Ideas about inventory turnover

[chicweb]

It's been a year and a half that I started this ebay adventure. I'm really liking it. In fact, I'm enjoying more and more every day.

Now it's time to think about strategies for inventory turnover. I have a lot of inventory to still add. I bought a lot and adding new items every day.

I'm starting to test some strategies for items not selling. One of it is to have a discount structure in place (If item more than 6 months not sold = % discount. 12 months = More discount. and so on).

Many Pros for this:

1. It allows me to fix a price I want for my item.

2. With time, the price will lower, reaching the perfect price to attract a customer if I priced it too high by mistake (or greed? ;)).

3. It allows me to get rid of old inventory and optimize the price. Having things moving and getting out.

Many Cons:

1. Some items might sell better at specific time of the year. With this technique, I'm not optimizing fully.

2. Some more rare items might take time to sell because of less interested buyers. Could be losing potential money.

3. At some point, it will not be profitable (except maybe for eBay algorythm aka taking a loss to bring more sales).

Some things to think about:

1. Some people might notice and wait a few months before buying. But, its still risky (someone might want it at the current price).

2. After a certain point, another strategy might be used. If its not selling at all... Getting rid of the item (donation = complete lost), bundling in lot (might be interesting), restart the item completely (sometime, it pushes the algorithm to show this item more).

Do you have any strategies in place? Thinking about one? How do you deal with your old inventory?

[ricarmic]

In my own categories/experience sales/discounts don't work, at least for me.

I have noticed that standard promoted does work, for me.

Instead of a sale, say I'm thinking 10% off, instead I put 10% standard promoted fee, or 15% or whatever the discount was going to be. In my experience this very much outperforms any discount sales. I'm presuming because the sale, while it does increase visibility does not increase it as much as a relatively "high" promoted rate does*.

Your and my worlds do overlap a bit, so this has a chance of being true for you at least in some categories.

As a note, in the categories that do overlap, "long haul" items are not uncommon as there are only so many folks that are interested in specialized things, so patience is required awaiting them finding it. I fairly regularly have individual items that have been running for more than 10 years sell.

My version of turnover albeit snails pace, is that the oldest stuff has the highest promoted fee, and the promted fee reduces by age groups until the newest stuff (last year or so) has NONE.

Keep in mind that if someone purchases something promoted everything else promoted that they subsequently buy from you in the next 30 days encounters the promoted fee as well. If you have a lot of repeat customers (as I do) then this punishes you for the repeat customers that would have come back in an unpromoted way, and they keep repeating the 30 day cycle each time they buy something promoted. Up until this 30 day rule came into place, I promoted 100% of my items with at least the minimum promoted rate. When this rule came into place, under my 100% promoted style, "forever" everything promoted that the repeat customers bought (so everything!) would encounter the promoted fee (unless they happened to wait more than a month between purchases). Repeat customers are 30 to 50% of my sales so thats why I adopted the graduated style with a decent chunk being the "new" stuff.

As a note, when I was trying to use discounts I did the same thing the oldest stuff had the highest discount %, but that was a flop).

*The sad commentary here is that by diverting a discount to promoted rate instead, the customer doesn't get  a better price, ebay gets a better price, but at least in my experience that's the way the world works at this time.

[chicweb]

Mm interesting.

Maybe I will try to use a mix of both soon? Promoting based on age too...

That could be an interesting test to do.

As for overlapping items, I just sell used mixed stamps lot. I got a lot from my family while they concentrate on specific countries. 

Stamps are very special items, I think. This is a category that requires a lot of work and knowledge about the specific hobby. All the stamps differences, values, dimensions, etc.. I have all the tools (calculating identations, black light, etc)... A bit too overwhelming for me.

[ricarmic]

In my first experiment, I took items that had a 10% discount, sold almost none, changed them to no discount and 10% promoted (which was above the recommended at that time), and sales of both promoted and non promoted items significantly jumped (this was in the days before I was promoting all of my items).

I should have mentioned that virtually everything I've ever done selling style wise that worked here has been a result of my experiments or ideas I got from these chat boards so both are very good things (IMO) to do!

I also did a more modern experiement where I put 15% promoted on the batch of oldest only (generally above the recommended number again), a few more of them sold but the jump in views of them appear to have caused the bots to think I had something good and visibility IMO of everything improved because overall sales went up again for a short time.

I should probably do that again, maybe after (if ever) the tumultuous tarrif stuff settles down a bit.

[dinomitesales]

I'm here to sell things, and really don't want to hold onto them longer than I need to.

My strategy is similar to what you describe. At all times, my Seller Hub has the listings sorted by "Time Left" (decreasing). This way I can see exactly when a listing renews and flips over after being listed for ~30 days as it will show up at the top of Seller Hub. Every 30 days I drop the price by a certain amount (usually anywhere from 2-5% depending on the asking price). Every 90 days I end the listing and relist using "Sell Similar" while also increasing the Promoted Listing percentage by 1%.

So, the longer something has been listed, the lower the price, and the higher the promotion. Once it gets down to a price point that makes it barely profitable I'll just pull the listing and donate it. Most things do sell eventually though. I've currently got some sub-$10 items that are promoted at like 15% so I can tell they've been around for a long time. Might they sell eventually? Maybe. Do I want to waste my time with them anymore? Not really, no.

[needsmorerobots]

I thought about using the strategy you mention after I was entrenched here, but I never put it to practice.

Instead I use ad rate for promotion. I have a set percentage depending on the item. The ad rate is never increased even if Ebay tries to prod oneself to increase it.

To get rid of my older stock, I have "Best Offer" available. Actually every listing has "Best Offer", but I am less hesitant to accept an offer of an item I just listed. 

Rounding it off, I make offers to watchers and I change prices on my inventory as the market changes.

[byto253]

I noticed in your listings that everything appears to be listed individually, even if it is $5 or less and many are DVDs, CDs and Video games.  There tends to be a lot of similar listings, and US sellers have media mail and include free shipping.  To move the slow/non-sellers you may want to try making some lots, with an eye on the shipping scale so that you minimize the shipping costs.  e.g. How many itmes can be bundled and stay under 250 or 500 grams, etc.    

[chicweb]

Indeed.

I prefer buying lots and breaking them down to single units. That's where I get my fun. 

It might be faster to move items in lots, but since I test every single CD, DVD, VHS before selling them (yes, listening  / watching every single one of them at least once), doing it for lots would take more time testing before being able to list them.

But, I might make bundles for the items that did not sell. Maybe I'll aim for 2 years before bundling some together with optimizing shipping in mind. I could bundle by theme, that could be fun.

[ricarmic]

@chicweb This is also my situation. I'm a treasure hunter at heart. The part I enjoy is getting boxes, carloads, rooms of stuff and seeing what I find when I break it down, aka the stamp version of "storage wars". The rest, listing, selling etc is the necessary evil required to support the fun part (this is why I started selling 47 years ago).

As I try to somehow semi-retire, I'm trying to find venues that take away the "non-fun" part and leave just my fun part to do. So far the more work I offload, the less return I end up with, which makes logical sense of course. My bigger problem is finding a solution that has large enough general exposure, so far that's only going so so.

I have always had to group stuff because one can't make anyting selling something for 10c or less apiece individually here. My mainstay has been to provide treasure hunts for others, it's hard to describe how I can provide useful treasure hunts when I've already treasure hunted it, but the very simplified version is that I take "junk" and split it up in a way that the divided junk is more useful to someone with a specialized interest.

[chicweb]

About this 10c thing... I've seen systems/websites for Legos that are made for very low value items. Buyers can easily select all the invidual parts they need to build their own set (or follow examples by other users). Very powerful concept.

Could be interesting to have something similar on eBay. Combining items on eBay is very not user friendly. It's not easy to setup our policies about it, and for users they often have to contact sellers. Refunds must be made, etc.

Allowing very very low value items to be sold in bigger lot chosen by customers would be opening many doors for a lot of markets (legos, stamps, etc).

Ebay would need to rehaul their combined shipping interface for sellers and buyers for it to happen.

[flipistics]

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@chicweb wrote:

Indeed.

I prefer buying lots and breaking them down to single units. That's where I get my fun. 

It might be faster to move items in lots, but since I test every single CD, DVD, VHS before selling them (yes, listening  / watching every single one of them at least once), doing it for lots would take more time testing before being able to list them.

But, I might make bundles for the items that did not sell. Maybe I'll aim for 2 years before bundling some together with optimizing shipping in mind. I could bundle by theme, that could be fun.

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You can test CDs and DVDs with computer software (unless you want to watch it).

For DVDs I generally target the Canadian market (unless it's really rare). There's several large companies in the USA that flood the market with ultra cheap movies which makes it nearly impossible to compete there. The market tends to be much better in Canada.  Set yourself a target price based on what's listed / sold in Canada and the time it takes you. Anything less than that, bundle. Anything more than that, list separately.

[chicweb]

Personally, I ship everything internationally.

I prefer testing while watching (even if I'm not fully focused). It helps me ensure there are no quality issues, minor skips or other problems. Everything is clearly disclosed in the description. Also, there’s no way to automatically test VHS or cassettes — the only option is to watch or listen to them.

As for selling in the States, I’ve sold a few items there already, but DVDs don’t sell very well for the reason you mentioned. interestingly, I sold more DVD Region 1 in other parts of the world than in the US.

I won’t bundle items right away. It’s just not fun or interesting for me. I might consider it only if something doesn’t sell after a certain period of time. People can already buy multiple DVDs at once — I’ve had sales of 10+ DVDs in a single order. That’s why combining shipping is important. Customers can bundle them themselves if they want to. 😉