Saturday, March 10, 2012

Please Advise.

Well, here's some stuff I just listed today and yesterday.  I actually made it to the estate sale and it had nada, so I trekked to my GW's and Salvation Army:

This is actually my senior prom dress.  I really can't tell from the completeds what I should list this as, but I started an auction at $60 and put BIN for $115.00.  It's in really good shape and I shelled out about $500 for it new.  And, yes I did pay for it, by the way, because mother told me there was no way she was going to.
 This is a David's Bridal bridesmaid dress in a size 22W.  It's in great shape.  This picture also reason #58 of why I need a bloody mannequin.  The shipping on them is so expensive, though!

I thought this was basically the best shirt ever.  It's unbranded (I think the tag was torn out, but it's hard to tell) and it's all embroidered work on here.  Men's size XL, paid $4.50, sold today for $34.99.  Tyler laughed at it when I showed him, but it had 5 watchers before it sold, so HA!  I love quick flips.  I love them even more because they've been so few and far between lately.

I am also having thoughts.  I love selling men's clothes.  I do well with men's clothes (better than books, lately) and I've never had a man send a return back or complain about their stuff.  I am thinking about considering entertaining the possibility of whether to open another basic store wherein I would sell only men's stuff.  Does anyone out there have two basic stores?  Can I have two basic stores?  Is it a giant PITA?  Please advise.

5 comments:

  1. In my opinion I would not open another store. Why would you want to pay two monthly fees? You could always upgrade your store to save on fees. When I first started selling on ebay I sold mostly toys. I named my store To The Toy Box and Beyond. I am slowly getting away from toys and I should rename my store but I still have business cards to use up.

    I don't know if you can have two accounts on ebay but I have heard other sellers do: one for listing and one for buying. I think some couples have two stores one is hubbys and one is theirs. It seems like it would be too much work and with a new store you have to build up feedback and you are restricted to how many items you can sell each month so your left over inventory will end up in your old store anyway.

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  2. Becky, this is true. The more I thought about, the more crazy it seemed. I guess I'll just start buying more men's stuff and slowly change over if it goes well. Thanks for the voice of reason!

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  3. I would stick to one store. I mostly sell womens clothing but every now and then some plush or whatever else I might find. Just create different categories within your store. I have 2 Etsy stores with minimal inventory and that simple place is a headache for me. There is no way I would do it on ebay with all the added fees!

    I wouldn't worry about getting a mannequin for the 22W dress - I have one (garage sale, $10! Best deal ever)but anything over a 16 is nearly impossible to photograph on her without it falling all over the place!

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  4. I opened a 2nd store after My Dear Trash (do you follow her blog?) got banned from eBay for some minor reason after selling for 10+ years, and they won't consider her coming back at ALL now. I'm depending too much lately on the extra income, and I still use my maiden name and have a totally separate debit/checking account, so I went ahead and opened a separate PayPal AND eBay account. so really it's a hubby & wife thing, but since we only sell the odds & ends we aren't sure about and your first 50 are FREE, we've been letting it build up feedback (our main store is up to 332/100%). It's now up to 25, so I might take it more seriously, but I think we will keep it under 50 items/month, unless it's free listings, like it will be until the end of the month! I don't think this is foolproof insurance against anything bad happening to our main account, but at the time we just couldn't believe it, and eBay always sides on the Buyer, plus we can't leave them any negative feedback anymore! I have a new Etsy account, but I've sold only ONE thing so far, and I totally screwed up the shipping(my fault)--a heavy book to Tasmania/Australia--I think I made like $2. I'm not sure if I will keep the Etsy account.

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  5. I wonder if, as an alternative, you had a new store name that you really like you could just buy the domain name (I remember Jessica saying she bought one or two for $10/ea per year) and then have it redirect to the eBay store you already have. If you're wanting to be able to directly market to a new audience (have business cards made up, etc) - it might be a possibility? (Does that make sense?)

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