Ep 191 || Consignment Selling as a Business Model

[podcast_team]

Need inventory? This week eBay seller Libby Broggi of Conshy Consignments shares her expertise on running a successful consignment business on eBay. And Brian and Griff answer questions about Local Pickup, troublesome buyers, the eventual end of UPI’s, and changing a buyer’s shipping address by request, post payment.

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Episode Links:
Buyers: Changing your Shipping Address Post Purchase
Abusive Buyer Policy
Reporting a Buyer
Member to member contact policy
Reducing unpaid items for accepted offers
Conshy Consignment eBay Store
Conshy Consignment’s Linktree
Recurring Links:
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eBay for Business Podcast Discussion Group
eBay for Business Podcast Listener Survey
eBay Seller News Announcements
eBay for Business Facebook
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Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: I'm Griff. And this is the eBay for Business Podcast, your source for the information and inspiration to help you start manage and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. And this is episode 191. What?

Brian: I was just thinking, when you said, you know your name, I thought, well, you've got so many. I can see.

Griff: I only have one.

Brian: And you're given name as well.

Griff: I don't use that given name.

Brian: I know. And your given name could be two names.

Griff: It could, but in my aspiration to be Madonna, I got one name.

Brian: Yes, you do. It is Griff.

Griff: Anyway, just Madonna. Just Griff.

Brian: Griff.

Griff: Yeah.

Brian: It is just Griff. So, who's our guest this week?

Griff: Oh, you're gonna love this one this week. We're gonna talk to an eBay seller named Libby Broggi and her user ID is Conshy Consignments on eBay. She's building a business model on well, can you guess?

Brian: Consignments?

Griff: Exactly! Libby has in fact managed to build a successful business on eBay by taking consignments and selling them for her consigners on eBay. And she's gonna share her how to, when it comes to making this a viable business model, there's certain things you want to avoid. If you're considering it and certain things you wanna make sure you do. And she's gonna talk to us about that.

Brian: I'm looking forward to that conversation.

Griff: Me too.

Brian: So Griff. Yeah. You know how we're always pushing Seller Center?

Griff: I do. It's one of my go-to hubs. Whenever I have a question, I'm always pointing sellers there.

Brian: Well, then you might have noticed last week, the Seller Center looks different.

Griff: I've noticed. Yes.

Brian: That's because we've made some change to our Seller Center to help you improve your selling skills and grow your business on eBay.

Griff: Yay!

Brian: The new Seller Center has a clean, modern design to make it easier to find relevant information about topics that are important to you as a seller. We also refresh Seller Center content so you can quickly skim information and follow the navigation buttons to go straight to the eBay tools and features you're looking for. And lastly, the new updated Seller Center now gives you a seamless experience from any device, whether you're working from your office or selling on the go.

Griff: Ooh, I like that.

Brian: And the updated seller center pages are now more closely aligned with international eBay Seller Center sites to provide a streamlined content and navigation experience across international borders.

Griff: Have you seen it? Have you gone on it? It's amazing.

Brian: And the one thing I'm gonna emphasize, and I've always emphasized this always with Seller Center, there's a great content at the top, but you scroll all the way down to those first pages. You'll see link after link, after link of all kinds of great information.

Griff: I use Seller Center a lot to get the information. I need to answer a lot of seller questions that and Help and Contact. But those two sources, if you utilize them religiously, whenever you have a question, you'll become an eBay expert, and you'll be able like to take over this podcast and you can take my place, maybe Brian's place. So you could be a, an eBay star.

Brian: Yeah. So put in your applications, podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: Not that I'm looking to, I'm not going anywhere.

Brian: Good because I don't think, any of us could take over what you do.

Griff: It could be all about you. You know that movie, All About Eve?

Brian: Yes.

Griff: You could be the Eve Harrington. Anyway, another aside, a boomer aside.

Brian: A boomer aside.

Griff: Exactly. And by the way, I'd like to remind everyone, if I may, if you haven't taken our new updated podcast survey, please do. We need your input and feedback. You can find the new survey link and the description for every episode of the podcast in your podcast app, regardless of which one you use. And you can also find it in the sidebar at www.ebay.com/podcast. I know a lot of our, at least our Facebook listeners actually listen to it directly through our Community Page. And you can see there's some links on the right hand side. And one of them is the survey. Please, please take the survey. We need to know how we're doing.

Brian: Yes. We can always use suggestions.

Griff: We take 'em seriously.

Brian: We do. Or if you don't remember that URL, you can find it in the transcript for every episode. That's true, including this one episode, 191. Anything to avoid having to spell out another long URL.

Griff: I know it's such an eBay thing. They'll give us some URLs and they're impossible to mention on the podcast because they're way too long. I've asked the team for shortened vanity URL for the podcast survey. So let's hope they give it to us. And before we meet our guest, I had one more thing to talk about, which is you're off to a seller meetup this afternoon.

Brian: I'm leaving for Denver tonight, but the meetup is actually tomorrow evening. I guess if you're a listener, you would've missed it.

Griff: You've missed it.

Brian: But look for meetups near you, you can go to ebay.com/seller meetings for meetings, seller meetings, and meetups near you. And...

Griff: You're taking that little box.

Brian: I am taking a little, I'm taking a microphone.

Griff: Well, not just a microphone.

Brian: It's a recorder. That's true. This is why Griff runs it. And I'm just a cohost.

Griff: I showed up with a mic, but I didn't capture anything!. No, you've got one of those cool little Zoom recorders. If you're doing podcasts and you like to do things remote recording, I don't get paid by this company, but I use all their products. It's called Zoom. It's not Zoom, the same thing like for meetings, it's zoom, audio equipment. I think they make a handheld recorder called the H4N pro, which is really affordable. And you could basically run a podcast off that thing. It's so it's so cool. You've used it when you're recording as a host from home.

Brian: Yes. I mean, you, you set it up where it went through there and it recorded and then I could download the files straight from it. And then I have used it on the road in the past. Um, sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully.

Griff: Well the last time was my fault. I didn't show you what to do. That's not your fault. That was mine, but it's all set up and ready to capture some seller interviews and stories while you're at this meetup.

Brian: And I'm sure that we'll get some good, uh, content from, from the sellers there.

Griff: Just ask the right questions. And I don't mean what are you wearing? (laughing)

Brian: No, I won't ask them that.

Griff: What are you wearing? Who are you wearing?

Brian: I'll ask him the standards. How long have you been on eBay? What do you sell?

Griff: Can't wait to hear this. Cuz we'll use it in the next episode. We'll actually review some of the stuff you capture.

Brian: And I'm really excited because it's been a while since we've been out to see sellers. I mean, I was at the Seller Remix in October in Las Vegas and it was a long time ago and this will only be the second time, you know, since the pandemic started that we've been out in person, Rebecca's gonna be there as well. And she's actually gonna get to finally meet sellers in person as opposed to via Zoom.

Griff: And that's, this will be the first time for her.

Brian: Yes.

Griff: You know, that's Great.

Brian: And others on the team like Stephanie as well.

Griff: And Sheila.

Brian: And Sheila.

Griff: Yeah. So there's gonna be four eBay employees.

Brian: We don't normally send that this many.

Griff: That's a lot of employees for what? There's 30 or 40 people showing up?

Brian: I don't know how many people. Exactly. But probably in that range. Yeah. Probably, you know, hopefully 40 or so. That's normally more than we normally do. But I think part of it is there's just a desire to get out and, and see customers face to face.

Griff: Yeah. And someday, maybe even I'll go out to a seller meet up.

Brian: And now, now I have to make sure I get content because we've recorded this and this is going out.

Griff: Yeah, you do Brian, because I'm not gonna cut this out of next weeks episode. So, uh, I think you'll be fine. All the buttons are set. You should be fine. If you run into a problem, you can always call me and I can walk you through it. So looking forward to that, but now it's time to meet this week's guest. So fire up the meetup zoom.

Griff: Our guest this week brings some tips and experience about using an alternative source for products specifically consignment, please welcome from Conshy Consignments, eBay seller, Libby Broggi, welcome Libby.

Libby: Thanks for having me.

Griff: You're joining us from where?

Libby: I am in Schnecksville Pennsylvania, which is in the beautiful Lehigh Valley. So I'm all the way on the east coast.

Griff: How long have you been selling on eBay? Woo.

Libby: I've been selling for 23 years on eBay and 10 as a business. Well, it'll, it'll be 10 as a business this year.

Griff: How do you make that differentiation?

Libby: Casual hobby seller. I would just sell stuff around the house when I was unloading some collectibles just here and there, back in the old days where people would mail you money, even though you would ask them not to, you know, those good old days.

Griff: Yeah, I do. Yes. coins taped to a card.

Brian: And what made you switch 10 years ago to go full time?

Libby: Oh, it's kinda an evolution. I was working in a bank and I just, you know, I had two kids. I was a single parent and it just wasn't working for me. I didn't feel very good about what I was doing in life or how I was serving my community or setting an example for my kids. And I decided to open a consignment store. So I opened a consignment store and started consignment selling and in conjunction with that brick and mortar store, we started to sell as a business on eBay. And that was kind of our online portion. And I considered it at the time an insurance policy, if everything went belly up with the storefront, I had this backup.

Griff: And so you stopped working at the bank?

Libby: So I stopped working at the bank. I opened my own business. I was contributing to the community because consignment and I'm sure we'll get to, this is kind of recycling goods and money back into a community, unlike any other business model, it's really full circle. And it's just, it feels good.

Brian: But that's an interesting perspective, which is there's kinda the environmental thing about, you know, reuse and things like that. But you're right. If somebody sells that item in the community, those dollars then gets spent in the community. Yeah.

Libby: Yeah. It's pretty amazing to see it in action.

Griff: You had started operating a consignment business. Why?

Libby: Why? I always knew I would want it to be a business owner. My family was not that thrilled with my choice to leave a good paying job with benefits and embark on this, which is ironic because my whole family is entrepreneurs but not that thrilled with it. I said, you know, before I turn 40, I have to try this. I will never forgive myself. I know this is what I wanna do. I know this is my dream. And like so many people I don't wanna regret it. I'm gonna try it. And it's stuck.

Brian: That's great.

Libby: Yeah.

Griff: And when you started doing this seriously, did you go right into consignment or was that something that happened gradually?

Libby: When I started the business, it was always consignment. Yep. Mm-hmm

Griff: A lot of times I'll get questions from sellers who will ask me about the workings of a consignment business. So for example, how do you find consignors?

Libby: That's really usually the question I get asked, but that is once you're into consignment. That is the last question you will ask. You'll be asking, how do I limit my consigners um, you know, and I ask that question myself, when I first started, like, where am I gonna get my inventory? How is that gonna? And then all of a sudden it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, back it up, slow down. This is, this is something else. So it's a really amazing way to get inventory. And all you really have to do is start with friends and family. And it just kind of grows word of mouth there. I'm surprised there's not more consignment sellers out there because I can't fill the demand. There is way more of a demand than there are people that offer the service at this point.

Griff: Do you have restrictions or acceptable use policies about what you'll take for consignment and what you won't take?

Libby: Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think that's probably why a lot of people shy away from consignment is they haven't thought about those boundaries yet. I'm gonna mention my other business, which is Consignment Chat. So we run a community for other consignment sellers where we can talk about and discuss exactly these sort of things.

Griff: I wanna know where that is.

Brian: Yes

Libby: . I'm sure you'll link it up. Uh we're on, you know, we have a community on Facebook. We're on YouTube. We have a podcast we're pretty much everywhere and wherever consignment sellers are, we like to be there.

Griff: We will definitely log roll this one. We'll be putting it all over the, this episode transcript.

Libby: Yeah. And we answer so many questions there, but pretty much it's my belief that every reseller should be consignment ready. And maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but I think we wanna talk about this.

Griff: Oh yeah. That's why we're doing this interview. We do want to talk about it.

Libby: Yeah. So I think every reseller needs to be consignment ready because who hasn't?

Brian: What do you mean by that? Consignment ready.

Libby: As a reseller, The second you tell somebody you're a reseller or I sell things on eBay. Oh wait, I have some things. Could you sell these for me?

Griff: Oh yes.

Libby: Oh yeah. I'm moving. Oh. Or I know such and such. And they want you to sell their items. If you're not correctly set up and you don't have an agreement or you don't have those parameters in your head at least, or written down somewhere, you could number one, be making a bad decision and losing money. Number two, you could be missing out on a lot of money. You can just be leaving money on the table. If you're not set up to handle that situation. Because how many times have you had to say, oh, I'm not, you know, I don't really do that or I'm not ready.

Griff: Oh, that's a nice faberge egg, unfortunately, I'm just not up to listing it right now. Say I'm a consigner and I've got something that maybe you're willing to accept or agree. Like I have a box of things. What is the first thing that you do?

Libby: Pretty much we go through the consignment agreement. I think every reseller needs to have one of these agreements in their toolbox. We do have a free sample one on our website@consignmentchats.com and it lays out the parameters. What you are willing to accept what your percentages are. And I can tell you if you want the details, I can tell you how my business in particular works.

Griff: Yes we do. We want details.

Brian: Our listeners would love to hear that too. Because you've been successful. And so years of success doing this, and I think that means it's a good roadmap.

Libby: It's a good roadmap. And believe me, I have learned by making a lot of mistakes. I'm a great person to come because I'm like, ah, that didn't, that did not work for me. And this is why. Maybe it'll work for you. But I always say, learn from my mistakes. All right. So you come to me and you have a box of stuff. Can you sell this for me? And I just say, all right, well, let me tell you a little bit about how our consignment generally works. You would receive 40% of the sale price over the course of 60 days. And those are my terms. Everybody is, is very different. The industry standard runs from about 70 to 30%. Wow. Mine is, you would earn 40%. You get a bonus for store credit, which, you know, helps that circular thing. It helps your consigners become shoppers. There's a little trick for you if you're gonna do consignment and over the course of 60 days, and you can monitor your account online and see what we sold. And does that sound like something that would work for you or something you would be interested in?

Griff: Okay. I'm gonna play the role of the consign and you're oh yeah. You just told me that 60%. Well, that seems awful high. Why is it 60%?

Libby: Okay. If somebody says to me, you take 60%, I immediately correct them and say, no, we earn 60%. Yeah. We earn it. Absolutely.

Brian: Really great perspective.

Libby: Yeah. I always tell consignment, people know your worth as a consignment seller, you are generally in a very high demand. There are not many people that provide this service and you have to really think about what it costs you to sell an item and all the time and energy. And it depends a lot on what type of items you list. But somebody that would say that I would, I would gently say, you know, I don't know if this is gonna be the best choice for you. You know, maybe you wanna try selling it on your own. Maybe you wanna try another consignment store. Their policies vary, things like that. So if somebody generally is not happy with it, I'm probably not gonna make them happy.

Brian: Do you ever make exceptions to that 40% rule? Like if somebody brings in say really high valued items or a whole bunch of inventory that you know is really high quality, like let's say there's an estate sale and they say, can you just consign all of it?

Griff: Yeah. There's a Faberge egg in this box.

Libby: I'm gonna say I do 50% for other sellers. I work with a lot of Amazon sellers, surprisingly and I work with a lot of other eBay sellers. So if they're a colleague, I do a 50/50 split. Oh, okay. Um, because they generally understand the process. I don't have to hold their hand. They know how much work we're putting in. And it's just easy. Other than that, no, absolutely not, do I make an exception?

Griff: And your contract is written, right? It's not an oral contract.

Libby: It's written. Yeah.

Griff: So they sign something, you sign something, you have it on paper.

Libby: Yeah. And one of our community members, Ashley from A And B Consignment had the great idea of be proud of what you do and tell everyone. So we use our consignment contract to actually do that and go through it. People wanna know, it's not like you're, you know, oh, would you sign this? No people wanna know how it works. They're genuinely interested. And then they could tell their friend and it just word of mouth spreads.

Griff: The contract is a form of marketing itself.

Libby: It is. If you do it right.

Brian: Mm-hmm and a way to describe your service. Like it's not just, oh, I'm taking a single picture and putting it up. There's other stuff that goes into every one of those listings and communicating with those buyers or potential buyers and all the rest of it.

Libby: I just wanna piggyback on that. You asked me about like value. Like if it's a higher value item, do I take a different percentage? And my answer was I personally don't, there are people that use a tiered structure, but my thought on it is if it's a higher value item, I'm taking more risk with a higher dollar value item. So it's not necessarily beneficial to use a tiered structure because you are taking on more risk, the higher dollar value item you have.

Griff: Okay. So I've just brought you a box of things and I like your terms and I'm ready to do this. Now you have to look at the box and you open it up. And it's a bunch of designer brand merchandise. Maybe there's a GUCCI bag. And maybe there's a pair of Prada shoes. And maybe there's a pair of Nike sneakers.

Brian: I thought you were gonna say some kinda branded men's cologne.

Griff: How do you guarantee that? What you're looking at when it's brand name items, if you take them, maybe you don't. How do you make sure they're authentic?

Libby: So if I'm not able to authenticate them on the spot, I will research it. We do a lot of authentication in house. Some things we just can't authenticate and we will send those out for authentication.

Griff: How long does that process take? Say, I know if I want to get like a trading card authenticated, it can take up to a year right now. There's such a demand.

Libby: Oh no, it's not like that. It's like a week, two weeks. Yeah. It's nothing crazy.

Brian: I assume if there's a fee for that authentication service that you're using, then that gets passed onto your consignor as well.

Libby: I don't generally do that. No. We just absorb that. Cuz it is, it's fairly rare that we have to send something out for authentication or get an appraisal or anything like that. We do absorb that as part of our cost of doing business.

Griff: What about returns? Just because you're selling on consignment doesn't mean that you're not gonna take a return if it comes in. How do you handle those If it's a consigned piece of merchandise?

Libby: Yeah. This is a real hot button topic in the consignment world. I have always taken returns. Even in the storefront, even on eBay, I will take a return. I wanna make that customer happy. I consider that part of the cost of doing business. I think our return rate is like, it's less than 2%. So I take that risk on and I'll resell the item. I mean, it's mine If it comes back and I'll sell it as store inventory.

Brian: So if it does get returned, then you don't go back to the person who provided and say, oh, it didn't sell. Therefore I've gotta try and resell it again. Okay, so you don't wait a period of time after it sells to give the money to the, to the person who consigned it to you?

Libby: I don't, I don't know. I, I consider that part of the risk I take and it's worked out well. Now, if I have a couple thousand dollars item I'm selling yes, I wait until that return period is over to, to pay out the consigner.

Griff: That's when you say up to 60 days?

Brian: Or 30.

Libby: Yeah. Yeah. Now a lot of consignment sellers will wait for all the transactions to get past their return window to pay the consignment. I think that's okay. I think that's a good way to do it.

Griff: If it's understood upfront. Yeah. If it's understood upfront. But a lot of people want money right away. That's why they're selling sometimes. So you gotta make that clear in your terms in the contract.

Brian: Is there a certain amount of like the value of an item that you'll just say it's just not worth it. Do you have a floor for value of items?

Libby: Yes. And this is I'll tell my floor is I say $20 resale value in the consignment industry that is very, very low. Most people in order to recoup their money, say $50 and above is what they will take. Now I have my business structured a little differently than most consignment sellers. So at the end of that 60 days, if an item doesn't sell, it does become my inventory. That is what allows me to take the lower dollar value items.

Griff: Okay. So it becomes your inventory, but you still have to pay something to the consigner, right?

Libby: No, no.

Brian: The agreement is you had it in your store. People have had 60 days to look at it. You're storing it for them for that 60 days.

Libby: Yep.

Griff: And then it becomes yours?

Libby: It would become our inventory. Yep. Mm-hmm. I didn't always do it like that. What I learned in the store front was people would have the option to pick everything up at the end of their consignment period. And I ended up with a back room full of stuff. People didn't pick up their stuff, they had it out of the house. They didn't want it back.

Griff: Ah, I see.

Libby: So it pretty much had been like torturing, you know, my employee, my staff for no reason. So this has worked out really, really well. And I recommend giving a shot.

Brian: You don't really acquire it for free because you've had a conversation with the individual who's providing it. You've stored it for them for 60 days. It's been available to customers who've come into your store and if it doesn't sell, then it just becomes yours.

Griff: Makes sense. Yeah.

Libby: Now I am all online. Now I skipped over that part. Oh, you're Totally no bricks. Myre totally online. I have no brick and mortar store. eBay supports my family and me brilliantly with the consignment business.

Brian: Fantastic. Wonderful to hear.

Griff: I've been thinking about retirement and what I would do. I think this could work for me Brian.

Brian: But I don't want you to retire. Who would do the podcast?

Griff: You!

Brian: I cannot do what you do.

Griff: I'm glad you recognize that, but still no, It sounds like if you're thinking about sourcing product and you don't want an outlay and you don't wanna be running around looking for it, this could actually work out really well for you in your local area. Especially if there's no one else doing it, you can basically write your own terms. And like Libby said, if you need some guidance beyond just this episode segment, I'm gonna put links to all of those. Is it Conshy Consignment chat?

Libby: So Conshy Consignment is my business where I sell things. My consignment business and Consignment Chats is where we're building a resourceful community.

Griff: And I'll put links to that so that you can check it out. You get items in a lot of times, the people are bringing them in, they know what they are and that's helpful, but you get something and you're not quite sure what it is. How much research do you do to help guarantee that it's gonna bring the top dollar?

Libby: Ooh, yes. I love this. So if we can't get comps, if it is a very unique item and this happens a lot less than you would probably think we auction it, we use eBay to auction it.

Brian: So you let the market decide the price.

Libby: Yes we do. Yes we do. But that is very few and far between

Brian: When you do the research, are there any tools that you use, like either third party tools or is it just, you know, looking at past sales on eBay, what are the kinds of things that you are using?

Griff: You trying to get a promotion of Terra Peak in there?

Libby: well, I'm gonna tell you that Tara peak is just made our lives so much easier. I love the way it works. We all use it here. It's great for key wording. It's great for getting values. I know you guys talk about it, using it for trending and acquiring inventory. I don't particularly use it like that. I use it just for keywords and market value, but awesome.

Brian: So you're in a specific locale and my assumption is the vast majority that you get comes from the comes local. Do you ever get items from people from other states who say, hey I'll you this stuff or is all local?

Libby: Yeah, certainly we get, we get things shipped to us for people that wanna consign from all over the country, for whatever reason they wanna use our consignment service. Or maybe they, I don't know.

Brian: I have 20 some eBay branded shirts.

Griff: I'm not so sure that those are valuable, Brian.

Brian: Probably won't get $20 a piece.

Griff: Yeah. I don't know how that market is doing right now.

Libby: You can try out the consignment. You can check our online portal and see your stuff selling, see how we have it barcode. It's kinda, it would be a cool experiment I would do with you for sure.

Griff: Libby, is there a memorable item on the top of your head that you took on consignment that brought a lot of money or caused a lot of conversations? Something that really sticks out in your mind.

Libby: So many, we've had so many cool circular stories and things that have found their right, correct homes. And just so many heartwarming things. One of the cool things about consignment and operating this circular kind of business is that oftentimes our customers and consigns get to see where items end up. We often post on social media things that found their home. I've done consignments for both of my grandmother's estates. And you know, when the family doesn't want something, there is nothing better than seeing somebody get something that they love and appreciate. And our consigners feel the same way when something finds the correct home. It's just the most heartwarming thing, because believe it or not, a lot of people don't consign because they want the money they consign because they don't wanna throw their item in a dumpster. They don't wanna donate it. They wanna know where it goes. They wanna know somebody's loving and appreciating that item.

Griff: What's the most expensive item that you ever sold that you remember?

Libby: Oh, geez. I dunno. Not that expensive.

Griff: A couple hundred?

Libby: Oh, actually one of the first things I sold on eBay was a car.

Griff: Oh, there you go.

Libby: For a couple of thousand dollars. My great-aunt had passed away. That was so many years ago. I don't even remember how much it was.

Griff: It was a classic car.

Libby: It was, it was.

Brian: So Griff is all about the dollar figures. I'll flip the question a little bit. And what was the most unique thing that you sold that someone brought in something that kinda surprised you or?

Libby: Oh gosh. You know, I always say nothing will surprise me, but something always surprises me. You never know what's coming in. I'm just gonna use an example from last week. My father did back in the seventies, early seventies did architectural salvage where he tore down like some gravity railroad buildings and he kept the bricks and my parents had them in their house and it's, they're gorgeous, like early 18 hundreds bricks. So I just sold a ton of them for him last week.

Brian: Oh wow.

Libby: Like a literal ton of bricks.

Brian: I've sold a ton of bricks on eBay. That's incredible.

Libby: And a kitchen sink. We've sold everything, including the kitchen sink. You know, some of those old American Standards are very collectible.

Griff: The cast iron ones. And how do you ship them?

Libby: Very creatively. We do, um, for larger items. I do a good bit of furniture actually. We use You-Ship.com and we have the buyers actually arrange shipping. And we did a whole episode on that at Consignment Chats on selling large items cuz we do quite a bit of that.

Griff: I'm gonna find that episode and point our listeners to it because that's always a question, you know, I have this big thing and I just want do local pickup. And I always think you're limiting your audience. Shipping is not that big a deal.

Libby: Yeah. I think the furthest, somebody drove for something you'll never know who will drive to pick it up first of all, or who will pay to have you You-Shipping. I mean, we send, you know, things out to the west coast all the time, but the furthest anybody ever drove was from Kansas here to Pennsylvania to pick up an antique writing desk.

Griff: That's quite a distance.

Brian: And when you do those kinds of transactions, do you have the buyer create the item or do you create the item and then just have it done? Or do you just say, Hey, here's the item. You guys hire the shipping company and they're gonna need to create it and send it?

Libby: I actually have them the shipping company do that because when they do come to you, they like to be able to see it visually inspect it and take photos. So if they were just picking up a crate, I would be taking that away from them. And a lot of times they're wedging it into like an odd piece in the moving vehicle. So I don't get into crating it, boxing it, anything like that.

Griff: Why am I working at eBay? I could be selling on consignment. I have a good personality. Surely someone in San Jose should be doing this Brian.

Brian: Shirley? Oh That's a bad joke.

Griff: A terrible joke. Brian, Shirley, whatever your name is.

Brian: You could be doing it.

Griff: And if I'm not doing it, you should be doing it.

Libby: I'm like a little scared that you're putting it out there now because all of a sudden you're gonna have all these people coming to you. Like sell my stuff Griff, sell my stuff.

Griff: Yeah. Not yet. Wait till my next chapter in life. Should I still be here. But the thing that's important is that if you were considering and I'm talking to you listener, if you were considering a change in your business, this could be it. There could be a demand in your area for consignment. All you need is a little guidance and three bits of advice, which we're gonna ask Libby to provide. I come to you as this person on the street and I wanna start a consignment business. Do you have some advice for me to get started?

Libby: Yes. Get your consigner agreement ready. Go to consignmentchats.com. Get the sample. It's not rocket science. Very simple. Know your terms. The second piece of advice I have is know your worth. So not only do you need to know your terms, but you need to know your worth. I see a lot of people enter consignment accidentally or because somebody asks them to sell something and they're charging. They're just not covering their fees. They're doing it as a favor. They feel bad asking a higher percentage. And I say, don't feel bad. Know your worth. People will respect that. And if it's not for them, that's okay. You still wanna be in business and able to provide this service a couple years down the road. So pay yourself.

Brian: Well, and they have the option to say no that I don't wanna pay that and walk away.

Libby: Yeah. And I do that when I walk through the agreement, if this isn't for you or you're not comfortable with the terms, that's okay. Like there's no hard feelings here. It's not for everybody. There's no hard feelings for sure.

Griff: Do you have piece of advice for the new neophyte, I want to get into consignment seller?

Libby: Yes. All right. So the number one P reason people don't consign is because dealing with consigners my advice is once you get that agreement set up, practice it a couple of times, set yourself up as a consigner put yourself through the paces, then put your family and friends through the paces. It's a great way to get started. And if you have that set, you'll avoid a lot of the pitfalls like you know, feeling like you're disappointing people not charging the right amount, that sort of thing. So just be prepared.

Brian: Good advice.

Griff: Yes. Very good advice. Libby, you've been an inspiration very few times. I've actually thought about quitting eBay and doing something else. But this segment...

Libby: I don't wanna be responsible for that. I don't wanna be responsible for that Griff!

Griff: Well, maybe I can balance both. We'll see.

Brian: Have you ever thought about doing a podcast? Libby? We might have an opening.

Griff: She does one.

Libby: I have two podcasts. I have one for my business and one for Consignment Chats.

Griff: She can do two. I can do this one and consign. I mean, it's all I do here.

Libby: Yeah. You can definitely do it. You can definitely do both Griff.

Griff: Well, Libby it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for taking well this time outta your busy consignment business, to tell us about consignments and direct us to Consignment Chats and Conshy Consignments on eBay. Again, we'll put the links to both, there's more than that. We'll put a whole load of links so that you can, you can explore this on your own. Thanks again, Libby.

Libby: Oh, thank you guys. This is been really a dream of mine. So thank you.

Brian: Absolute pleasure. Have a great weekend.

Libby: You too!

Griff: Libby Broggi sells under the user ID, Conshy Consignments, and we'll put a link to her eBay store and the podcast and the consignment chats, all of that. And the transcript for this episode, episode number 191.

Brian: You got questions?

Griff: Guess what? We got answers. And two of our questions this week, the first two we're gonna talk about were sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller Tiffany. Brian, why don't you read the first one?

Brian: Okay. Happy to hi, Brian and Griff. I have two questions. First. We have seen an increase in recent months of local shoppers requesting pickup, which is great. We love saving our customers money by offering local pickup. However, we have had a few no-show buyers. We have messaged the buyers several times with no response. What should we do with the orders in those cases? Do we cancel the order and refund the buyer after a certain number of days? Do we leave the items set aside indefinitely? We just wanna make sure we handle those cases properly to stay in good standing with eBay.

Griff: Well, Tiffany, she seems like she'll go to the end of the earth in order to make a customer happy. Keep an item indefinitely. Like till what? Like from 10 years from now and the buyer shows up, oh, we were hoping you'd show up for this! No, Tiffany, the good news is you don't have to leave the item set aside indefinitely. If the buyer has paid you, but has not responded to messages or has not shown up. And this is the local pickup buyer, that's the option they selected, then you have up to 30 days to cancel the sale and refund the buyer's payment at your discretion. So you can do it any time within those 30 days. That's for cases where the buyer is paid.

Brian: And if the local pickup buyer hasn't paid for the item and isn't responding to messages and has not shown up to pick up the item as planned, then consider filing an unpaid item for the listening four days after the purchase date.

Griff: One note about local pickup. For those of you who might be curious about how it works as a shipping option, you can add it to any of your listings as part of a policy. You can edit a policy so that it includes that option. A lot of sellers might do that for like a big item. They're selling a sofa or tables or something that's really heavy, but you can't do it post transaction. If your listing didn't have that option on it and a buyer then says, can I pick this up? That's an awkward situation, cuz there's not gonna be any record. As far as eBay is concerned that this was a local pickup and you're gonna get dinged for shipping. So if you're willing to have a buyer come to your location of business, to pick up an item, add that option into the listing before you list it.

Brian: Really good advice. And one other piece of advice, especially if you're running your business outta your home, coordinate with the buyer where you're gonna pick it up. For something like a couch, they're probably gonna have to come to your house to pick it up.

Griff: Unless you have a truck. You wanna go to a safe location so no shenanigans happen. Not saying that they would, but it's better to be safe than sorry. And a lot of your local police departments will actually have a dedicated, like parking lot, right outside of the station where people who are doing online commerce can meet to exchange goods and money.

Brian: I had another seller tell me that they always meet in front of a bank because there's all kinds of security cameras in front of banks as well.

Griff: That's a good idea for those of you who may not want to go to your local law enforcement, we won't ask why. Yeah. Just make sure it's a safe place. If you don't want to have people at your home.

Brian: And you know, I haven't heard any issues actually with local pickup on eBay. You know, I was just trying to think about, I, I don't think I've ever heard of one instance. And I worked in Trust for seven years.

Griff: In all my experience at eBay. I've never heard from a seller or a buyer. Who's had an unpleasant experience with local pickup. So it's, it could be a good option by the way. Tiffany did say she had a second question. I'll read that one. Cause this is, this is an interesting, listen: We have a particular customer who's been very troublesome for us over the last year. In one instance said, buyer sent us over 30 messages in a five minute period over the weekend. The buyer has contacted us directly outside of eBay on several little occasions and made subtle threats. So we use the block feature to prevent that buyer from shopping with us in the future. But that buyer keeps creating new eBay user IDs. We know it's the same buyer because the tone of the messages and the type of products, the buyer inquires about and purchases and the location. Is there anything that eBay can do for us in a case like this? Or do we just keep blocking every new user ID? This buyer creates? Thanks for the amazing podcast. That's always helpful and never boring. eBay username, Rio Grand Trade. And this is Tiffany who sent this in.

Brian: Well, Tiffany, if you have a buyer who insists on harassing you after you've blocked them, you should report that buyer to eBay. Go to the eBay, help and contact link and type abusive buyer into the search bar. That will take you to the page for reporting that buyer.

Griff: And I asked Velvet about this this morning on our slack channel to make sure I had the right information. She also noticed in the message that Tiffany had said subtle threats. And if you as a seller or a buyer, but as a seller, feel that a buyer is threatening you, you need to let us know that immediately. And there is a link in that page that you just lead us to that's for threats. And please, please do not just pass them off. We need to know about it so we can take action.

Brian: It's not the type of buyer we want in the marketplace, as you can imagine.

Griff: Remember it takes all kinds of people to make a world. And sometimes they do sign up on eBay And another tactic that works. If it's not threats, it's just annoying. Ignore the buyer's messages, delete them without response. This is a hard thing for people to do. It's your choice. Whether or not you're gonna engage. Even as a seller, you do not have to answer buyers annoying messages. You can simply ignore them, which could be the working tactic, the successful one, because if they're looking for attention and you're not giving them that attention, eventually they're gonna get tired and leave.

Brian: And they'll look for the attention from somebody else. Yeah. Who's willing to give it to them. Who's

Griff: Willing to get all like haired out and start sending responses back. But Tiffany, if you feel that there's no matter how small the thread is, you've gotta let us know.

Brian: It's a really good tactic. And it's actually a tactic that I think when I first joined eBay and was posting on the discussion boards, you gave me the guidance sometimes just to ignore people who post and it's the same kind of philosophy, right? Whether it's a public post and they're just looking for others to engage with them, you think, okay, they're just sidetracking. It's not relevant to the discussion. You just have to ignore 'em. And that includes not even typing something along. I'm not gonna respond to your questions because that actually is a response. So you can't even do that.

Griff: I used to have to advise mostly sellers, but sometimes sellers and buyers on the early eBay forums, back in the nineties who would get into these huge McCoy Hatfield type of feuds. And they'd come to me and say, what should I do? And I'd say, just ignore it. Well, they couldn't, they just couldn't ignore it.

Brian: They wanted the last word.

Griff: Exactly. If you choose to engage, you have to expect to be, the other person is gonna respond. If you don't wanna response, just walk away. You're under no obligation to respond. Very few people took that information to heart. choose where to engage wherever it is.

Brian: And time is money. So especially as a business owner, Tiffany, you can also think from that perspective. Where do you want to spend your time. Happy buyers or this kind of annoying buyer?

Griff: Exactly. So Tiffany we will post the links to the Report Buyer Page and the relevant policy pages in this transcript for episode 191. Our next question was sent to podcast@ebay.com by eBay seller Alexander, he writes: Hello. I was wondering if eBay had any plans of getting rid of the ability for buyers to "buy" the item and then not pay for it. We have items in our store that have been sitting in a waiting payment for months because of this feature. Thank you, Alexander

Brian: Months. Well, I have so much to say on this. So Alexander we're heading in that direction so that nobody can actually do this though, we aren't completely there yet. But as a start, we've taken steps to eliminate unpaid situations for Best Offers. Obviously immediate pay takes care of it. So if you're selling fixed price, you know, encourage you to use immediate pay. Yeah. If you do offer Best Offers though, it can still occur. In October, 2021, we piloted a new process for collecting payment, from a buyer automatically following acceptance of their offer to do this. We asked the buyer for payment and shipping details in the Best Offer flows in the coming weeks, we plan to expand our coverage and include more buyers, which should further reduce unpaid items from buyer offers.

Griff: I've actually seen this as someone who has made an offer and accepted it where it took the payment out.

Brian: An easy process?

Griff: Really easy. Yeah.

Brian: It's good to hear. So by mid-year we will also start collecting payment details and other best offer scenarios, including counter offers and offer to buyers. These changes will be applied automatically for buyers. So you don't need to update or make changes to your listening. The goal for the future is to add this feature for auction format listings as well. There's no set timeline for that, but stay tuned throughout 2022 for update.

Griff: Well, that'll be golden. It'll be the end of unpaid items. Except for people who actually still for whatever reason, for legacy reasons, want to not have immediate payment, whatever the reason may be. You'll always have that option as a seller.

Brian: But that's a business decision. You know, it's not, if you're making that choice, then you take the risk of having the unpaid item. The other thing that I would say to Alexander is don't wait, if a buyer hasn't paid, you can file an unpaid item report within four days. So please do that. Oftentimes that buyer gets a message from eBay that they haven't paid for the item. And oftentimes that prompt email that they get from eBay prompts them actually to go pay for their item. And so you actually might see an increase in the number of buyers paying for those items. If you use that unpaid item flow.

Griff: Yeah. And you should not let those items sit for months, you should actually make sure that you can recycle them back into the market. So that's not capital sitting there not working for you. You don't want to have inventory that's not working. You want it to sell.

Brian: So file unpaid item claims if they haven't and, and then close them out and re-list.

Griff: And finally, Brian, we have a call to our voice line from eBay seller, Ezra of Silver Deals.

Guest Caller: Hello. My name is Ezra. The name of my story is Silver Deals. I'm an experienced long time eBay seller. And just have a basic question that I would like to have you guys reiterate. I will also get a sale from a customer and then an email immediately following the sale saying, oh boy, I made a mistake on the address. Please ship it to an alternate address. If the item is anything of any value, I'm always worried to do this. And I'd like to know from you guys, what's the best way of handling that? Do I email the customer to request the cancellation or do I cancel the order as per the customer's request myself? Or is there another way of doing it that can make the customer happy and make it so that I don't lose the sale. Often I'll email the customer and not get a response even from them. So this remains an issue for me. Thanks for the great podcast and all the work you guys do. Have a great day.

Brian: Another great question.

Griff: Yeah. And it's one that we hear occasionally. I thought it was worth updating in case you haven't heard it in past episodes because it's like I said, It's a perennial question on eBay. Although Ezra, we don't have a help page on this topic for sellers, we do have one for buyers and it actually informs a seller's options. We'll put a link to that help page in the transcript, or you can find it by going to help and contact on the top of any eBay page. And then just typing in change shipping address the link to the page that shows up is the first link, click it. And you can read it, but Brian, why don't you outline exactly what the options are?

Brian: Yeah. So the, the question is whether or not to change the buyer's address at the label printing stage, the answer is it's up to the seller. You may decide at your discretion to honor the buyer's request and change the shipping address at the label printing stage, or if you're not comfortable changing the address you have the option within 30 days, cancel the transaction, using the problem with address reason, you would then refund the buyer with the instructions for the buyer to change the destination address and repurchase the item.

Griff: There isn't one set way to do this. You could also agree to change the address, should the item for some reason, go missing. You do have the option to pursue it with eBay by using my messages. The trusted and customer support team will see that you changed it at the buyer's request. And they'll usually, you know, rule in your favor. So it's not a problem, but in order to avoid that, if you don't wanna have that happen, you're perfectly within your rights to politely say, Hey, I, you know, it's post transaction. You can't do this anywhere else, by the way, try doing it at Amazon or any retail website. You can't. You still have to cancel the transaction and repurchase it, but first make sure you've added the destination address you wanna use in your profile. You can have more than one address. You can select it.

Brian: I was gonna say, and for buyers out there, if you've got multiple addresses, cuz I've shipped stuff to my kids off in college. I ship stuff to my mother down in Southern California. You can have multiple addresses that are kinda approved addresses to ship to.

Griff: You can select which address you want.

Brian: And you have a default one, which is my home address.

Griff: Address. It's funny cuz the seller asked us once, well, why can't buyers do that post transaction? And there is an absolute, really good reason to protect the seller. You know what it is?

Brian: After the transaction,

Griff: Right? So they've paid for the shipping and they've paid for the item and now they want to ship it to a different address.

Brian: Now you gotta recalculate the shipping.

Griff: And it could be that it's either under or over in which case, who's gonna pay that? How does that work? How we have to go back into the checkout flow. If that's a possibility, the decision was made not to allow a buyer to change the address payment because there's the possibility that the shipping amount, whether it's free shipping or not, because you as the seller have already decided what that's gonna be. It could end up being more. And then how are you gonna get that money from someone? It's a tricky situation. So Ezra the bottom line is it's not eBays or your responsibility as a seller to make sure that a buyer's shipping address is correct. Or the one that the buyer wants to use. That's solely a buyer's obligation and responsibility. There's nothing to be lost by politely informing that buyer that, Hey, you gotta do this.

Brian: And we give the buyer the option to update and have multiple addresses. So it shouldn't be an issue on the buy side. When this happens with you Griff. Do you honor the buyer request?

Griff: Okay. I gotta be honest. I do. It's just not worth it for me. And I haven't had an issue so far. I haven't had like to outlay more money for postage yet. It only happens maybe once a year out of the several hundred transactions I might have, I suppose if it was a high value item. I'd have to be able to make that decision.

Brian: Given Ezra's user ID, he might be dealing with some really high value items.

Griff: Silver Deals, could be right. But for me, if it was a really like several hundred dollars, I'd probably decline it. But like, again, that hasn't happened to me yet. Has it happened to you?

Brian: It hasn't, but I'm trying to think I don't sell as much as you, the last time that someone asked me to ship to another address has probably been over a year ago.

Griff: Yeah. Well, anyway, I hope that answers your question Ezra. And I wanna commend you for wanting to do the right thing and asking us and I hope we haven't confused you with the answer. It's basically up to you.

Brian: Yeah. Although hopefully buyers will learn too, along the way. Any of our buyers that are out there listening, you know, you wanna ship to another address just before you complete checkout, add an address.

Griff: The few times I've had the request and I've agreed to it. I've also said, Hey, in the future, if this is gonna happen for other purchases, you may want to have that address on file. And I've given them instructions on how to do that. I've never had a buyer come back and say, thanks. I assume that they follow the instructions. You can lead a horse to water. But you can't make 'em change their address.

Brian: No you can't.

Griff: Brian. That's all the questions for this week.

Brian: Well, if you have a question, why not let us help. Just call your question into our voice line at (888) 723- 4630.

Griff: Yeah. Like Ezra did (888) 723- 4630. We love calls. Call it any time of the day, any day of the week. And then you leave your question or comment and we just might put it on the air.

Brian: And if you're not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com, that's podcast@ebay.com.

Griff: And now it's that time of the week. Your three point podcast checklist. Number one.

Brian: Check the Announcement Board for up to date seller news every day.

Griff: Number two, please fill out our new survey. You can find it at all those fine stores that I've told you about it. Fine stores everywhere. Fine webpages everywhere. We need your input.

Brian: Need to review anything in this podcast, it's easy. Check the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to find the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: And on our next episode, we'll get a seller product update with longtime employee in the product organization. Valerie Ye.

Brian: We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. Libby Broggi of Conshy Consignments.

Griff: The eBay for Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.