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Opening an eBay store, selling on eBay, store categories, feeling defeated and starting over, store header, promotion boxes, how-to information and inspiration. Christmas selling, custom store headers, eBay University.
Sometimes You Just Have to
Start Over From Scratch
Getting ready for the upcoming
holiday season is our store's top priority.
We took a good, hard look at where we started and where we were just a few weeks ago and made the bold decision to completely revamp the entire system. We tossed over 270 listings from Peppermint-Ice-Cream and we feel that getting to start from scratch is what it's going to take to get things just right. With the USPS new postal rates that took effect some time around May, many of our listings were still not current with the increased rates. Plus we've learned so much in this long journey that we now know what's truly important. (And a lot of what's not!)
However, we have grown too quickly and it's not like you can measure or even pace your growth across the board evenly. It's just like when a parent lovingly brags about his baby talking at 8 months and then another parent topping it with their walking baby at 10 months; as precious as both these timelines are, eventually most all babies grow into adults that talk and walk.
Same analogy with our store; sales may slow while we're drastically increasing inventory (and all the insanely hard work that it entails) and listing less but eventually the business grows into a talking, walking, adult-stage. It's the growing pains and lags that in the quiet moments leave me the most overwhelmed.
We have worked tremendously hard to scout, resource and secure products from all over the globe. But when your every waking moment is filled with processing that incoming stock and the merchandise starts oozing out of your ears---well, you either make more room or get taken over. Right now we're in the middle of dodging toppling boxes. We are talking stacks and stacks of boxes and inventory sheets and record-keeping forms. Not little stacks, but big stacks, like to the ceiling.
We've got a new core facility we've gutted and reconstructed. It's beautiful, what with all its matching lilac storage bins and lime green baskets. We even scrubbed every piece of gridwall and slatwall, including every last piece of slatwall/gridwall/pegboard hook. Our purpose is that we want the most perfect, pristine and sanitary foundation before we began stocking the shelves and bins with our prospective customer's orders.
But we're moving like sardines in the Core (that's what we call it; it's an acryonym for Care, Organization, Respect and Ethics--the basic principles on which Peppermint-Ice-Cream is built). That way every time we say, "Incoming Package for Core," or "Meet me at Core," or my favorite "Still working at Core," we have a small built in affirmation that encourages us to keep plugging away.
So anyway, we've accomplished a beautiful Core with a carefully planned color scheme to soothe and cheer the spirits. Throughout this year, we have secured merchandise in very large numbers. We thought we would be listing evenly while doing all the other things we've done in our overhaul.
But coordinating photography---and I mean careful, great photography for pictures that truly sell takes an exorbitant amount of time. Our props department alone has grown huge; as we add backdrops (which we sell the best of, by the way!) and merchandisers, displays, cabinets, stands, mannequins, heads, feet, hands. And I scared the heck out of my best friend last week when she opened a packed door at Core, only to find a butt/leg mannequin staring back at her torso-less and headless.
Ahhh, but this is no ordinary leg and butt mannequin; this beauty was advertised as a "Brazilian." Yes, my curiosity and sense of silliness got the best of me. I had to have her to show off our great lines of cheeky-peeky panties and hottie-naughties. (Like those names for panties? Yeah, I made them up. It's funny how much time goes into thinking up original new names for things like underwear!)
Invariably it seems as though there have been one million details that we've noted, learned, assimilated or at least tried to observe. The learning process is similar to that of being Masters Prepared. Or heck, at this junction, I'd go one step further and say it's like struggling for your Doctorate. Just the amount of research that goes into learning deeply about vast eBay easily matches the amount of time, effort and commitment of higher learning pursuits. (eBay University, exactly!)
(And hey, when eBay University comes to your town, make every effort to attend. They are coming to YOU; to a city near YOU at some point in YOUR future.) I'd tell you the program is great except that I missed mine. Yep, realized I was out of town, 200 miles away! I was, so, so sad. (But I heard from all my colleagues that it was EXCELLENT!)
Don't be like me; fight for your right to access eBay in whatever live form; in person! Disengage from all the complexities of everything you've got going on in life at that moment and treat yourself to the opportunity of empowerment with all that honest-to-goodness and sincerely warm energy that eBay beautifully manifests. (It is truly what I am the most heartsick about missing!) We all owe ourselves this genuine opportunity of network and renewal and I will never miss an opportunity again.
Anyway, back to scrapping all our listings...Revising those 270 or so auctions seemed tempting, till we realized that they lacked a consistent look, a consistent message, and the elusive 'branding' that one always hears about when they first start selling while thinking, "What's the big fuss?" (Oh boy...hindsight!)
And in tossing all those auctions; it left us free, TRULY FREE, to implement a super-focused, seriously-planned, extremely well thought-out execution in building our store categories. eBay says that categories are like the rows and aisles in on-line stores. We wanted to add to that 'shelves'. Our categories can be three-deep when additional tiers are warranted and we planned our 'aisles and rows' as though we mapped out an actual retail store setting. This three-dimensional methodology is what helped us to capture a solid categorical installation of our product 'shelves.' As our listings grow and a new category then becomes visible in the store's navigation, it's as exciting as the first growth of Spring! Promise and planning converge upon a new day; a new opportunity; a new sale!
We want our customers to have numerous ways to naviagate Peppermint-Ice-Cream and felt it very important early on to ascertain our Domain name and enable forwarding to our eBay store. It proved to be very smart! This makes driving traffic onto our eBay site much easier and more effective. We also learned how to set up ad campaigns with per click programs. It's not an easy thing to learn and can even be a bit mind-boggling but it sure helps you with the whole process of knowing who your intended target market is and how specifically to extract from it.
Constructing custom store pages is important for us as well as there are so many things we wish to share with the eBay community, the eBay Art Marketplace and of course, our current valued customers in addition to our prospective clients. Custom store pages are seriously under-utilized by eBay Store operators and yet they hold such potential.
(Same as with categories and it blows me away how so many sellers never utilize their categories.) Categories can FEED feeds! Categories are like having a ton of extra possible virtual auctions going on without having to 'pay for them'. Categories are keyword RICH. Not utilizing categories is like thumbing your nose at prospective customers.
In the meantime, the holiday season of 2007 is looming, and bearing down hard upon us with the equivalent magnitude of a tornado or a hurricane! We feel it coming on and we're shifting gears every hour on the hour to cohesively align all the timelines, projects and matching coordinates. We don't know if our biggest fear is getting slammed and not being ready or being ready and not getting slammed.
All I know is what I feel for certain in my bones and every fiber of my being, which is, that the inroads we've been making, inching along...now need to turn into giant strides with an eye on the finish line. Wrapping up and getting down to listing with a vengeance is just what the "Doctorate" ordered.
Below are some resources that I think you will find immensely helpful. But before you click away, will you please vote yes if this information was helpful to you in some way? (See below.) It takes just one very brief second and then you can click on the various links to take you to sources that will help you with all kinds of topics on selling.
Selling in an eBay store; information, details, how-to
Information on designing your store; How-To
Helpful books on successful selling on eBay
Help with custom logo, store header design, templates, categories
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