Episode 60 || The Perfect Price and a Message From Jordan Sweetnam

[doug@ebay]

This week’s theme is The Perfect Price and how to find it, how to apply it and how to monitor it over time. In the Buzz, we cover topics of conversation in the Community, on social media, and the news. In the Main Story the Queen of Auctions Lynn Dralle shares her pricing strategies. On Inside eBay Harry Temkin explains how Terapeak can help research the perfect price for your listings as well as determine trends. He’ll share best practices too. We’ll also have a special message from Jordan Sweetnam, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas Market, in his first eBay for Business podcast appearance. He’ll tell us why he’s excited to be back and why sellers are core to eBay’s business. To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

eBay for Business- Episode 60 – The Perfect Price

This week’s theme is The Perfect Price and how to find it, how to apply it and how to monitor it over time. In the Buzz, we cover topics of conversation in the Community, on social media, and the news. In the Main Story the Queen of Auctions Lynn Dralle shares her pricing strategies. On Inside eBay Harry Temkin explains how Terapeak can help research the perfect price for your listings as well as determine trends. He’ll share best practices too. We’ll also have a special message from Jordan Sweetnam, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas Market, in his first eBay for Business podcast appearance. He’ll tell us why he’s excited to be back and why sellers are core to eBay’s business. To have your questions answered on eBay for Business, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com.

Links

#ebaypodcast
ebay.com/podcast
ebay.com/sellingonebay
ebay.com/meetups
ebay.com/community
ebay.com/sellercenter
ebay.com/communitychat
ebay.com/sellerprotection
ebay.com/help/home
ebay.com/sts

Hosts

Griff, Alan Aisbitt, Liz Austin

Guests

Jordan Sweetnam (eBay Staff), Harry Temkin (eBay Staff), Lynn Dralle (eBay Seller)

Transcript

Perfect listing. Perfect title, perfect photos. What's today? Perfect price!

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

What is the perfect price?

Well, that's what we're going to find out. If it was that easy, we'd just have a ten second show.

99 cents?

The lowest price. That's the perfect price.

No. There are alot of other factors.

Right. Do you shop by the price when you shop anywhere like eBay or anywhere else?

It depends. It really depends how quick I need the item. If I need it quickly. If it's an impulse buy and I can find it somewhere, maybe it's a bit more expensive, but I'll get it in a day or two.

That's is part of the value.

Yeah.

You'll pay more to get it quicker?

Yeah. Or if it's a gift and the seller has better returns policy versus another seller, I might pay a little bit extra for peace of mind knowing that I can return it.

So it's not just the price.

It's not just the price.

Or the lowest price.

You would think so. But then actually when you think about all the other factors, who it's for, how quick you need it. Yeah. There is a lot goes into it.

Well, that's what we're talking about today. Should we say, should we start?

Let's jump on in.

Let's do that.

I'm Alan.

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 60. What's on the roster for this week, Alan?

This is the last part of our four part month long perfect listing series. And the theme this week is The Perfect Price. How to find it, how to apply it and how to monitor over time.

And continuing with that topic. The queen of auctions herself, also known as Lynn Dralle returns to the podcast to share some of her pricing strategies. It's more than just setting a price, Alan.

So it's not just set it and forget it?

Not on eBay. There's so much more to a successful, profitable, perfect pricing strategy than just setting it and forgetting it.

But of course, and when it comes to setting up price research is key.

It sure is. And I'm so glad you brought that up because we're going to talk once more with Harry Temkin about the research tool that you have all heard about Terapeak. And Harry's going to explain how Terapeak can help you research the perfect price for your listings as well as determine trends and the best practices too.

Perfect. And Liz Austin will be speaking with Senior Vice President and General Manager of Marketplace America's Jordan Sweetnam who's returning to eBay after a short hiatus away at Walmart. All that. And what sellers are saying online about eBay are coming up next.

So what's The Buzz this week, Alan?

Well Griff, there was a lot of buzz this week. I thought I heard something. Well we had some site issues.

It does happen from time to time.

Unfortunately. Yeah, some users had issues uploading images to their listings, generating and printing labels and there was issues with My Messages.

Oh my, I had the same thing happen. I couldn't print a label that day. I had to go to stamps.com.

Well we're sorry for the inconvenience.

No, it wasn't that bad. And a few hours later it was all back together.

Yeah. Yeah. It did take longer than, than we usually get incidents turnaround. But I think the Community Team did a great job engaging with sellers throughout the day and providing updates. And we found a work around and then we shared that work around with sellers that enabled them to print labels in the interim.

Thank Heavens! Alan, tell us where sellers and buyers can go for site issues and updates if they want to be reassured by the Community Team.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a great System Status Board that sellers can use. And I actually saw sellers sharing this on social media. It's not a well known thing, but you can get to it by going to ebay.com/STS.

STS?

Yeah.

Not STD?

No, no. You need to go to your doctor for that one! I have to add the System Status Board was very useful during these issues.

Tell me, Alan, do we ever see any buyer feedback? We're mostly sellers.

Let me tell you a Griff. Interesting you should mention that. Though sellers are the main audience on the community we do see buyer related topics as well.

Oh really, give us an example.

I've got a few. Buyers report frustrations with unresponsive and unprofessional sellers. There are some. I know most are great, but there are some sellers out there.

Who are just having bad days.

Who have bad days or maybe something's come up. Buyers purchase, they've sent their money and they have questions and they do appreciate getting answers. There's uncertainty with how to return their purchases and then there's confusion related to tracking and the cancellation process as well as feedback issues.

You know, it's interesting to hear some buyer feedback and issues and every now and then.

Yeah, many buyers seem unaware of the protections that eBay offers them. Instead of waiting for the seller to educate them on how to find a resolution. Some buyers reference the communication they receive from eBay related to their issues but feel these messages do not fully address their questions.

That's not good. What are we doing to help?

Well, we've just started to share these insights with the buyer team for improvement on a weekly basis.

Good. I heard that PayPal began notifying its members that they will no longer return transaction fees on refunds?

That's right.

Wow.

And in response where you're seeing some salary site out, they will no longer accept a buyer requested cancellations due to this change.

That's not good. Returns are a bigger concern as sellers will now be out of their PayPal fees.

That's right. And the overall feeling is that this change will negatively impact eBay sellers as the only payment method available for non Managed Payment accounts is PayPal. This is a topic that we're going to continue to monitor Griff.

Yeah, it's still in development. Okay, so that's one topic. What else Alan?

We saw a lot of conversations over on social media about Promoted Listings and them being potentially blocked by users who have ad blockers installed on their browsers. We noticed there was some incorrect information being shared that caused the alarm in the seller community.

Oh no. Incorrect information. That doesn't sound good. So tell us more.

Well, here's what we know right now. Ad blockers generally are intended to block intrusive ads like popups that disrupt the user experience. We have designed our Promoted Listing ads to natively align with our site experience. And most ad blockers do not block that sort of non-intrusive content. However, there are a host of ad blockers on the market and each maintains its own user settings and policies, distinguishing between intrusive ads and acceptable native content. Currently our data suggests that Promoted Listings are being blocked for less than 2% of traffic. Unlike other marketplaces and social networks, we're constantly evaluating our experience and our advertising programs, including the impact of ad blocker software on the content we make available.

Well, thank you Alan. It's good to hear that it's only about 2% of traffic. That's not a lot.

It's not. It's not a lot.

So anything else going on with Promoted Listings?

Yeah, yeah. Lots of conversations on Promoted Listings recently. Some sellers mentioned that they didn't understand the change communicated in their 2019 Fall Seller Update. That was regarding the removal of duplicated promoted on non promoted listings in Search.

We've covered this in the podcast in the last few weeks, but it always bears repeating. So Alan, can you clarify that change?

Of course, that's what I'm here for.

Good.

So a listing will show once whether it's promoted or organic. If the listing places higher in search results as promoted, it will show as promoted and not a second time as an organic placement. And if the listing places higher in search results organically, it will be shown organically and not a second time as promoted. And we feel this is a better buyer experience. It gives buyer a cleaner, more relevant search experience as it cuts down on confusion due to duplicate listings in search results. Nobody wants to see duplicate search results. Right, Griff?

Well, I suppose not Alan. Thanks for all that news in The Buzz and let's move on shall we to our Main Story for the week.

It's time for The Main Story.

Time for The Main Story.

Here comes The Main Story.

Here it is.

I think it's The Main Story. Wait a minute, who's there?

It's The main Story.

Come on in Main Story.

Sit down.

Good to see you again.

This week we're talking about The Perfect Price. We're going to talk to someone who I'm pretty sure has got a really good pricing strategy. We've had her on the show before and you all know her as the Queen of Auctions. It's our beloved friend, Lynn Dralle. Lynn, welcome back to the show.

Thank you Griff. It's great to be here.

It's always fun to talk to you and I always learn something, so I'm hoping that our sellers will learn something as well. And today as you heard, we're talking about pricing. I know from our past conversations that you have very specific strategies that aren't just dependent upon pricing but also on how you price and when you price and when you change formats and how you realist and how you revisit pricing and how you keep on top of it. And this all results in your velocity of sales. A lot of our sellers have adopted what I call the "set it and forget it" pricing strategy. Can you give me your thoughts on that?

Well, I think you have to really have a plan and a strategy. And after doing this for 21 years, can you believe that? 21 years selling on eBay. I've really come up with a price strategy that works for me. You know, I originally started out pricing stuff super high. Like my grandma had a cameo vase. I'd start it at $1,000 cause I wanted $1,000. And that worked for a while cause it was back in 1998 but then I went to the 99 cent strategy and boy Griff, that did not work for me. I know it works for some sellers, but it did not work for me.

Well tell me what happened when you adopted that strategy.

Well, I adopted it when I was moving from Bellingham, Washington to California back in 2002. And I did it to move stuff quickly. But I'll tell you what happens at 99 cents when you're selling stuff that doesn't have a lot of demand, nobody bids or if they do bid, it's 99 cents.

That's not good.

That's not good. It's definitely not worth your time to sell something for 99 cents. But you know from going to all the eBay Lives, and eBay Opens I've met sellers that are super successful with that strategy, but that's because they do it constantly and they build up a huge following. So it can work for you. It just depends on your business model.

So you didn't find success with the 99 cent model. What was your next step from there yet? You didn't say you didn't just sit there and complain, you figured out something else. What did you do after that?

And you know what Griff? We changed that one really fast.

I guess you had to.

I wasn't going to be doing that for long. Honestly. You don't want to sell anything less than $10 on eBay. It's not worth your time. It's not worth the listing fees. So I started listing everything at 9.99 and that works really well. And I have elaborated on that over the years and now I'm very happy with where I sit now. I start a lot of stuff at 9.99. Coffee mugs I used to start at 9.99, now I've up them to 12.99 because it's a specific buyer. So that extra three bucks really helps. And then if it's something like, if it's a dinner plate or something that I have a reference point, replacements or Terapeak. Terapeak is awesome for doing some quick research. I will take that high retail that I consider when I do my research and I'll price it at half that for auction. That's worked really, really well for me. And it kind of gives you a structure so you're not just PFA ING and PFA means pulled from Air. And that term comes from my grandma because she had an antique store for 52 years and I'd say, grandma, where'd you come up with that price? And she'd say, PFA.

Pulled from the air.

That's the nice version, right? There's a, there's a not so nice version.

Because seriously pricing is tough Griff. You know, I have a retail store now and it's hard. It's really hard because you want to price it to sell it so you don't sit with it for the next six years. But you also don't want to leave money on the table. It's very hard to pick a fixed price. That's why I really recommend for people selling on eBay. Always, always, always put your item up at auction first.

We are talking specifically about the kind of merchandise you sell, which tends to be one of a kind collectibles, antiques.

Absolutely. But the reason I say always put it up at auction is that way it keeps you from leaving money on the table because if you get a bidding war, you know you've got something good. And that way you don't have to research it too much. You know what I mean?

You mentioned 9.99 and 12.99. Do you find over time that that helps protect you against the risk of losing out on the item?

Absolutely. And I just put on a Murano, beautiful piece of art glass from Italy, Miller Fiori. I mean, I started that at $99 because I'm not going to take less than $99 for that. You really have to follow your gut on this. But it is a learning curve and I think that if you're just starting out, starting at 9.99 is a great place to start.

Do you use any research tools for determining price of items where you may not know the value but you don't want to PFA?

Yeah, I do Griff. I got you saying it, didn't I?

You did and I'll be saying it forever now.

I see my grandma's smiling down on us. You know, I use Terapeak a lot. I love Terapeak. Let's say I bought a collection of precious moments figurines, which I don't recommend anyone buys. (laughter)

Why is that?

Because they don't sell.

Yeah, that's a good reason.

Well, they do sell, but not for a whole lot.

So I bought a huge collection and so for me to figure out my starting bid price on those, I went to Terapeak and I searched for Precious Moment figurine and I looked at the last year's worth of data and I saw what the average selling price was and I believe it was like 13 something. So I started them all at 14.99. It's a really great tool, especially when you're, you know, doing a group of things or like shot glasses or something that you want to get kind of an idea of what the market is willing to pay. Terapeak is wonderful. Replacements I use a lot for my silverware and my dinnerware cause I always start at half of their prices. If it doesn't sell, it goes in my store at Fixed price at their high price.

We should mention your Replacements is a separate website that sells replacement dinnerware and silverware.

Yeah. And, and it's just a great research tool. I do find though that after auction, I always always raise the price always. And people, you know, people will email you during an auction and say, well will you take less? And i''ll say no, you better buy it at this price cause it's getting, the prices are getting raised. When it goes into my store I raise the price. You know, I was a buyer for May Department Stores for five years. And one thing I learned doing that and being in charge of a huge amount of inventory was, you know, your shoppers are looking for a bargain, they want a sale. My philosophy is price it high, you know, but at a reasonable high price. And then you got to run those sales. The Promotions Tool is fantastic. You need to be running a sale all the time on your merchandise. And when you'd go to do a sale and promotions on eBay, it'll suggest like a four to five week range. Don't do that. Do like a seven to 10 day window because then when your shoppers are looking at your item, it'll say the sale ends in six days, five hours or whatever. And you don't want it to say sale ends in 30 days.

So as a way of goosing them to get into the purchase, right, Hey, you don't got much time, here's a goose.

Well that's, that's exactly right. You know, what creates things as a sense of urgency. And in my store, as you know, our prices go down every 30 days automatically. And that really spurs people to say, Hey, this isn't going to be here. I better buy it now. Same thing with that whole sale mentality. You gotta be running those promotions. And you know, my mom or some of my followers will email me or call me and say, my sales are terrible. And I'll say, first thing, are you running any sales? Are you running any promotions? And they'll be, Oh, I forgot. And it really, really helps business.

After the auction you put it on fixed price. This is obviously items that didn't get an opening bid at the auction?

Right. Absolutely. Which, you know, really Griff it is about 90, 95% that don't sell at auction. So you really just put it out there to get the, to get people to see it and get the exposure and then you immediately raise it to a higher price, get it in your store, put Best Offer on it. People love making Best Offers, run those promotions and um, do everything you can. Do the ad words, what's that called? Promoted listings. Do that. Do everything you can to get that item sold because you want that inventory to turn. That's, that's where you're gonna make your money. It's your margins and your turnover.

You're not running a museum.

No we are not.

Sometimes I think we are. I asked my grandma once, how often do you turn your inventory in this store, grandma? She goes about every 50 years. (laughter).

So two lifetimes.

I go, that's, that's not gonna work for me. We got to increase that turnover to about four to six times a year is really what you want to be turning that inventory.

When you list an item and you know you're going to have a pricing strategy that may result in a decrease over time given promotions and discounts and best offers. Do you keep a record of what your absolute drop dead bottom price is before you know that you've now moved into the last category, which we may do to liquidate?

Absolutely. And you have to do that a lot, Griff. Especially if you're selling commodity items. With mine, I have 13,000 things listed. Griff, I can't track each one individually. You gotta look at the big picture and my big picture is I don't pay more than 10 cents on the dollar for this stuff. So I've got a pretty long shelf life where I can sit with it, you know what I mean? Because I don't have much invested. I will towards the end of products life span, you know, for example, I keep most of my stuff three to four years. Cause antiques and collectibles take some time to sell. In that fourth year before I will take it off of eBay, I usually run a 30 to 50% off sale for a couple of months. Clean out everything I can and then I'll just end those items and I'll donate them or I'll put them in my store. You gotta be turning it, you know what I mean? You can't let that stale stuff sit. You gotta be on top of it.

and your donated items, you write those off, I assume.

Absolutely. You should see my stack of receipts.

It all, it all works in the end.

It does and nobody's perfect and don't beat yourself up if something you buy doesn't sell. And there are a lot of people that will hold on stuff and hold onto stuff, well I paid $50 I'm not letting it go for $50. I'm like, okay, Hey, you can get 30 and guess what? That 30 could turn into 300 so you've got to let go. Gotta move it along.

Do you give this advice outside of the podcast?

Pretty much.

And if you want to hear Lynn, you can go directly to her store someday if you're in Ventura, California. Lynn, tell us a little bit about your latest venture and how it's going.

Oh my God, Griff, it's so fun. Do you know we've been open a year and a half? It's crazy. The store is just so much fun. We have 700 consigners. They bring stuff in. We've gotten really picky. We've got vignettes set up and every 30 days our prices go down 20% and it's just a really fun, happy place. It's just been fantastic. I love the community. I love our customers. We just were voted second best home furnishing store in Ventura County, which is super exciting.

That is amazing. Congratulations!

Thank you.

If people want to learn more about Lynn Dralle and everything you'd, you've written books you've had, you've been online, you've, you've done tons of stuff. Where can they go? Where do you want me to send them?

Got to thequeenofauctions.com. Sign up for my newsletter and I've really cut down on writing my evenings, but I've got one coming out in a couple of weeks, so they're fun just to, you know, catch up with everybody. I've got about 20,000 people that read those, so got to keep them going.

Yes you do. You don't want to abandon your fans.

I can't abandon them!

No. Lynn, it's always a pleasure talking to you and congratulations on your success with the consignment store. Lynn's consignments in Ventura, California. I promise I'll get down there soon.

Yes! Will you bring me a truckload?

I could bring you my house. I'm in the process of liquidating everything I own over the next few years and there is stuff that I just don't want to put online, so maybe that's a good deal. Yeah.

Oh Griff, please do. Please. Please do. That'd be really fun.

Lynn. It's always a pleasure. We've been speaking with Lynn Dralle, She's also known as The Queen of Auctions. She's been on eBay for forever and and she has a wonderful store in Ventura, California as well as a presence on eBay under the queen of auctions. Check her out. You can learn a lot about how to price. I have. I've actually adopted some of her strategies and recently with great success. So try it out. See, this is especially good for one of a kind items. Coming up next we'll learn more about pricing as we revisit Terapeak with Harry Temkin. Stay tuned.

Today I'm rejoined by one of our favorites, Harry Temkin, Vice President of Seller Experience here at eBay. And on this segment we're going to talk about the perfect price as a key component to the perfect listing for the holiday. Thanks for rejoining us, Harry.

Great to be back, Griff.

So this is the final piece of the perfect listing, a puzzle. And we've talked about title and item specific and images in past episodes and now we're going to talk a little bit and focus in on pricing. Tell us why pricing is so important.

Well, look, you can have great photos, you can have the best title, you can have all the items specifics. But if you're not priced competitively, buyers aren't going to buy from you. The key is how do you know what price is competitive for your listing?

Well, that's my next question. How do you know? How do sellers know what the perfect price is?

We have this amazing tool called Terapeak. And everybody who has a store basic and above this year we gave Terapeak for free. So you should have access to TP.dot com straight with single sign on, right from ebay.com, right from Seller Hub. And what we announced at eBay Open was the first phase of the full integration now of Terapeak.com directly into Seller Hub. So in the research tab, you will now see Terapeak functionality directly within Seller Hub. You have the ability to search up to a full year of historical transactions.

Not just the 90 days…

Not just the 90 days. So now you can, you know, you can look at seasonality.

And trends.

Exactly right. So the cool thing about Terapeak is look, when you're figuring out how you want to price your listing, it not only can tell you how other listings have sold, but it also can help you understand whether you want to use auction or fixed price format because it shows, you know, how many have sold with auction versus fixed price. The other really cool thing is it shows you what percentage of sellers are using free shipping, so that'll also help you understand whether you need to build shipping into your listing price or whether, because you know the majority are actually adding on shipping. You just go with that. But that's really, really important because that can put you at a disadvantage. Right. Compared to other sellers, if everybody's using free shipping and you're not.

But there are some categories where I've discovered, for example, in antiques. Especially items that may weigh more than five pounds, where sellers don't usually offer free shipping, and then it's not such a big competitive situation.

Exactly right. But Terapeak would show you that you would say that the vast majority of sellers do not include free shipping in their price.

Now when I'm pricing items, cause I'm, I'm listing all the time, every night I list about five or 10 items now. And when I'm pricing them, my rule of thumb is I have to undercut everyone. I have to, even if it means I'm taking a loss on something, I just figure, well it's time to get rid of this item. That's my strategy. But I've heard that other sellers use tons of other strategies. What have you heard?

Yeah, my son and I have different kinds of strategies as well. We look at competitive pricing and sometimes we'll price a little bit higher and put best offer on it, right? So that opens up the ability to negotiate because buyers like to negotiate, they like to know they're getting a deal. So sometimes if we see where the average price is on a fixed price format, we might go a little bit higher than that and put on a best offer on it as well. It also depends on the particular product we're selling and how many listings are out there. Right. And the competitiveness, basically supply and demand. It also comes down to have you sold a lot of that item, quite frankly. Right? I mean buyers recognize if you've sold those products, usually price competitively and look, a lot of times it comes down to pictures as well along with that price. And I'll come back to pictures because when the buyer can really see your product in some cases authenticate it because of the pictures, particularly with sneakers, like the way we sell, that goes a long way. So I've seen a lot of times where we can be priced a little bit higher than our competition and because we have great photos and the buyer knows they're getting a legit product, they can see in the photos, you'll sometimes get that higher price. But a lot of times also just in that space, you can have a lot of people that are well below the competitive price and that kind of, you can sniff out that those may be aren't authentic shoes right there, you know, fakes. But sometimes people just, you know, they're willing to pay a lot less for the fake. But that's another way you can differentiate when you see a lot of prices at the lower band. Knowing where Terapeak shows you the average price.

So every, every show this month we've been focusing back on what we're talking about and how it relates to holidays cause this is the make or break season coming up for a lot of sellers. It is for retail and sellers aren't any different. Do you have any extra tips based on your experience both as a seller now at eBay, but also you're very familiar with the retail season from past work that you've done in other markets. What can you advise sellers to keep on top of mind when they're getting ready for prepping for the holiday season when it comes to price?

I actually go back to the other things even before price when it comes to holiday Griff. Like making sure your title is a great title, making sure you're providing all the item specifics, making sure you're giving us the best photos of your product. I mean those are at the heart of a great listing. And then ultimately, you know, looking at Terapeak, looking at how things have sold, what those average prices are. Based on that you'll determine where you think your competitive prices and whether you want to include free shipping or not.

So don't just think about price. Think about the four pillars here of the perfect listing.

Exactly right. There's a lot of other factors just besides price. I mean, you know, a lot of buyers come back to same buyers. They trust that particular seller, they've sold a lot of that product. Sometimes that demands a different price than others, but the reality is it's not just price, it's all of those other things as well.

I was shopping this morning for a bunch of equipment and I always buy all our podcast studio equipment on eBay. And we're setting up a studio in salt Lake. And so I'm looking at the equipment and I'm not paying so much attention to price right now even though it's eBay's money. Sorry. But I'm, what I'm looking at is how quickly can I get it and if I find a seller who's going to get it to me three days faster, I'm going to pay the premium. These were all free shipping.

But look, I'll also say this, we definitely do encourage free shipping. Buyers are accustomed to seeing free shipping and that's an important fact when using Terapeak and looking at your competition. What percentage are doing free shipping? And if that percent is much higher than 50% we'd encouraged to use free shipping obviously, because that is a big draw for buyers.

Well, Harry, I know you're very busy and you've got to get to the meetup.

I do, yes. But i'm always happy to make time for you and our sellers.

You know, it's not easy to be a VP. People are constantly pulling you hither and tither.

You know what time I started this morning, right? 4:30 AM I got on a plane to come to California and here it is, It's five o'clock Pacific coast time and I'm still going.

You heard it here sellers. Harry is earning that Vice President paycheck, so thank you. Thanks.

My pleasure. My pleasure Griff.

We've been listening to Harry Temkin, Vice President of Seller Experience, here at eBay. We've been talking about The Perfect Price and this is the end of our series for The Perfect Holiday Listing for the month of September. But we'll have great advice coming up in the next four episodes that have other, other aspects of holiday selling. So stay tuned.

We have a special segment today and in fact joining me to bring us this special segment is our good friend and correspondent, Liz Austin. Hi Liz.

Hi Griff.

And you have something special for us.

I do. Today we're excited to welcome our new SVP and GM of the America's Market, Jordan Sweetnam. Hi Jordan. Tell us about yourself and your history with eBay.

Hi Liz. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, it's great to be back at eBay. This is a run number two for me. I first joined eBay in 2004 and was with the eBay for almost 12 and a half years. And took a three year stint to go explore some other opportunities and get in the heat of the retail chaos and i'm really excited to be back at eBay.

Brilliant. And what were you doing at eBay before you went on your hiatus.

I got my start up in eBay Canada in 2004. I spent time doing analytics, pricing, marketing. Had the opportunity to move to San Jose in 2007 and work under actually a former a VP in Seller Experience Danesh who some people may remember and then had a lot of fun working on everything from shipping to trust programs. Got to go out and visit sellers at their place of operation. We had Seller Summits all over the country. I joke with, you know, many of us sort of my long time selling friends that, you know, I first met them, it sort of, you know, the, the nicest hotels, but the basements of every city in America kind of thing. A lot of really cool stuff. So I did Seller Experience for three to four years at eBay and then spent a couple of years doing Buyer Experience. So how do we drive and then conversion on our, on ebay.com you know, launch shopping cart. Which you know, amazingly even for eBay was new in 2010 I think. The improvements in guest checkout registration and then the final role I had at eBay was a leading actually Seller Experience and I got to spend a lot of time then build a lot of friendships in the selling community. So how do we improve for our consumer sellers and our professional sellers, our technical capabilities, the API is a selling flows? How do we look at helping them grow and scale their businesses? And a big focus for me then as it is now is really, how do we connect with our selling community and bring the voice of sellers into everything we do? I mean, I could talk about that for hours, but the number of examples where these moments on these really hard projects, these hard policy changes where sitting with sellers fundamentally change the way we build something. It's just been extremely impactful in my career, but impactful for sellers helping sellers because of how they shaped those. That was a huge part of the fun that I had and sort of my first stint at eBay and yeah, now I'm back and excited to do even more.

The question I have is, why did you come back?

I actually have trouble articulating it because the truth is there were all of these discrete moments over the last three and a half years while I was gone. But they kind of accelerated over the last year where I had these moments of like, wow, if I had known this, here's how I'd approach it differently at eBay. Or Oh my goodness, I can't believe this. This is happening outside of eBay. This should really be eBay's to own and be in. And so in no specific order, my family and I love to travel. My wife's family is from the Western part of Canada, mine is from the Eastern part of Canada. So we go back and visit in these fairly small towns where we came up in. But even going to, you know, cities like, you know, Nashville that are experiencing this growth. It's not about the downtown as you get out into the neighborhoods and see these main streets, this notion of Retail Revival, which we made a thing, but it was actually happening before eBay started to embrace it. I have personally seen it happening in all these towns across North America. And what's amazing is eBay can play a huge role in that. And actually making sure that these are helping these small sellers that are working their business of passion, get exposure to a national market, to a global market. My team told me this amazing stat two weeks ago, 90% of comic book stores in the U S sell on eBay. I mean, that is so cool. And when you dig inside that, um, many of them are in towns that actually wouldn't have enough demand to support a comic book store there to support them in the town in which they want to live. And eBay actually gives them that national exposure. And what's cool there is you can extend that into mountain bike shops and to record stores in to toy stores. I saw all these towns with like this really resurgent retail experience. And then I contrast that to what I've seen in other bigger cities, which is somehow the standard of retail, which is it doesn't matter where you go in America. I mean, or where you go in the world. And all of a sudden you see the same giant mega global brands and the same super discount retailers. And while that's awesome, If you see the same thing everywhere you go in the world, then you can kind of just stay in one place and get access to that. For me it was just this like awakening of like, wow, eBay is not Amazon, eBay is not Walmart. What we are is so incredible. Unlocking that assortment. And so that was kind of one of those moments. I sort of joke with my team just because the categories that I shop in doesn't mean they're categories that you know should be our number one focus. So, you know, I buy plants, I buy ladybugs, I buy art. But I recently went through buying a mountain bike and I didn't even check eBay. I was trying to find a used one. I checked Craigslist, I checked these other sites, I did find this great mountain bike shop that certified the bike and I bought it and I kind of said to myself, why isn't that on eBay? We have a role to play in that and it's a great experience. It is used. You save a lot of money. The bike shop cleans it up and certifies it. Like that can certainly happen locally. eBay can also be an enabler for that to get that inventory national exposure. And then we can actually send, when somebody buys it, we can send it back into the local bike shop. And so people know that that's where they can go and get service. And so there's no notion of who owns the customer, the local store or eBay, it's actually working in concert. I had a lot of fun at Walmart, which is where I was the last three years. I learned a lot. It can be a pretty polarizing brand and so, uh, you know, I wouldn't pretend to touch that topic, but certainly what I learned about, like eBay's big. Walmart has 5,000 stores and a million and a half employees in the U S . You learn a lot about how to work at scale and what it means to focus on the customer and compete and win. And Walmart is not for every birdie in terms of the brand spectrum, but they're really clear on who they are. And it really made me reflect on like, I think at times in eBay's past, we haven't really been comfortable with who we are. We've sort of said like, Oh, well maybe we should be that and maybe we should be that eBay is awesome in who and what we are! When I left eBay, I didn't stop shopping on eBay. I kept buying all the things because I still love eBay. I have crazy collections of stuff. If that doesn't have to mean it's, you know, niche and random, there are tens of millions of buyers buying this stuff every week. And I think if we embrace that, we can actually become much bigger than the sum of any one of the puzzle pieces. And then the last part of, you know, why came back, it's more of a personal note, but I've got two kids that are 12 and and nine. And I found that, you know, in order to have a sustainable career, you need to have balance. I need to have balance self, I need to balance for family. And if both those things are true, then I can bring the best part of what I need to do to work every day to help our sellers and help our community. And as awesome as my last job was, I spent almost every week on an airplane. And the reason I actually live close to eBay's, is cause I moved down here and bought a home that was close to eBay, you know, 15 years ago. And that's still true. And so it's awesome to have more time with my family and have more time to do what I love doing.

So there's a lot there that you want to do. What have you been doing since you've been here?

Trying to maximize the number of hours in a day is probably the short question. I've been trying to meet as many people as I can here in our campus, in San Jose and just get feedback. What's working, what's not working, how can I help. You know, what's going on culturally? Where are the tests we've been running and is it working? Where is there potential? You know, I know this is no news to anybody, you know, on the podcast, but like where are we feeling the greatest competitive pressure? Where do I need to be leaning in to help? Just so many of sellers that I've had relationships, you know, reached out to me almost immediately with coming back. And so I've been trying to, you know, late at night jump in on the Facebook groups and answer questions there and just again, try to gather feedback and insights. I have great context and you know, Griff, nothing compared to you, but in the history of eBay. But you know, really trying to get a crisp focus on, you know, where are we going to focus eBay in the next three years? When I look at the magic across all of the different seller segments on this platform, we've got professional sellers, we've got enthusiasts, we've got consumer sellers. No one of them makes up eBay. The sum of all of those really are our platform and our community. And so I want to figure out, you know, what strategically should be our priorities for the next six months, for the next one year, for the next two years, the next three years. 

So you talk a lot about our seller community and the value of that. Why do you believe that sets us apart?

As long as I've been at eBay it's been, this debate. Is eBay a marketplace? Is eBay a retailer? And the answer is both and neither. At the end of the day, we are a platform that is an enabler of trade, an enabler of commerce. But I worked in Buyer Experience. What does that really mean? I can control the pixels on ebay.com but that's just one part of the buyer experience. The buyer experience is largely determined by like, wow, look at this amazing item that's on eBay. Look at the spectrum of value that eBay offers me. Then the pixels. Can I find it? Can I buy it? Can I check out? And then does it show up? What do I open up? Is it what I want? The role of the seller is so critical in that buyer experience. For me, the big focus is if we don't understand what our sellers are doing, Where are they getting these products? What is the passion for our sellers? How are they able to make money? If our sellers can't run a successful business, I don't know how we can expect them to then deliver amazing experiences for our buyers. And so that's kind of at the core of it. There is no eBay without either one of those. I mentioned earlier at the start of the podcast around how important it is for sellers to help us shape the development of products. I shared an example of some sellers a few days ago around the creation of a Top Rated Seller Program, which at the time was quite controversial but as tough and difficult as was when we launched that it had actually been shaped over the period of nine months with feedback from sellers across the country. And the reality is the feedback we got from our sellers made the original idea of how do we create a program that makes sure the best sellers on the platform are recognized. That idea was shaped with feedback from sellers over nine months to get something that actually became viable and launch-able. That didn't make it a noncontroversial decision, but the quality of what we launched was much better thanks to the feedback from our sellers.

So as we think about supporting and enabling our sellers, we can talk about how we do that on the platform, but what about these macro issues that are out there like IST? How can we help our sellers work through this as we together are trying to make sense of this new legislation that has been enforced on us?

That's certainly a tough theme. You know, internet sales tax. Yeah. All things being equal. Nobody would want to pay sales tax. As a citizen and taxpayer, the flip side, Hey, everybody's gotta pay taxes, right? You want to have, we are in California, Cal fire is always front of mind here. I want to make sure that we're appropriately staffed so that our houses don't burn down in the middle of the night and so it's a meta theme, taxes are what they are. How can eBay help? I think making sure that we are creating a platform that is stable and predictable as possible for our community to grow and run their businesses. There are always things that will happen on a national or global scale that eBay can't control, but there's a lot we can do to actually smooth those out and make sure that sellers have that predictability and stability to run and grow their businesses. In the case of internet sales tax, I know we spent a lot of time legislating to try to make sure we didn't end up with a patchwork of regulations across every state, which a large retailer could probably comply with. But somebody who's selling on eBay as a hobby, you shouldn't have to worry about how to file tax returns in 10 States, 20 States, 30 States. This is not going to be a good use of their time.

Currently our sellers are gearing up for holiday. Do you have any advice or words of support for them for this major moment in their business?

eBay reflects so many different passions from collectibles to stamps, coins to dye cast to Christmas ornaments. The number one advice to sellers is just do what you do. Do what you love doing, you know your products better than anybody. Make sure you have what is on the platform that the customer is going to be looking for. What I've been talking about with the team here is we get ready for holiday. How do we make, what is magic about eBay come to life on our platform, right? The new or last Star Wars movie is coming out this year. Yeah. You'll be able to get some amazing new released Star Wars products on eBay. We also have 42 years. I apologize, somebody can correct me later of Star Wars history on eBay. There's nowhere else in the world that you can find that. And as I increasingly live more moments through the eyes of my children and they get excited about the things that are new, I actually get excited about them when they were out the first time and so they're going on to eBay and finding the, Oh look, here it is, you know, new and this is the one I want to have. I'm like, Oh, I'm going to go buy, I guess the quote unquote retro version of that, which is the one that I grew up with. And so I've been talking to the team a lot around how can we make eBay come to life on our terms through holiday. All the things that you see rereleased that are, you know, retro new, you can get the retro rerelease or the original one on eBay. For me personally, eBay has an extremely special spot for the holiday season. I grew up with, you know, I don't know, like many people did decorating the Christmas tree and you know, certain ornaments were really an anchor part of my childhood. And just over time as you move and things get lost and get damaged, those are kind of gone. And at one point I just kind of realized I could actually start to rebuild a lot of that on eBay. And through awesome capabilities like our Image Search where I was able to take old photos and use the app to actually find these missing ornaments. And so I have rebuilt amazing collection of, you know, late seventies, early eighties hallmark ornaments that I found on eBay. And so I've got, you know, Kermit the frog on skis. Kermit the frog on a sled. I think at one point in other I will probably monopolize most of the Kermit the frog ornaments as I've been trying to rebuild them. That was a big part of my childhood. eBay can bring Christmas and the holiday season to life in so many ways that are unique to all of our buyers. And again our sellers are actually the experts in that, like, what are those products? I want to make sure the website, the marketing, the tone is reflecting the amazing spectrum of value we have and the amazing assortment, but ultimately we can only deliver what is on our shelves, which is a function of all of the awesome energy and enthusiasm that our community brings into making the holiday season relevant.

Well a couple more questions that I know If we had sellers in here that would want to know from you, are you a seller on eBay?

How about I split hairs on this one and say not yet. When I left eBay I was a Top Rated Seller and that was, I found a very high bar to hit while working a full time job. And I know the bar has only gone up since then. As I shared with some sellers two days ago, in all candor, I'm a little bit nervous to get going again cause I don't want to do it if I can't get to a Top Rated Seller and I think it's going to be a high bar to hit. The reason I hesitated is I moved about a year ago and so I have my big box of eBay selling stuff. I've got my boxes, I've got my tape. I used to sell a lot of Lego and so I actually have boxes and boxes of Lego I need to get selling. I went into the garage last weekend to start selling again and then I just got distracted with all the boxes I hadn't unpacked. I have my eBay selling stuff ready to go, but as of right now, if someone looked me up, I have 1100 feedback back, but there are no active listings. If you want to hold me accountable at the next podcast, I will come in and I will tell you what my sales look like.

Deal! I just imagine you sitting in your corner of your garage waiting, like trying to sell, but actually playing with the Lego.

I think there are times when my wife is suspicious as to whether the Lego is there actually as part of running an eBay business or it's secretly there so I can siphon some off to the side. But that's part of running a business. Having fun with it.

Of course. You've got to try these products out and there's something so strong about nostalgia and as you say, when you have kids, it all just comes flooding back. And my daughter's birthday is next week, so I'm looking at all the old vintage Barbies and the Cabbage Patch Kids that I used to have as a child. And I'm debating whether I buy them for her because am I buying them for her or am I actually buying them for me? But then I might be the one in the corner playing the Cabbage Patch Doll. And then final question for you, I'm putting you on the spot here. Who is Jordan Sweetnam outside of being the SVP and GM at eBay? Do you have family? You've obviously talked about your kids. What do you love doing in your spare time? You probably don't have a lot of it, but who is Jordan?

Both my kids play soccer. So my wife and I spend a lot of time on the weekends shuttling between fields and hoping that the games are close enough that we can watch them both play. Evenings, are trying to get home in time to pick up the kids from soccer and then make sure we're there to have a family dinner. And then, uh, as I mentioned, sort of everything in the podcast. My wife and I both grew up in Canada. And so for holiday family moments, Thanksgiving and Christmas, et cetera, we try to get back up there to see our family. And then, if and when we have the time, which tends to be rather sparingly, try to make sure that our kids are exposed to different cultures from around the world. And so, had the opportunity two years ago to take my kids back to the family in Portugal where my wife's family grew up. And I the benefit of growing up under a father who spent a large part of his life, sort of backpacking around the world. And so he was able to, um, expose me to lots of different areas and I try to do the same for my kids. Cause I think having perspective around all of the different cultures that make up this awesome planet helps us actually be successful in career and in life.

Could not agree more on that. So I think we've just decided that now that we've learnt that you are back into selling that we're going to invite you back to the podcast and we're going to track you and your selling journey and get you a Top Rated seller again, selling the Lego on eBay. So we'd love to have you back. What do you think?

That sounds awesome. I have a couple hundred sets of Lego to sell through and after that I actually had a really interesting idea earlier today around what I might want to try selling next. And so maybe that can be a teaser for where we go a in a future podcast.

Fantastic! And I think that we'll also ask our sellers for their advice for you, so tips for Jordan as he gets back into selling on eBay.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me today.

Thank you. We've been speaking to Senior Vice President and General Manager America's Market, Jordan Sweetnam.

We here at the podcast want to acknowledge the recent news that Devin Wenig stepped down as eBay's President and CEO. While we search for his successor, Scott Schenkel, our Chief Financial Officer will serve as CEO on an interim basis. Scott has been with eBay for over 12 years and like me and like all of us here on the podcast, he's committed to our purpose and understands that our sellers are at the center of it.

Alan, that's all for this week. Tell the people what we have for them in episode 61.

On our next episode, episode 61 we'll explore adopting the right promotional strategies for the holidays.

Ooh, sure. Sounds like fun, Alan. Definitely. And you know we like to have a lot of fun around our podcast. Yes. And listeners, if you want to join the fun here on the eBay For Business Podcast, you can be a part of the show when you call us on 888-723-4630.

You heard it right! That's (888) 723-4630 and you can call that hotline anytime of the day, any day of the week. Leave a question or comment and we might just put it on the air.

And don't forget. You can also email us at podcast@ebay.com. That is podcast@ebay.com.

Yeah, I don't want to disappoint anyone, but there is no funny talk this week in this segment.

What?

No, I just want to get to it. Just a reminder that if you aren't already, you really should be attending a local eBay seller meet up in your area. Because at seller meetups, sellers share great selling tips, selling stories, seller learnings, seller insights, and even a little seller gossip. Are you seller intrigued? You should be. Go to www.ebay.com/meetups to locate a seller meetup near you.

Beautiful. And in the meantime, in the meantime, don't miss our weekly live video stream on the eBay For Business Facebook page every Wednesday at 12:30 Pacific time. Go to facebook.com/ebayforbusiness.

Here's my favorite part where you hop.

Here we go. And then right after the live stream, hop on over to the eBay community for our weekly community chat. That starts every Wednesday at one pm go to ebay.com/communitychat and you will find it right there.

Yeah, that's good. That's our show for this week. The eBay For Business Podcast is brought to you by Head of Community, Brian Burke, Special Correspondent Jen Deal, Associate Executive Segment producer and he's here in the other studio, Doug Smith, Marketing Strategist, Liz Austin, My Esteemed cohost, Alan Aisbitt Oh Hey. Editor in Chief and Mr Griff Griff. That's me!

The eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

So what we're going to do next. We had to take some promotional photos before and after. So I thought it'd be cool cause now we got a two room studio. It's 100% bigger than what we used to have.

A hundred percent.

But we don't have the old studio. Because it is gone.

We don't, do you miss it?

Well, no, but I thought what we'd do is , we'd take the first, the before shots. We'll go into the bathroom stall on this floor with microphones. Pretend that's where we used to do the podcast because the acoustics are so awful.

Okay? Okay. Okay. I trust you. Okay.

And then we'll shoot it in here.

What do you think?

I'm down for whatever.

I'll post them on face book.

Whatever you need me to do Griff.

And the Community.

And anywhere else we can. Put them on Doug's Instagram. With his 1200 followers. He thinks he is better than me. How many? 22,000 followers? 2,200.

Now that is more like it.

Okay. I don't know. Up from down for whatever. I'll post them on Facebook. Whatever you need me to do. Birth and the community and anywhere else we can or else put them on Doug's Instagram. You can put them on Doug's instead of thousand followers. 1200 followers thinks he's better than me. How many? 2100 Instagram thousand Instagram followers. 22,000 no, he doesn't. 2,200 yeah, that's more like it.

[vintagecraze50]

Excellent Podcast. Thanks.

[dunguyen_39]

Thanks

[thanhcon-77]

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Thanks for sharing

[tienhu-66]

Useful information

[lifeinthefastlane.llc]

helpful advice thanks

[nhnguye7329]

Good info.

[dangjack_888]

Thanks for your story

[vintagecraze50]

Jordan has an excellent view of what Ebay should be and that is not AMAZON, WALMART or anybody else. He has to have a vision of this wonderful place, so eclectic, so helpful to small businesses, such a wonderful place to find things you cannot get other places for the greatest prices. Continue Mr Sweetham with this vision. I believe you are on the right track. Blessings.

[bakronhighquality]

Thanks for that 

[hylt-chri]

Lyn Had me Laughing when she talk about the pfa .

[dn4993]

great seller reach-out! Research in Terapeak is a must! So glad it has been added to eBay store subscriptions for sellers to consume and take meaningful steps to be aware of trends and be price competetive

[onlythebestm6]

thanks  good information 

[roxxyplays]

Very good podcast, Lynn is motivating as ever!!

[rdanti27]

im new to ebay selling, im just kinda try and navigate myself arround to find tools and any advise possible,  im not computer savy  but do ok, im told the community forum was where i need to go so im hoping i can still get podcast it sounds like i could use the info. i have bought from ebay for years,. right now i have selling limits,  i may have jumped into having a store, i list my limit but not everything sells, what can i do? im spending more then earning which i expected  a bit. should i drop store for now?

[dennisthrasher]

As a long-time buyer, I'm want to get into selling and really appreciate your information and approach to educating us, newbies. Thanks and keep up the good work.

[stepwes_1503]

ohh can you heplll 😞

[stepwes_1503]

helpful advice thanks thank

[junpie-7]

I don't see my order today. What happened 

[living-lotus]

Many thanks for all these podcasts! Just OD'd on last quarter of 2019 & I have a question for doug@ebay or @Griff…..what is the 4th of Griff's 4 Pillars of Perfect Listings?

Price

Title

Photos

& …….?

I found it to be "Aspects" in the transcript from Podcast #56.....but what is meant by "Aspect" & could you please clarify or give examples?

Cheers!