Kits for Motor Bikes. We design them here, but have a manufacturer in China that makes them for us and ships them to us. eBay sellers located in China copy our designs, create an eBay account (saying they are located in San Francisco, etc.) and then ship the clutch kit they purchased direct from the manufacturer to US buyers. They add a very small mark up fee because the cost of living in China is much lower than ours. They don't have to deal with huge costs up front to buy the merchandise in bulk, Expensive shipping via sea liner, Customs Fee's, Customs Broker's Fee's, Tax and freight cost to get it from the Port of Seattle to us here in Roseburg, Oregon. After all of that we still need to box a kit up and ship it to a customer here in the USA. It's a loose, loose situation for the small businesses here in the USA. I think you have the right idea of selling via your web site. No 12% fee, no competition underselling you on the same page as your listing (like eBay now shows at the bottom of the screen), No auto cancelling your listings for no obvious reason and No changing the Order Details Page on a whim without some sort of truthful explanation. I need to get my own web site going.
