This week; eBay seller thequeenofauctions joins Griff to talk about how she handles her old inventory. The new eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake joins the podcast for the first time to talk about the new Community platform enhancements that she and her team have just unveiled. And finally, Griff and Rebecca answer a question from a UK seller about Late Delivery.
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Episode 130 Links
A reminder regarding eBay’s zero-tolerance policy on price gouging
eBay’s Price Gouging Policy Help Page
eCommerce Times
The New eBay Community Feedback Forum
Lynn Dralle’s eBay Store
Lynn’s Consignments
Guests: Lynne Dralle (eBay Seller), Sheila Dhake (eBay seller)
Hosts: Griff, Rebecca Michals
Episode 130 transcript:
Lynn Dralle " Unique, one of a kind items Griff take a long time to sell. And with 10,000 free listings for my anchor store, that was always my goal to keep it 10,000. And so I would end the older ones and that's how I looked at. It was ending things that had been enlisted in 2014, 2015, and do it that way. But with the new send offer, I have been selling so much of my old inventory that it doesn't make sense to end those listings. There's still value.”
Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 130. Welcome back, Rebecca!
Rebecca: Thanks, Griff. How are you doing?
Griff: I'm doing just great. Weather couldn't be better.
Rebecca: We are so lucky to live in California. I know over the last week we were definitely watching everything happening in Texas. I hope everyone out there is okay. And no more pipes are being frozen. That's sort of thing.
Griff: That was so really distressing to watch. And there are a lot of our sellers in Texas and in places in the South where they're probably not back up to speed yet and may not be for awhile.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. And we have announced that there's protections and reminded folks about that time away, but mostly we just hope that everyone is staying safe, warm, dry, and taking care of their families before everything.
Griff: Yeah. And if you need special consideration, you can always contact customer support if there's a specific issue. So don't fail to do that. And we look forward to having things back to normal for you.
Rebecca: Absolutely. So Griff who's on the roster this week?
Griff: Well, Rebecca first up, we have a good friend of the podcast, eBay seller Lynn Dralle. We like to check in with Lynn every quarter or so to talk about what's up with her business and selling on eBay in general. And this week we'll talk to her about her processes for moving older inventory.
Rebecca: And I think I'm right, you have one of our teammates in Community up on deck too.
Griff: Oh, we do. We have Sheila Dhake. She started with us last year in the role of eBay Community Manager. And she literally hit the ground running. And this is all while we've not been in the office. So many of us haven't really met Sheila face to face. You know, all of her many projects with Community, the biggest has been the overhaul of the look and feel of our community platform, which by the way, happened to have launched the day we're recording today. It hasn't been updated for several years. I think it looks incredibly good.
Rebecca: It's so exciting. And it's mobile friendly. It's really clean and very modern looking. And I mean, change is hard and we know that, but we're hoping that this sets sellers up for the future and being able to connect and share advice and do all of the things that help them sell right here on eBay.
Griff: Yeah. And I should say that a lot of this change makes it a lot easier for those folks on Sheila's team to actually do their job when it comes to managing and participating in the community as well.
Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. And I'd also like to add that we did a lot of research beforehand or at least know, Sheila did a lot of research beforehand to know exactly what our sellers wanted and needed from an online community. Like we offer.
Griff: There's so much to talk about, but first what's in the eBay news this week, Rebecca?
Rebecca: It's actually been a relatively quiet week, as far as news barring, you know, everything that happened with the weather recently. We do have two items first up. There's a reminder regarding eBay's zero tolerance policy on price gouging. This was posted in the eBay Community Seller News Board. At eBay we're committed to ensuring consumer and employee safety and protection. We continue to closely monitor the Corona virus. That's COVID-19 pandemic as it develops, and to take significant measures to block or quickly remove listings from our marketplace that make false health claims or offer products at inflated prices in violation of the applicable laws.
Griff: And you can read that entire post at the Seller News Board on Community. We always advise people to go there.
Rebecca: And we'll put a link in the transcript as well. And the most important thing to know is we are here to protect both buyers and sellers from price gouging.
Griff: It's not over yet. So if you have any questions about what's allowed, make sure that you visit that post and then go off on the link. There's actually more information there.
Rebecca: Yeah. There's lots to read there. So then also in the news is we have this from Jack M Jermaine in a piece that he authored for the online journal e-commerce times. And it says shopper experience index report by Bazaar Voice, which is a provider of product reviews and user generated content solutions. And it shows shopping trends are expanding as the pandemics impact on e-commerce continues forcing retailers to adapt their marketing strategies, to meet new consumer expectations and demands. A key finding of the global report is how rapidly social commerce has gone mainstream. Another significant result is that while digital shopping is not fully replacing brick and mortar stores, it is surpassing it. And a quote, which says, "I think the most surprising finding was how common social commerce has become. Almost a third of US shoppers said that they use social media to discover new products to buy. Susan Wold, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Bazaar Voice said that. And she told the E-commerce Times that.
Griff: What do you think it means for eBay sellers, Rebecca?
Rebecca: Oh, there's so much to unpack there, but really what it means is that more than ever because of how the pandemic has actually changed, how buyers shop, having an active and engaging social presence, both on and off eBay can be a crucial marketing component to help drive customers to your merchandise on eBay.
Griff: It's not just having those accounts, it's using them properly. Using them to their best advantage. We've talked a lot about this in the past. We've had many great episodes in the last year, actually two years now that we've talked about the right way to use social media for promoting your listings on eBay. Please do feel free to search our archives and find those episodes. So you can pick up on that.
Rebecca: Yes, so true.
Griff: Well Rebecca, thanks again for being with us this week. We'll up again later to answer a few seller questions. Up first let's meet eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake.
Griff: We love introducing new employees to our podcast audience. And today we have with us the new, or I should say newish member of our Community Team. I say newish because she actually started with us last spring as the official eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake, welcome to the podcast.
Sheila: Thank you for having me.
Griff: Tell us a little bit about your role.
Sheila: Well Griff, I like to think of myself as a quarterback. I understand community members' issues and I'm passing along those issues along to internal eBay's staff.
Griff: You're the eBay community manager. We mean our platform that everyone sees when they go to community.ebay.com.
Sheila: That's correct.
Griff: What was your previous history managing communities before you came to eBay?
Sheila: Well, I worked as the Google Nest Community Manager and the Gmail Community Manager. The Nest Community, I actually built from the ground up. At that time I didn't know anything about communities. I learned fast and I hit the ground running and I built a really successful community. It was actually ranked the six best technical community out of 250. And then I worked as the G-mail Community Manager and Gmail is a very established product and it was a very established community as well. So I've worked on both ends of the spectrum of brand new community, as well as an established community.
Griff: And that gave you the foundation for moving over to eBay.
Sheila: It did. I learned how to build a mentor program there. And I also improved the mentor program for the G-mail community as well.
Griff: And of course, eBay has a mentor program. So that must have felt like old home week for you.
Sheila: It did, but I have so many ideas to make the mentor program much better.
Griff: Fantastic. We love ideas. It is a big role. And just last week we changed the entire look and feel of the eBay community platform. It has a new "skin". Why did we change that? Why do we make this improvement to the community?
Sheila: When I first started, even though I have quite a bit of community management experience, when I went to the community, I didn't know where to start. It's like there are so many boards and I had no idea where to go. One of the things my team and I did is we created a survey and posted it on Community. We got tons of data back from the survey. And then we hired a team of analysts to analyze all the data on the survey. And they found that a lot of community members said cluttered, not easy for discussions, just confused.
Griff: Not easy to navigate.
Sheila: Not easy to navigate as well. And it's a pretty outdated platform. And the last redesign was about five to eight years ago. So it was time for a change,
Griff: Which is a lifetime online. Tell us a little bit about some of the updates, the changes that you're most happy about.
Sheila: Well, the load time is actually a lot better. One of the projects I worked on was doing an audit on the community where we went line by line and studied all the code in the community. And that was a project that took about six weeks to do. And we found that the code wasn't playing well together at all. And that's why some of the pages were so slow to load. And I suspect that's why we had a lot of the bugs that we had as well. So we basically cleared out about 90% of all the code and we're working out of an out of box experience now . We also have like a simplified eBay header and a full footer now as well.
Griff: What's been the feedback from the regulars. We have huge community regular users that have been on there for 20 years. What's been the reaction from them?
Sheila: Some folks do like the changes, but with change, you know, it's not going to be a perfect experience by any means. I mean, the Community Team and myself, we worked really hard to make sure we covered all our bases, but there's just a few of us and thousands of Community members and actually even the mentors, there is a lot more mentors in the Community team. So they're going to catch things that we haven't caught yet, but I can assure you, we're looking at all the comments on the Community and we are definitely going to keep in mind any feedback we get and improve the Community.
Griff: It's not finished now it's done. The cake is baked situation. There's always room for suggestions from the community about things that they would like to see different. And we listened to them and we implemented the ones we can.
Sheila: Exactly. Cause at the end of the day, the Community Team and myself, our goal is to have a wonderful community experience. We want to have a platform where peers can connect with one another and a place to geek out on topics that they're really passionate about.
Griff: I think this is a big step in that direction. Congratulations on your team and to you for pulling this off, I've been involved in eBay for a long time. I've seen a lot of platform changes and they don't always go as smoothly as this one did. So I think you should give yourself a hardy pat on the back job. Well done. Sheila is Community Manager for eBay. You can leave your feedback on the recent upgrade to our community, look and feel at the discussion board called “seeing-issues-with-the-new-community@ebay.com.”
Griff: Every quarter or so we like to check in with one of our favorite sellers to get an update on her business on eBay, and to ask her about some specific topics. She runs a consignment business in Ventura, California, and she's been an eBay seller of some renown now for at least two decades. Welcome back Lynn Dralle.
Lynn Dralle: Thanks alot!
Griff: Isn't it two decades?
Lynn Dralle: It's 22 years. Can you believe?
Griff: Okay, so you want me to pretend it was otherwise?
Lynn Dralle: No, I think it's awesome.
Griff: Okay. Well welcome back to the podcast. The queen of auctions Lynn Dralle. Hi Lynn.
Lynn Dralle: Hi Griff. So good to be with you.
Griff: I want to remind everyone that Lynn sells on eBay under the user ID, the Queen of Auctions, and you can sign up for her newsletter at thequeenofauctions.com.
Lynn Dralle: Or Lynnsconsignments.com. Cause I'm writing that one right now.
Griff: Okay. Lynn's consignments. I'll put that in the transcript of course. Lynnsconsignments.com. I just checked your eBay listings there is 15,593 live listings and each one is unique.
Lynn Dralle: It's crazy. Isn't it? It is so crazy. And I have a single piece of paper for every single one of them all in notebooks sorted by date listed. That's how we keep track.
Griff: It is the library of Lynn Dralle Congress.
Lynn Dralle: It's so funny. One of my employees yesterday looked at the whole shelf full of all the books and he goes, Oh my God, you're so organized. Well, you have to be organized to have 15,500 and whatever listings you have to know where they are and what you paid and all that. And it's all on those pieces of paper.
Griff: Exactly. It's 15,593 live listings, by the way, I counted them all. No, there's the total on the top.
Lynn Dralle: I know you didn't count them.
Griff: I sorted them. And I found a listing. Tell me about the carved antique cameo cupid angels, playing marbles on a cloud.
Lynn Dralle: That was my grandmother's Griff. She played at marbles as a child and that came into our antique store. And of course that was one of her prize possessions. You know, she had an antique store for 52 years. We decided to sell it, the family. And so it's listed on eBay and it's never sold. I still have it. I could wear it if I wanted to. It's not really my style. She wore that almost every day on her lapel.
Lynn Dralle: I know. Isn't that sweet?
Griff: You would look good in an Edwardian, get up with your hair done up like a Gibson girl, you know, high collar.
Lynn Dralle: Maybe I'll do that for Halloween. I'll break out the cameo.
Griff: Most things do sell eventually, but what kind of action do you take on an item that hasn't sold in a long time?
Lynn Dralle: I think this is such a great question to look at one item. It's interesting cause I got audited about four years ago and the guy treated my business like a car dealership. He's like, I need to see every single car, what you paid for it, the depreciation where it is now. And I said to the IRS guy, I said that doesn't make sense when I have 15,900 and some SKUs that are all different. And he agreed with me and I explained to him the way that I look at it is how much I spend per year. And then I look at what kind of inventory is left after about four or five years. Because unique, one of a kind items, Griff take a long time to sell. And with 10,000 free listings for my anchor store, that was always my goal to keep at 10,000. And so I would end the older ones and that's how I looked at. It was ending things that had been enlisted in 2014, 2015 and do it that way. But with the new send offer, I have been selling so much of my old inventory that it doesn't make sense to end those listings. There's still value.
Griff: Right, So now you don't really have to worry about, well, this listing hasn't sold, I have to take it down and think of another liquidation path. Exactly. I don’t.
Lynn Dralle: I was just looking at what I have left from 2014. I have, you know, probably a couple hundred listings and think, Oh, I could end them. But you know, those costs me 20 bucks a month to keep on there. And every week I sell something from 2014. So why would I end them? And you know, it's a crap shoot. I mean, you're looking at such low volume items, $10, $20, $50. It's not worth my time to go through and try and figure out what's going to sell. And what's not because eventually everything sells.
Griff: You still have to do a volume of business. Even with that many listings, that's going to support having an anchor store, not just for the listings itself but for the cost of an anchor store.
Lynn Dralle: Absolutely. We are right now sitting around 10,000 a month, which is excellent for this time of year. That includes of course shipping, but it's great. We're up about 200% over last year, because last year it was pre COVID this time. And I wasn't focused on eBay and ever since COVID, I have really been focused on eBay and making that my priority because people are shopping online. They're not necessarily coming into my store as much. So our eBay business is off the charts. Very happy about that.
Griff: How is the store doing? And is it a concern for you?
Lynn Dralle: It's a concern because we're losing a little bit of money every month and I'm funding that with eBay, but does that make any sense? It really doesn't unless it's going to turn around and I don't know if it's going to turn around, people are scared to go out and shop. I think that vaccine is going to help, but our sales are trending down about 7% and 7% in a large store like mine can make or break you.
Griff: Are you holding out for perhaps the start of a turnaround? There's a lot of predictions that business, at least business will start to return to normal in mid to late Spring and through the Summer.
Lynn Dralle: I am holding out for that. I'm also trying to cut my expenses. I'm working with my landlord. I'm working with my employees. I'm trying to cut everything that seven to 10% so that we can continue to stay afloat and hopefully ride this out. We were on such a good path right when COVID hit. We were on a trend to pick up 27%, which would have made my sales just incredible. And then with COVID it's like screeched to a stop. We were on such a good trend and it's hard to build that momentum back up right now.
Griff: The advantages of your consignment business is at least you don't have to invest in a lot of inventory. That just walks in.
Lynn Dralle: Very, very true. And you know, another thing I was thinking about too Grif is my eBay sales are so good too because eBay items are walking in that front door too. I'm getting a lot of contacts from having the store and people liquidating things and people bring in wonderful things that I can buy to sell on eBay. So, you know, it's, everything is so intertwined when you're in retail.
Griff: Qualify for any of the assistance that was provided by the federal government for small businesses to weather out this now year long pandemic?
Lynn Dralle: Crazy. Yes we did. We got the first round of the PPP loan and I'm working on right now, filling out all the paperwork to get that forgiven. So yeah, we were very fortunate to get that. So that, that helps.
Griff: People that, that money. And in Lynn's case in many small businesses, cases goes back through the economy, through the employees, she hires through the businesses that she pays for to keep her business going. So it's actually money that's very well provided.
Lynn Dralle: Yeah. And it does, it does a great, great service for all of us. And I was able to hire some extra people too. That's been really nice, which I'm going to have to lay off now. Just kidding.
Griff: You don't want to let them know on a podcast. That's the worst way to tell an employee something.
Lynn Dralle: Yeah. Cause I'm down 7% better. Figure out what 7% that is.
Griff: There's always go fund me. I'm kidding.
Lynn Dralle: We're going to be fine. Of course you are you are Lynn Dralle. Lynn Dralle does not fail.
Lynn Dralle: We do not fail that's for sure. A long time ago, by long time I think, I mean like a couple of years ago, but it seems like a long time ago today. When we would talk about a liquidation path for your merchandise. I remember that you had a format change. You would put something up in a certain format and then if it didn't sell, you would change it to either the other format like auction or buy it now.
Lynn Dralle: I still do that. Every single item goes up to auction first, always auction first, cause you don't want to leave money on the table. And then if it doesn't sell, it goes into the fixed format with the best offer. And at some point I used to be putting stuff back at auction to try and sell it. But with send offers, you don't need to do that. That's just been the best, best tool.
Griff: It's interesting because the idea was to increase the velocity of sales for sellers. But I think one of the unintended boons for this is that, like you just said, it takes the work off the sellers back about having to go through and send the offers to individual buyers.
Lynn Dralle: Like instead of like hunting and seeing like who's had a lot of Watchers lowering the price, that kind of thing. And here's my rule of thumb for that. If something's over 16 months, I send an offer at 41% off. If something's less than 16 months, I sent an offer at 21% off and it's been working like a charm.
Griff: With that formula. Are there some times with inventory that you end up taking a loss?
Lynn Dralle: You know, cause you know, I, I pay 10 cents on the dollar and then you know, me, I price it double of what I expect you to get it. So there's a lot of fluff in there that I can, you know, I could take 75% off and still make money because you know, Griff it's all perceived value. If you don't price it high, your customer's not going to think it's worth anything.
Griff: True. That is a maximum of the antique business. I remember that.
Lynn Dralle: That's exactly what I learned from my grandmother. And it's so funny. I hope we have time to talk about it. I just listed an Asian vase today that I think could be worth a couple thousand dollars because I just read an article about a guy that found a little bowl at an estate sale that was worth half a million. I know I'm hoping this is at Griff. And then, and then I'll be retired. No I can't retire on half a million.
Griff: You are not going to retire. You're just going to put it all back into inventory and hiring more employees. We know this.
Lynn Dralle: It's true. It's so true. But anyway, I put it on eBay at $2,000. I just listed it right before we got on this interview and I put $2,000 with a big help in the title and usually Bayer's will help you with the item. So I'm just wondering if I can share it with you.
Griff: Yes I can. I'm looking at it now. Do you want to give an item number?
Lynn Dralle: I do. It's at auction right now. 402713-747525.
Griff: It's interesting. It's got all this, um, that's overlay actually.
Lynn Dralle: It is it's metal overlay. It's got like weird serpents or tigers on the handles. It really looks eighteen hundreds to me. If not earlier, what do you think?
Griff: I'm not an expert. So I can't really tell you, is that a great way out of something? No, it looks, it looks old to me. It definitely intriguing. I love the inlays and the fact that they're marked on the bottom.
Lynn Dralle: It is signed. How can I ever get that translated?
Griff: You live in California, Lynn. It can't be that hard.
Lynn Dralle: You know what? I guess I'm going to post a big poster in my store and see if somebody will read it for me. That's you know, my next door neighbor might be able to read that for me.
Griff: You could do this.
Lynn Dralle: Do you think it's Chinese or Japanese?
Griff: It looks Chinese to me. At least the overlay does, but then again, I'm not an expert. I love yellow. Yellow is a great color.
Lynn Dralle : It's a great color. It's such a great color. You know, I guess Japanese, but it might be Chinese.
Griff: It could be. It's hard to tell the Mark might help in that case. That's why it's great to have somebody who can at least read and tell you what it says.
Lynn Dralle : I'm definitely gonna print this out and take it around and see what I can find out before it sells for $2,000. And it was worth 2 million. I better get that done.
Griff: But now if it turns out that it's not worth 2 million and it's also maybe a little high at 2000, you've allowed yourself a lot of room to actually reduce the price in that case.
Lynn Dralle : Absolutely. Yeah. This is what I do when I need help. I put some something out there for a crazy price and believe me, those was the bears will tell you faster than anybody.
Griff: That's true. They will.
Lynn Dralle : Yes, they will. And I appreciate the help. And then, you know what? And once they say, Hey, it's worth maybe $500. I'll put it in my store at a thousand and hope for a half price offer.
Griff: This is all about how you can liquidate merchandise. And I find that unlike other antique dealers I've known, Lynn is not married to everything she owns.
Lynn Dralle : No, not at all. And you know, it's funny, my grandma, one of her good customers came in one day and she goes, I don't think your grandma cares if she sells anything. And I go, she doesn't, she didn't care. She was happy with all her inventory. She could have lived with it forever. And that's why when she passed away in 2000, we had over a million items to liquidate.
Griff: Through all of those millions of items or no,
Lynn Dralle: I got a barn full in the back of boxes. Oh, Griff, I need help.
Lynn Dralle : Well, I'd offer to take a job with you. If I lived in Ventura.
Griff: That would be so fun. We would have a blast.
Griff: I have said on the show in the past that I do have a truckload of inventory that I'm dying to bring down to Lynn's consignment shop. But of course I haven't left the house in almost a year, right? Once the black plague has passed, I'll be antsy about making a trip somewhere in Southern California.
Lynn Dralle: That sounds like a great idea. You'll be just like the Clampetts driving your truck with all the stuff hanging off down the PCH.
Griff: Well, I'm not going to go down that, that road's closed right now because of a big wash out. But you'll find, you'll find flotsam and jetsam from my collection all up and down route five.
Lynn Dralle: That would be so fun to film. Wouldn't it? Oh my gosh. Griff on a road trip.
Griff: It's actually happened back when we were in the antique business, we always had an open pickup truck and a valuable antiques had a way of disappearing on our way to a show.
Lynn : I'd love that story.
Griff: People looked at us as scants I'm afraid.
Lynn Dralle: Scants exactly. A great word.
Griff: For the merchandise that you have. You're a strategy for how to get it sold, which in your case is not necessarily getting rid of it, but keeping it in your store until you can get a price point and find the right customer.
Lynn Dralle : Yeah. And you know, Griff. It just makes perfect sense. You've done the work. You all know that the work is getting it listed and taking that picture. Why would you end it? Especially if it's within your free amount of listings, it's not costing you any money until it sells.
Griff: Have you noticed any change in the buying trends for collectibles and antiques in the last half year to year?
Lynn Dralle : You know, I really haven't, but it just seems like people are shopping more and spending more and filling in their sets more. I'm selling a lot of flatware, a lot of dishes and those more expensive antiques, I'm selling a lot more higher end pieces. And I'm looking for those really super unique pieces that I can offer because like the vase we just talked about, sky's the limit. You're not going to find another one of those. And that's what sells unique. One of a kind.
Griff: Unless there was a pair and somebody has the other one.
Lynn Dralle : Well, that's a good point. And then they'll pay, they'll pay me dearly to have the matching piece.
Griff: I had a friend whose mother had a pair of Chinese faces on the mantle. She thought that they were a thousand years old. And she thought that because of the way they were marked on the bottom and a friend of hers who could read Chinese script, looked at them and said, she said, well, what does it say? What does it say? She said, this one is the left one. And this one is the right one.
Lynn : Serious that's hysterical. Is that true?
Griff: That's very true.
Lynn : I have never heard that before. Griff. That's perfect.
Griff: She was disappointed, but she had a sense of humor and laugh and she got great stock out of telling that story over and over.
Lynn Dralle : Oh, that's a great story. And mine could seriously be marked the left side. Or it's the middle one who knows? I'm the middle one.
Griff: Lynn, it's always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Always learn something from you. It's always an up to hear how you're doing. You're always succeeding. And I think that's what all of us who sell on eBay love to hear.
Lynn : Well, thank you Griff. It's always fun to talk to you.
Griff: You can see lens merchandise on eBay. If you look for the user ID, the queenofauctions.com, I'll put a link to her eBay store and I will put a link both to her newsletter and also to the consignment shop. And again, that URL for the consignment shop is lynnsconsignments.com. It's always a pleasure, Lynn. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you again in a few months.
Lynn : Thank you. Griff.
Rebecca: You have questions?
Griff: We have answers.
Rebecca: Wait, I thought it was got questions.
Griff: It was. I changed it to keep you on your toes. And I think it sounds more professional.
Rebecca: It sounds weird.
Griff: I can always change it back. Rebecca: Wait, I'm going to test. Let me see. You have questions. You got questions. I don't Know. What do you think?
Griff: Maybe something else. How about something on your mind?
Rebecca: Like I'm at the shrinks. How does that make you feel?
Griff: I guess not. Okay. How about, are you in possession of a query?
Rebecca: No, definitely not that. Way too academic. We’re just down the rabbit hole here Griff. Okay. Focus. What's our first question.
Griff: Our first question was sent to us by UK, eBay, sellers, Faye and Simon. And why don't you read it?
Rebecca: So Faye and Simon wrote "hi guys, more great shows recently. Thanks for all you do." So they have a question regarding defect removal, and they say "as conscientious sellers, we regularly check our performance dashboard and recently noticed four defects, for tracking indicates late delivery. We appealed the defects and three out of four were removed. The scenario was the same for all four shipments. All the labels were purchased through eBay, were shipped and scanned within schedule and all arrived one day after the estimated arrival date. The one shipment that eBay wouldn't remove differed because it was a different class of postage. You guessed it the large letter. Because there isn't tracking for that service and even though the label was purchased through eBay and we have the scan receipt from the post office, it's treated unfavorably in the appeal. So we are wondering how can we continue to offer great value items at the low end, if we're forced to add tracking to such orders. And since they're in the UK, it's an extra one pound. Is there something within the shipping or appeal process that we're missing out on? Incidentally, the customer already left positive feedback for the order, yours sincerely, your loyal listeners, Faye and Simon." And their store name is f&s resellers. And they're from the United Kingdom. What do you think, Griff? Where do we go with this?
Griff: Well, I think I may have an explanation of how this works. It took a little research from the UK and actually went to eBay, UK and signed in with my user ID to find some information. There are two separate topics. One was late delivery and the other was around tracking specifically. There's no tracking, so it couldn't be uploaded. Again, I want to remind everyone, the nomenclature we're using is from the UK site, which will be slightly different than what we see and read in the US site. So there's two separate issues there. So you have four of these that got late delivery and they removed the ones that had tracking, but the one that didn't have tracking, they didn't remove. And that's because there was no tracking. Now in the US the tracking not uploaded metric can and does impact your Top Rated Seller status, but that's for us sellers. However, the tracking not uploaded metric is not a factor for UK sellers, but what does impact UK sellers is a high tracking indicates late delivery metric. For example, if more than 10% of your transactions are classified as late deliveries, eBay may limit some of the postage options available to you as a seller to make sure your buyers have the right expectations on the accurate delivery times.
Rebecca: Tracking, not uploaded and tracking indicates late delivery, two separate things.
Griff: Two separate things. They can be related in a sense that if you're relying on tracking to show that the item you did ship it in time, and then it was the carrier who was late. In order to get that removed, you're going to have to show tracking. And this is what happened in that case is that they're using a class of service that Royal Post provides eBay so that eBay can allow sellers to print the label. In the UK, the service that the sellers can use for shipping things like, well, ephemera, postcards, trading cards, coins, currency stamps, it's called a large envelope and a seller in the UK can print that out. But we'll post does not provide tracking for that unless you pay an extra pound and that's what they were talking about. So if you sell a lot of items, Simon and Faye that you ship using that service large envelope, make sure that at the very least that you're marking those items as dispatched in the US it would be called, you know, item shipped. An item will automatically be in the UK marked as dispatched. If you use an eBay postage label or manually upload a tracking number, if you post an item to a buyer using a different method, and it's still not showing as dispatched, here's how you manually mark it. If you're using Seller Hub, go to the awaiting dispatch section on the orders page, tick the action box beside the item you posted and from the dropdown menu, select Mark as dispatched. I can't guarantee that in the future with situations like this, that your items that are sent with the Royal Post large envelope, won't end up effecting your late delivery metric, which can be serious because it can limit the types of postage that you can use in the future. I'm not sure that that explanation is exactly what they'd want to hear for a lot of items. Adding that extra pound for tracking may not be cost-effective. I would certainly advise any seller without knowing their business details to at the very least test to see if it is worth while.
Rebecca: And again, I think we mentioned this a couple of times, but this answer is for Simon and Faye who are selling from eBay, UK. And again, that language is going to be slightly different depending on if you're in the UK or in the US. So in the US we do have a new service, which is the eBay Standard Envelope and that provides an affordable and trackable USP service for sellers of trading cards. And in the future, we expect that the service will be extended to other categories, but certainly it's a great option if you are selling trading cards right now.
Griff: Thanks for bringing that up. I almost forgot about Standard Envelope. So alas Simon and Faye, we don't have any indication of a similar service being made available in the future for Royal Post, but who knows what the eBay UK team and Royal Post can negotiate in the future. I'm not making any promises, but it's always possible. Okay. So now I have a question that was originally posted in social media, and I asked the seller to email the details to me, and we have the question and an answer, and it's about the new eBay standard envelope, shipping options, speak of the devil. eBay seller Minda wrote this week. I've switched over to the eBay Standard Envelope for mailing baseball cards. So far three items have been returned for not enough postage. Did eBay forget to tell the post office? Now I have to spend more money to resend the items. And yes, I followed all the rules. She continues. I spoke with the postmaster at my branch, and he said he never heard about eBay's special postage. And he teaches classes to others. So now I'm going to have to change my shipping costs back. Otherwise I'll be losing $2 per order. This is really annoying. Hopefully it will get corrected in a timely manner. Thank you, Minda. And she sells under the user ID, baseballchip. Well, Minda, I'm really sorry to hear about this. And you have my sympathy and empathy because although USPS obviously knows about this service in their corporate office, it's possible that the postmaster at your station just hasn't been informed of the new USPS service called eBay Standard Envelope.
Rebecca: Griff, tell me, is it in eBays hands to send that message out to local Postmasters, or does sit really on the USPS corporate office to send that message?
Griff: There is a channel and there's a chain of command, so to speak when it comes to communications and what happens in this situation. And this came up a few years ago, by the way, because we had this same issue when we started focusing on managing the shipment process and made scans really important. That wasn't the case 10 years ago, but there were some post offices where they would not scan a prepaid label, even though that was USPS policy. The USPS policy states that if a customer comes in with a prepaid label and they ask for it to be scanned, you scan it. Some post office workers were refusing to do so. And in that case, what we had to do, we had the liaison in eBay who would contact the liaison at USPS and the eBay liaison, who I'm just going to mention names at that time was Nate Hayward. He's been on our podcast before, would then inform his USPS liaison. Hey, this is the post office, the station name, and the zip code where a clerk refused to scan a package and then USPS then takes it from there and contacts either the person's supervisor, or if it's the Postmaster General, then they'll contact them directly and inform them, indeed when someone comes in, you need to scan it. Now that's the same thing that may happen in a few cases, like Mindas where someone at a post office says, I don't recognize this service and just sends it back to sender. Which is what happened here, because Minda dropped them off. She didn't bring them to the counter.
Rebecca: So does Minda have any recourse?
Griff: She does and in fact, we've already started, the shipping team has been alerted to her situation because I forwarded Minda's email to them. And they've just informed me that today, that they are going to contact their liaison at USPS. They have the station's number and the post-master's names, USPS will inform the postmaster of the new service, which must be accepted as a drop off as a legitimate service. In the meantime, I also forwarded Mindas email to customer service, and they are going to refund the cost of the postage that she paid for these items that have been returned.
Rebecca: And, you know, I have to thank Minda because she wrote to us and now we're contact that local postmaster. And that means that other shippers in her same area, hopefully won't run into this issue too.
Griff: Right. If you have this issue, you should contact customer support. If you run into confusion where they say, well, we don't know what to do with this. You can just let them know it has to go to the Shipping Team. They should be able to take care of it. If they don't, you can always come to podcast@ebay.com and you can send it to us. And then we can forward it to the contact we have in the Shipping Team who goes directly to USPS. I don't suspect that this is going to happen a lot, but it could.
Rebecca: And Minda, thanks again for writing in.
Rebecca: So do you have a question?
Griff: Do you got a question?
Rebecca: No Griff. That sounds awful.
Griff: In that context it does. So I take it back.
Rebecca: So if you have a question, why not send it to us and let us take a stab at the answer, you can call your question into our voice line at (888) 723-4630. Or you can email it to at podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. We love getting calls on that number. Please feel free to call it or podcast@ebay.com. If you rather not call. Now, it's time for your daily, weekly podcast to do list.
Rebecca: First, go right now and check out our all new eBay community platform. You'll be glad that you did, and you can find that at community.ebay.com
Griff: Second, are you having issues, setting up the thermal printer that I have on occasion suggested you purchase? Then send an email to podcast@ebay.com. And we'll walk you through the setup. I'll ask you some questions, like what kind of computer you have, what operating system, blah, blah, blah. I think it's the least I can do since I've convinced you to go out and buy one, which is still a smart move.
Rebecca: You're totally not obsessed with those printers,
Griff: Not obsessed.
Rebecca: All right. Third, always visit the transcript for this and any other episode to see the links that we referenced during the show
Griff: And on our next episode, which will be episode 131. We'll talk to Justin Johnson from eBay's Global Seller Update on what's on tap for sellers in the coming months.
Rebecca: And we'd like to thank our guests again this week. eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake, and eBay seller Lynn Dralle.
Griff: eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
A reminder regarding eBay’s zero-tolerance policy on price gouging
eBay’s Price Gouging Policy Help Page
eCommerce Times
The New eBay Community Feedback Forum
Lynn Dralle’s eBay Store
Lynn’s Consignments
Recurring Links:
Guests: Lynne Dralle (eBay Seller), Sheila Dhake (eBay seller)
Hosts: Griff, Rebecca Michals
Rebecca: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:
Lynn Dralle " Unique, one of a kind items Griff take a long time to sell. And with 10,000 free listings for my anchor store, that was always my goal to keep it 10,000. And so I would end the older ones and that's how I looked at. It was ending things that had been enlisted in 2014, 2015, and do it that way. But with the new send offer, I have been selling so much of my old inventory that it doesn't make sense to end those listings. There's still value.”
Rebecca: I'm Rebecca.
Griff: I'm Griff and this is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 130. Welcome back, Rebecca!
Rebecca: Thanks, Griff. How are you doing?
Griff: I'm doing just great. Weather couldn't be better.
Rebecca: We are so lucky to live in California. I know over the last week we were definitely watching everything happening in Texas. I hope everyone out there is okay. And no more pipes are being frozen. That's sort of thing.
Griff: That was so really distressing to watch. And there are a lot of our sellers in Texas and in places in the South where they're probably not back up to speed yet and may not be for awhile.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. And we have announced that there's protections and reminded folks about that time away, but mostly we just hope that everyone is staying safe, warm, dry, and taking care of their families before everything.
Griff: Yeah. And if you need special consideration, you can always contact customer support if there's a specific issue. So don't fail to do that. And we look forward to having things back to normal for you.
Rebecca: Absolutely. So Griff who's on the roster this week?
Griff: Well, Rebecca first up, we have a good friend of the podcast, eBay seller Lynn Dralle. We like to check in with Lynn every quarter or so to talk about what's up with her business and selling on eBay in general. And this week we'll talk to her about her processes for moving older inventory.
Rebecca: And I think I'm right, you have one of our teammates in Community up on deck too.
Griff: Oh, we do. We have Sheila Dhake. She started with us last year in the role of eBay Community Manager. And she literally hit the ground running. And this is all while we've not been in the office. So many of us haven't really met Sheila face to face. You know, all of her many projects with Community, the biggest has been the overhaul of the look and feel of our community platform, which by the way, happened to have launched the day we're recording today. It hasn't been updated for several years. I think it looks incredibly good.
Rebecca: It's so exciting. And it's mobile friendly. It's really clean and very modern looking. And I mean, change is hard and we know that, but we're hoping that this sets sellers up for the future and being able to connect and share advice and do all of the things that help them sell right here on eBay.
Griff: Yeah. And I should say that a lot of this change makes it a lot easier for those folks on Sheila's team to actually do their job when it comes to managing and participating in the community as well.
Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. And I'd also like to add that we did a lot of research beforehand or at least know, Sheila did a lot of research beforehand to know exactly what our sellers wanted and needed from an online community. Like we offer.
Griff: There's so much to talk about, but first what's in the eBay news this week, Rebecca?
Rebecca: It's actually been a relatively quiet week, as far as news barring, you know, everything that happened with the weather recently. We do have two items first up. There's a reminder regarding eBay's zero tolerance policy on price gouging. This was posted in the eBay Community Seller News Board. At eBay we're committed to ensuring consumer and employee safety and protection. We continue to closely monitor the Corona virus. That's COVID-19 pandemic as it develops, and to take significant measures to block or quickly remove listings from our marketplace that make false health claims or offer products at inflated prices in violation of the applicable laws.
Griff: And you can read that entire post at the Seller News Board on Community. We always advise people to go there.
Rebecca: And we'll put a link in the transcript as well. And the most important thing to know is we are here to protect both buyers and sellers from price gouging.
Griff: It's not over yet. So if you have any questions about what's allowed, make sure that you visit that post and then go off on the link. There's actually more information there.
Rebecca: Yeah. There's lots to read there. So then also in the news is we have this from Jack M Jermaine in a piece that he authored for the online journal e-commerce times. And it says shopper experience index report by Bazaar Voice, which is a provider of product reviews and user generated content solutions. And it shows shopping trends are expanding as the pandemics impact on e-commerce continues forcing retailers to adapt their marketing strategies, to meet new consumer expectations and demands. A key finding of the global report is how rapidly social commerce has gone mainstream. Another significant result is that while digital shopping is not fully replacing brick and mortar stores, it is surpassing it. And a quote, which says, "I think the most surprising finding was how common social commerce has become. Almost a third of US shoppers said that they use social media to discover new products to buy. Susan Wold, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Bazaar Voice said that. And she told the E-commerce Times that.
Griff: What do you think it means for eBay sellers, Rebecca?
Rebecca: Oh, there's so much to unpack there, but really what it means is that more than ever because of how the pandemic has actually changed, how buyers shop, having an active and engaging social presence, both on and off eBay can be a crucial marketing component to help drive customers to your merchandise on eBay.
Griff: It's not just having those accounts, it's using them properly. Using them to their best advantage. We've talked a lot about this in the past. We've had many great episodes in the last year, actually two years now that we've talked about the right way to use social media for promoting your listings on eBay. Please do feel free to search our archives and find those episodes. So you can pick up on that.
Rebecca: Yes, so true.
Griff: Well Rebecca, thanks again for being with us this week. We'll up again later to answer a few seller questions. Up first let's meet eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake.
Griff: We love introducing new employees to our podcast audience. And today we have with us the new, or I should say newish member of our Community Team. I say newish because she actually started with us last spring as the official eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake, welcome to the podcast.
Sheila: Thank you for having me.
Griff: Tell us a little bit about your role.
Sheila: Well Griff, I like to think of myself as a quarterback. I understand community members' issues and I'm passing along those issues along to internal eBay's staff.
Griff: You're the eBay community manager. We mean our platform that everyone sees when they go to community.ebay.com.
Sheila: That's correct.
Griff: What was your previous history managing communities before you came to eBay?
Sheila: Well, I worked as the Google Nest Community Manager and the Gmail Community Manager. The Nest Community, I actually built from the ground up. At that time I didn't know anything about communities. I learned fast and I hit the ground running and I built a really successful community. It was actually ranked the six best technical community out of 250. And then I worked as the G-mail Community Manager and Gmail is a very established product and it was a very established community as well. So I've worked on both ends of the spectrum of brand new community, as well as an established community.
Griff: And that gave you the foundation for moving over to eBay.
Sheila: It did. I learned how to build a mentor program there. And I also improved the mentor program for the G-mail community as well.
Griff: And of course, eBay has a mentor program. So that must have felt like old home week for you.
Sheila: It did, but I have so many ideas to make the mentor program much better.
Griff: Fantastic. We love ideas. It is a big role. And just last week we changed the entire look and feel of the eBay community platform. It has a new "skin". Why did we change that? Why do we make this improvement to the community?
Sheila: When I first started, even though I have quite a bit of community management experience, when I went to the community, I didn't know where to start. It's like there are so many boards and I had no idea where to go. One of the things my team and I did is we created a survey and posted it on Community. We got tons of data back from the survey. And then we hired a team of analysts to analyze all the data on the survey. And they found that a lot of community members said cluttered, not easy for discussions, just confused.
Griff: Not easy to navigate.
Sheila: Not easy to navigate as well. And it's a pretty outdated platform. And the last redesign was about five to eight years ago. So it was time for a change,
Griff: Which is a lifetime online. Tell us a little bit about some of the updates, the changes that you're most happy about.
Sheila: Well, the load time is actually a lot better. One of the projects I worked on was doing an audit on the community where we went line by line and studied all the code in the community. And that was a project that took about six weeks to do. And we found that the code wasn't playing well together at all. And that's why some of the pages were so slow to load. And I suspect that's why we had a lot of the bugs that we had as well. So we basically cleared out about 90% of all the code and we're working out of an out of box experience now . We also have like a simplified eBay header and a full footer now as well.
Griff: What's been the feedback from the regulars. We have huge community regular users that have been on there for 20 years. What's been the reaction from them?
Sheila: Some folks do like the changes, but with change, you know, it's not going to be a perfect experience by any means. I mean, the Community Team and myself, we worked really hard to make sure we covered all our bases, but there's just a few of us and thousands of Community members and actually even the mentors, there is a lot more mentors in the Community team. So they're going to catch things that we haven't caught yet, but I can assure you, we're looking at all the comments on the Community and we are definitely going to keep in mind any feedback we get and improve the Community.
Griff: It's not finished now it's done. The cake is baked situation. There's always room for suggestions from the community about things that they would like to see different. And we listened to them and we implemented the ones we can.
Sheila: Exactly. Cause at the end of the day, the Community Team and myself, our goal is to have a wonderful community experience. We want to have a platform where peers can connect with one another and a place to geek out on topics that they're really passionate about.
Griff: I think this is a big step in that direction. Congratulations on your team and to you for pulling this off, I've been involved in eBay for a long time. I've seen a lot of platform changes and they don't always go as smoothly as this one did. So I think you should give yourself a hardy pat on the back job. Well done. Sheila is Community Manager for eBay. You can leave your feedback on the recent upgrade to our community, look and feel at the discussion board called “seeing-issues-with-the-new-community@ebay.com.”
Griff: Every quarter or so we like to check in with one of our favorite sellers to get an update on her business on eBay, and to ask her about some specific topics. She runs a consignment business in Ventura, California, and she's been an eBay seller of some renown now for at least two decades. Welcome back Lynn Dralle.
Lynn Dralle: Thanks alot!
Griff: Isn't it two decades?
Lynn Dralle: It's 22 years. Can you believe?
Griff: Okay, so you want me to pretend it was otherwise?
Lynn Dralle: No, I think it's awesome.
Griff: Okay. Well welcome back to the podcast. The queen of auctions Lynn Dralle. Hi Lynn.
Lynn Dralle: Hi Griff. So good to be with you.
Griff: I want to remind everyone that Lynn sells on eBay under the user ID, the Queen of Auctions, and you can sign up for her newsletter at thequeenofauctions.com.
Lynn Dralle: Or Lynnsconsignments.com. Cause I'm writing that one right now.
Griff: Okay. Lynn's consignments. I'll put that in the transcript of course. Lynnsconsignments.com. I just checked your eBay listings there is 15,593 live listings and each one is unique.
Lynn Dralle: It's crazy. Isn't it? It is so crazy. And I have a single piece of paper for every single one of them all in notebooks sorted by date listed. That's how we keep track.
Griff: It is the library of Lynn Dralle Congress.
Lynn Dralle: It's so funny. One of my employees yesterday looked at the whole shelf full of all the books and he goes, Oh my God, you're so organized. Well, you have to be organized to have 15,500 and whatever listings you have to know where they are and what you paid and all that. And it's all on those pieces of paper.
Griff: Exactly. It's 15,593 live listings, by the way, I counted them all. No, there's the total on the top.
Lynn Dralle: I know you didn't count them.
Griff: I sorted them. And I found a listing. Tell me about the carved antique cameo cupid angels, playing marbles on a cloud.
Lynn Dralle: That was my grandmother's Griff. She played at marbles as a child and that came into our antique store. And of course that was one of her prize possessions. You know, she had an antique store for 52 years. We decided to sell it, the family. And so it's listed on eBay and it's never sold. I still have it. I could wear it if I wanted to. It's not really my style. She wore that almost every day on her lapel.
Lynn Dralle: I know. Isn't that sweet?
Griff: You would look good in an Edwardian, get up with your hair done up like a Gibson girl, you know, high collar.
Lynn Dralle: Maybe I'll do that for Halloween. I'll break out the cameo.
Griff: Most things do sell eventually, but what kind of action do you take on an item that hasn't sold in a long time?
Lynn Dralle: I think this is such a great question to look at one item. It's interesting cause I got audited about four years ago and the guy treated my business like a car dealership. He's like, I need to see every single car, what you paid for it, the depreciation where it is now. And I said to the IRS guy, I said that doesn't make sense when I have 15,900 and some SKUs that are all different. And he agreed with me and I explained to him the way that I look at it is how much I spend per year. And then I look at what kind of inventory is left after about four or five years. Because unique, one of a kind items, Griff take a long time to sell. And with 10,000 free listings for my anchor store, that was always my goal to keep at 10,000. And so I would end the older ones and that's how I looked at. It was ending things that had been enlisted in 2014, 2015 and do it that way. But with the new send offer, I have been selling so much of my old inventory that it doesn't make sense to end those listings. There's still value.
Griff: Right, So now you don't really have to worry about, well, this listing hasn't sold, I have to take it down and think of another liquidation path. Exactly. I don’t.
Lynn Dralle: I was just looking at what I have left from 2014. I have, you know, probably a couple hundred listings and think, Oh, I could end them. But you know, those costs me 20 bucks a month to keep on there. And every week I sell something from 2014. So why would I end them? And you know, it's a crap shoot. I mean, you're looking at such low volume items, $10, $20, $50. It's not worth my time to go through and try and figure out what's going to sell. And what's not because eventually everything sells.
Griff: You still have to do a volume of business. Even with that many listings, that's going to support having an anchor store, not just for the listings itself but for the cost of an anchor store.
Lynn Dralle: Absolutely. We are right now sitting around 10,000 a month, which is excellent for this time of year. That includes of course shipping, but it's great. We're up about 200% over last year, because last year it was pre COVID this time. And I wasn't focused on eBay and ever since COVID, I have really been focused on eBay and making that my priority because people are shopping online. They're not necessarily coming into my store as much. So our eBay business is off the charts. Very happy about that.
Griff: How is the store doing? And is it a concern for you?
Lynn Dralle: It's a concern because we're losing a little bit of money every month and I'm funding that with eBay, but does that make any sense? It really doesn't unless it's going to turn around and I don't know if it's going to turn around, people are scared to go out and shop. I think that vaccine is going to help, but our sales are trending down about 7% and 7% in a large store like mine can make or break you.
Griff: Are you holding out for perhaps the start of a turnaround? There's a lot of predictions that business, at least business will start to return to normal in mid to late Spring and through the Summer.
Lynn Dralle: I am holding out for that. I'm also trying to cut my expenses. I'm working with my landlord. I'm working with my employees. I'm trying to cut everything that seven to 10% so that we can continue to stay afloat and hopefully ride this out. We were on such a good path right when COVID hit. We were on a trend to pick up 27%, which would have made my sales just incredible. And then with COVID it's like screeched to a stop. We were on such a good trend and it's hard to build that momentum back up right now.
Griff: The advantages of your consignment business is at least you don't have to invest in a lot of inventory. That just walks in.
Lynn Dralle: Very, very true. And you know, another thing I was thinking about too Grif is my eBay sales are so good too because eBay items are walking in that front door too. I'm getting a lot of contacts from having the store and people liquidating things and people bring in wonderful things that I can buy to sell on eBay. So, you know, it's, everything is so intertwined when you're in retail.
Griff: Qualify for any of the assistance that was provided by the federal government for small businesses to weather out this now year long pandemic?
Lynn Dralle: Crazy. Yes we did. We got the first round of the PPP loan and I'm working on right now, filling out all the paperwork to get that forgiven. So yeah, we were very fortunate to get that. So that, that helps.
Griff: People that, that money. And in Lynn's case in many small businesses, cases goes back through the economy, through the employees, she hires through the businesses that she pays for to keep her business going. So it's actually money that's very well provided.
Lynn Dralle: Yeah. And it does, it does a great, great service for all of us. And I was able to hire some extra people too. That's been really nice, which I'm going to have to lay off now. Just kidding.
Griff: You don't want to let them know on a podcast. That's the worst way to tell an employee something.
Lynn Dralle: Yeah. Cause I'm down 7% better. Figure out what 7% that is.
Griff: There's always go fund me. I'm kidding.
Lynn Dralle: We're going to be fine. Of course you are you are Lynn Dralle. Lynn Dralle does not fail.
Lynn Dralle: We do not fail that's for sure. A long time ago, by long time I think, I mean like a couple of years ago, but it seems like a long time ago today. When we would talk about a liquidation path for your merchandise. I remember that you had a format change. You would put something up in a certain format and then if it didn't sell, you would change it to either the other format like auction or buy it now.
Lynn Dralle: I still do that. Every single item goes up to auction first, always auction first, cause you don't want to leave money on the table. And then if it doesn't sell, it goes into the fixed format with the best offer. And at some point I used to be putting stuff back at auction to try and sell it. But with send offers, you don't need to do that. That's just been the best, best tool.
Griff: It's interesting because the idea was to increase the velocity of sales for sellers. But I think one of the unintended boons for this is that, like you just said, it takes the work off the sellers back about having to go through and send the offers to individual buyers.
Lynn Dralle: Like instead of like hunting and seeing like who's had a lot of Watchers lowering the price, that kind of thing. And here's my rule of thumb for that. If something's over 16 months, I send an offer at 41% off. If something's less than 16 months, I sent an offer at 21% off and it's been working like a charm.
Griff: With that formula. Are there some times with inventory that you end up taking a loss?
Lynn Dralle: You know, cause you know, I, I pay 10 cents on the dollar and then you know, me, I price it double of what I expect you to get it. So there's a lot of fluff in there that I can, you know, I could take 75% off and still make money because you know, Griff it's all perceived value. If you don't price it high, your customer's not going to think it's worth anything.
Griff: True. That is a maximum of the antique business. I remember that.
Lynn Dralle: That's exactly what I learned from my grandmother. And it's so funny. I hope we have time to talk about it. I just listed an Asian vase today that I think could be worth a couple thousand dollars because I just read an article about a guy that found a little bowl at an estate sale that was worth half a million. I know I'm hoping this is at Griff. And then, and then I'll be retired. No I can't retire on half a million.
Griff: You are not going to retire. You're just going to put it all back into inventory and hiring more employees. We know this.
Lynn Dralle: It's true. It's so true. But anyway, I put it on eBay at $2,000. I just listed it right before we got on this interview and I put $2,000 with a big help in the title and usually Bayer's will help you with the item. So I'm just wondering if I can share it with you.
Griff: Yes I can. I'm looking at it now. Do you want to give an item number?
Lynn Dralle: I do. It's at auction right now. 402713-747525.
Griff: It's interesting. It's got all this, um, that's overlay actually.
Lynn Dralle: It is it's metal overlay. It's got like weird serpents or tigers on the handles. It really looks eighteen hundreds to me. If not earlier, what do you think?
Griff: I'm not an expert. So I can't really tell you, is that a great way out of something? No, it looks, it looks old to me. It definitely intriguing. I love the inlays and the fact that they're marked on the bottom.
Lynn Dralle: It is signed. How can I ever get that translated?
Griff: You live in California, Lynn. It can't be that hard.
Lynn Dralle: You know what? I guess I'm going to post a big poster in my store and see if somebody will read it for me. That's you know, my next door neighbor might be able to read that for me.
Griff: You could do this.
Lynn Dralle: Do you think it's Chinese or Japanese?
Griff: It looks Chinese to me. At least the overlay does, but then again, I'm not an expert. I love yellow. Yellow is a great color.
Lynn Dralle : It's a great color. It's such a great color. You know, I guess Japanese, but it might be Chinese.
Griff: It could be. It's hard to tell the Mark might help in that case. That's why it's great to have somebody who can at least read and tell you what it says.
Lynn Dralle : I'm definitely gonna print this out and take it around and see what I can find out before it sells for $2,000. And it was worth 2 million. I better get that done.
Griff: But now if it turns out that it's not worth 2 million and it's also maybe a little high at 2000, you've allowed yourself a lot of room to actually reduce the price in that case.
Lynn Dralle : Absolutely. Yeah. This is what I do when I need help. I put some something out there for a crazy price and believe me, those was the bears will tell you faster than anybody.
Griff: That's true. They will.
Lynn Dralle : Yes, they will. And I appreciate the help. And then, you know what? And once they say, Hey, it's worth maybe $500. I'll put it in my store at a thousand and hope for a half price offer.
Griff: This is all about how you can liquidate merchandise. And I find that unlike other antique dealers I've known, Lynn is not married to everything she owns.
Lynn Dralle : No, not at all. And you know, it's funny, my grandma, one of her good customers came in one day and she goes, I don't think your grandma cares if she sells anything. And I go, she doesn't, she didn't care. She was happy with all her inventory. She could have lived with it forever. And that's why when she passed away in 2000, we had over a million items to liquidate.
Griff: Through all of those millions of items or no,
Lynn Dralle: I got a barn full in the back of boxes. Oh, Griff, I need help.
Lynn Dralle : Well, I'd offer to take a job with you. If I lived in Ventura.
Griff: That would be so fun. We would have a blast.
Griff: I have said on the show in the past that I do have a truckload of inventory that I'm dying to bring down to Lynn's consignment shop. But of course I haven't left the house in almost a year, right? Once the black plague has passed, I'll be antsy about making a trip somewhere in Southern California.
Lynn Dralle: That sounds like a great idea. You'll be just like the Clampetts driving your truck with all the stuff hanging off down the PCH.
Griff: Well, I'm not going to go down that, that road's closed right now because of a big wash out. But you'll find, you'll find flotsam and jetsam from my collection all up and down route five.
Lynn Dralle: That would be so fun to film. Wouldn't it? Oh my gosh. Griff on a road trip.
Griff: It's actually happened back when we were in the antique business, we always had an open pickup truck and a valuable antiques had a way of disappearing on our way to a show.
Lynn : I'd love that story.
Griff: People looked at us as scants I'm afraid.
Lynn Dralle: Scants exactly. A great word.
Griff: For the merchandise that you have. You're a strategy for how to get it sold, which in your case is not necessarily getting rid of it, but keeping it in your store until you can get a price point and find the right customer.
Lynn Dralle : Yeah. And you know, Griff. It just makes perfect sense. You've done the work. You all know that the work is getting it listed and taking that picture. Why would you end it? Especially if it's within your free amount of listings, it's not costing you any money until it sells.
Griff: Have you noticed any change in the buying trends for collectibles and antiques in the last half year to year?
Lynn Dralle : You know, I really haven't, but it just seems like people are shopping more and spending more and filling in their sets more. I'm selling a lot of flatware, a lot of dishes and those more expensive antiques, I'm selling a lot more higher end pieces. And I'm looking for those really super unique pieces that I can offer because like the vase we just talked about, sky's the limit. You're not going to find another one of those. And that's what sells unique. One of a kind.
Griff: Unless there was a pair and somebody has the other one.
Lynn Dralle : Well, that's a good point. And then they'll pay, they'll pay me dearly to have the matching piece.
Griff: I had a friend whose mother had a pair of Chinese faces on the mantle. She thought that they were a thousand years old. And she thought that because of the way they were marked on the bottom and a friend of hers who could read Chinese script, looked at them and said, she said, well, what does it say? What does it say? She said, this one is the left one. And this one is the right one.
Lynn : Serious that's hysterical. Is that true?
Griff: That's very true.
Lynn : I have never heard that before. Griff. That's perfect.
Griff: She was disappointed, but she had a sense of humor and laugh and she got great stock out of telling that story over and over.
Lynn Dralle : Oh, that's a great story. And mine could seriously be marked the left side. Or it's the middle one who knows? I'm the middle one.
Griff: Lynn, it's always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Always learn something from you. It's always an up to hear how you're doing. You're always succeeding. And I think that's what all of us who sell on eBay love to hear.
Lynn : Well, thank you Griff. It's always fun to talk to you.
Griff: You can see lens merchandise on eBay. If you look for the user ID, the queenofauctions.com, I'll put a link to her eBay store and I will put a link both to her newsletter and also to the consignment shop. And again, that URL for the consignment shop is lynnsconsignments.com. It's always a pleasure, Lynn. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you again in a few months.
Lynn : Thank you. Griff.
Rebecca: You have questions?
Griff: We have answers.
Rebecca: Wait, I thought it was got questions.
Griff: It was. I changed it to keep you on your toes. And I think it sounds more professional.
Rebecca: It sounds weird.
Griff: I can always change it back. Rebecca: Wait, I'm going to test. Let me see. You have questions. You got questions. I don't Know. What do you think?
Griff: Maybe something else. How about something on your mind?
Rebecca: Like I'm at the shrinks. How does that make you feel?
Griff: I guess not. Okay. How about, are you in possession of a query?
Rebecca: No, definitely not that. Way too academic. We’re just down the rabbit hole here Griff. Okay. Focus. What's our first question.
Griff: Our first question was sent to us by UK, eBay, sellers, Faye and Simon. And why don't you read it?
Rebecca: So Faye and Simon wrote "hi guys, more great shows recently. Thanks for all you do." So they have a question regarding defect removal, and they say "as conscientious sellers, we regularly check our performance dashboard and recently noticed four defects, for tracking indicates late delivery. We appealed the defects and three out of four were removed. The scenario was the same for all four shipments. All the labels were purchased through eBay, were shipped and scanned within schedule and all arrived one day after the estimated arrival date. The one shipment that eBay wouldn't remove differed because it was a different class of postage. You guessed it the large letter. Because there isn't tracking for that service and even though the label was purchased through eBay and we have the scan receipt from the post office, it's treated unfavorably in the appeal. So we are wondering how can we continue to offer great value items at the low end, if we're forced to add tracking to such orders. And since they're in the UK, it's an extra one pound. Is there something within the shipping or appeal process that we're missing out on? Incidentally, the customer already left positive feedback for the order, yours sincerely, your loyal listeners, Faye and Simon." And their store name is f&s resellers. And they're from the United Kingdom. What do you think, Griff? Where do we go with this?
Griff: Well, I think I may have an explanation of how this works. It took a little research from the UK and actually went to eBay, UK and signed in with my user ID to find some information. There are two separate topics. One was late delivery and the other was around tracking specifically. There's no tracking, so it couldn't be uploaded. Again, I want to remind everyone, the nomenclature we're using is from the UK site, which will be slightly different than what we see and read in the US site. So there's two separate issues there. So you have four of these that got late delivery and they removed the ones that had tracking, but the one that didn't have tracking, they didn't remove. And that's because there was no tracking. Now in the US the tracking not uploaded metric can and does impact your Top Rated Seller status, but that's for us sellers. However, the tracking not uploaded metric is not a factor for UK sellers, but what does impact UK sellers is a high tracking indicates late delivery metric. For example, if more than 10% of your transactions are classified as late deliveries, eBay may limit some of the postage options available to you as a seller to make sure your buyers have the right expectations on the accurate delivery times.
Rebecca: Tracking, not uploaded and tracking indicates late delivery, two separate things.
Griff: Two separate things. They can be related in a sense that if you're relying on tracking to show that the item you did ship it in time, and then it was the carrier who was late. In order to get that removed, you're going to have to show tracking. And this is what happened in that case is that they're using a class of service that Royal Post provides eBay so that eBay can allow sellers to print the label. In the UK, the service that the sellers can use for shipping things like, well, ephemera, postcards, trading cards, coins, currency stamps, it's called a large envelope and a seller in the UK can print that out. But we'll post does not provide tracking for that unless you pay an extra pound and that's what they were talking about. So if you sell a lot of items, Simon and Faye that you ship using that service large envelope, make sure that at the very least that you're marking those items as dispatched in the US it would be called, you know, item shipped. An item will automatically be in the UK marked as dispatched. If you use an eBay postage label or manually upload a tracking number, if you post an item to a buyer using a different method, and it's still not showing as dispatched, here's how you manually mark it. If you're using Seller Hub, go to the awaiting dispatch section on the orders page, tick the action box beside the item you posted and from the dropdown menu, select Mark as dispatched. I can't guarantee that in the future with situations like this, that your items that are sent with the Royal Post large envelope, won't end up effecting your late delivery metric, which can be serious because it can limit the types of postage that you can use in the future. I'm not sure that that explanation is exactly what they'd want to hear for a lot of items. Adding that extra pound for tracking may not be cost-effective. I would certainly advise any seller without knowing their business details to at the very least test to see if it is worth while.
Rebecca: And again, I think we mentioned this a couple of times, but this answer is for Simon and Faye who are selling from eBay, UK. And again, that language is going to be slightly different depending on if you're in the UK or in the US. So in the US we do have a new service, which is the eBay Standard Envelope and that provides an affordable and trackable USP service for sellers of trading cards. And in the future, we expect that the service will be extended to other categories, but certainly it's a great option if you are selling trading cards right now.
Griff: Thanks for bringing that up. I almost forgot about Standard Envelope. So alas Simon and Faye, we don't have any indication of a similar service being made available in the future for Royal Post, but who knows what the eBay UK team and Royal Post can negotiate in the future. I'm not making any promises, but it's always possible. Okay. So now I have a question that was originally posted in social media, and I asked the seller to email the details to me, and we have the question and an answer, and it's about the new eBay standard envelope, shipping options, speak of the devil. eBay seller Minda wrote this week. I've switched over to the eBay Standard Envelope for mailing baseball cards. So far three items have been returned for not enough postage. Did eBay forget to tell the post office? Now I have to spend more money to resend the items. And yes, I followed all the rules. She continues. I spoke with the postmaster at my branch, and he said he never heard about eBay's special postage. And he teaches classes to others. So now I'm going to have to change my shipping costs back. Otherwise I'll be losing $2 per order. This is really annoying. Hopefully it will get corrected in a timely manner. Thank you, Minda. And she sells under the user ID, baseballchip. Well, Minda, I'm really sorry to hear about this. And you have my sympathy and empathy because although USPS obviously knows about this service in their corporate office, it's possible that the postmaster at your station just hasn't been informed of the new USPS service called eBay Standard Envelope.
Rebecca: Griff, tell me, is it in eBays hands to send that message out to local Postmasters, or does sit really on the USPS corporate office to send that message?
Griff: There is a channel and there's a chain of command, so to speak when it comes to communications and what happens in this situation. And this came up a few years ago, by the way, because we had this same issue when we started focusing on managing the shipment process and made scans really important. That wasn't the case 10 years ago, but there were some post offices where they would not scan a prepaid label, even though that was USPS policy. The USPS policy states that if a customer comes in with a prepaid label and they ask for it to be scanned, you scan it. Some post office workers were refusing to do so. And in that case, what we had to do, we had the liaison in eBay who would contact the liaison at USPS and the eBay liaison, who I'm just going to mention names at that time was Nate Hayward. He's been on our podcast before, would then inform his USPS liaison. Hey, this is the post office, the station name, and the zip code where a clerk refused to scan a package and then USPS then takes it from there and contacts either the person's supervisor, or if it's the Postmaster General, then they'll contact them directly and inform them, indeed when someone comes in, you need to scan it. Now that's the same thing that may happen in a few cases, like Mindas where someone at a post office says, I don't recognize this service and just sends it back to sender. Which is what happened here, because Minda dropped them off. She didn't bring them to the counter.
Rebecca: So does Minda have any recourse?
Griff: She does and in fact, we've already started, the shipping team has been alerted to her situation because I forwarded Minda's email to them. And they've just informed me that today, that they are going to contact their liaison at USPS. They have the station's number and the post-master's names, USPS will inform the postmaster of the new service, which must be accepted as a drop off as a legitimate service. In the meantime, I also forwarded Mindas email to customer service, and they are going to refund the cost of the postage that she paid for these items that have been returned.
Rebecca: And, you know, I have to thank Minda because she wrote to us and now we're contact that local postmaster. And that means that other shippers in her same area, hopefully won't run into this issue too.
Griff: Right. If you have this issue, you should contact customer support. If you run into confusion where they say, well, we don't know what to do with this. You can just let them know it has to go to the Shipping Team. They should be able to take care of it. If they don't, you can always come to podcast@ebay.com and you can send it to us. And then we can forward it to the contact we have in the Shipping Team who goes directly to USPS. I don't suspect that this is going to happen a lot, but it could.
Rebecca: And Minda, thanks again for writing in.
Rebecca: So do you have a question?
Griff: Do you got a question?
Rebecca: No Griff. That sounds awful.
Griff: In that context it does. So I take it back.
Rebecca: So if you have a question, why not send it to us and let us take a stab at the answer, you can call your question into our voice line at (888) 723-4630. Or you can email it to at podcast@ebay.com.
Griff: That's (888) 723-4630. We love getting calls on that number. Please feel free to call it or podcast@ebay.com. If you rather not call. Now, it's time for your daily, weekly podcast to do list.
Rebecca: First, go right now and check out our all new eBay community platform. You'll be glad that you did, and you can find that at community.ebay.com
Griff: Second, are you having issues, setting up the thermal printer that I have on occasion suggested you purchase? Then send an email to podcast@ebay.com. And we'll walk you through the setup. I'll ask you some questions, like what kind of computer you have, what operating system, blah, blah, blah. I think it's the least I can do since I've convinced you to go out and buy one, which is still a smart move.
Rebecca: You're totally not obsessed with those printers,
Griff: Not obsessed.
Rebecca: All right. Third, always visit the transcript for this and any other episode to see the links that we referenced during the show
Griff: And on our next episode, which will be episode 131. We'll talk to Justin Johnson from eBay's Global Seller Update on what's on tap for sellers in the coming months.
Rebecca: And we'd like to thank our guests again this week. eBay Community Manager, Sheila Dhake, and eBay seller Lynn Dralle.
Griff: eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.
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The eBay for Business podcast is published every Tuesday morning and is presented by eBay, Libsyn and Podcast411.
