In my guide "Know your wares" I spoke about the need for eBay stores to concentrate on one theme in its store and in this guide I want to continue on that theme, but with a slight alteration – let’s talk about the people that come into your store.

You might not have thought about it, but any shop in the High Street has an idea about who shops at that store, and the shop tailors its language and inventory and its ambience toward that clientele in ways that are both subtle and direct. The most direct way is the price tag. A more subtle way is branding.

If you’re a stay at home mom with two kids and a husband that works in a factory, you will be selected for or against by the brands in the store, as well as by the prices. You will also be selected against or for by the prices in the store. And you will be selected for or against by the campaigns and the messages in that store.

Sue’s choice of store
Let us look at that stay at home mom for a moment, and we can call her Sue. She will have a general set of qualities and needs that will be exploitable in a commercial sense. She will be a source for revenue for clothes shops because her two sons keep growing out of their old clothes. She will be mindful of the pennies when she goes to the supermarket, because she has two ravenous youngsters to feed.

A shop that wants to have Sue as a customer can’t expect her to be that interested if she has to wade through articles aimed at teenage collectors, elderly men, and career women to find the items that will fulfil her needs. If all that the shop can offer her are a very limited line of boy’s jeans she will strive to find a more suitable shop.

However, when she finds that shop – we can call it Boy’s Wear – she will be a very loyal customer. If Boy’s Wear can cater to her need for clothes exchange at a reasonable price, as well as offer her a choice of brands, then Sue will do her best to support that store. And the store will have to do its best to keep Sue, and people like her, by specifically targeting her needs.

It will become a symbiosis where the customer drives the store and the store drives the customer, and that will result in a loyal relationship that in itself will force the shop to specialize and cater to Sue’s needs.

Alec wants more
Alec is a thirtysix year old, single, and well to do middle manager with funds to spare. He will have very different needs and wants from Sue, and he will most likely not find Boy’s Wear in the example above his type of shop.

Again, Boy’s Wear can’t expect Alec to be very interested if he has to wade through childrens clothes and articles aimed at stay at home mum’s to find the items that will fulfil his needs. If he visits Boy’s Wear at all, he will not be very long in the store, and he will most likely not shop in it.

That is because he wants something else than Sue, and he will find the shop that is best suited for him. He will find a shop where he can fulfil his own needs and wants and desires. Again, his decisions will force the shops he uses to specialize to his needs and to the needs of people like him. And again, that relationship will be a strong one because people are a bit lazy and when they find something that works they tend to stick to it.

Jacks of all trades
Now, imagine a shop that would try to cater to both Sue’s and Alecs needs. It would have both rather cheap children’s wear and more high fashion men’s wear. It would sell Axe shower gel together with Ralph Lauren’s after shave. It would sell both detergents in five pound boxes and imported floor soaps.

That shop would be a very schizophrenic one, and it would have a hard time fulfilling the needs of both Sue and Alec. In the end neither would be satisfied with the shop, and they would try to find other shops that would better service their requirements. A jack of all trades would not last long in today’s high street, and here on the internet where the raw requirements of the clients is the only thing evident through search engines that truism becomes even more true.

eBay shops really need to specialize
This is the point to deal with the protest that since eBay is search engine driven, the clients will come anyway and bid for the particular item on sale. That is a good protest, but a store is not an auction. Auctions are merely means to advertise the store where you sell goods for fixed prices, and you want to sell as much as possible for as little effort as possible.

Then customer loyalty becomes paramount because the alternative is an advertising campaign that is never-ending, and because you will be subject to all the whims of the eBay marketplace all the time. Your enterprise will be extremely sensitive to moods and trends, and you will never actually know ahead of time if you are going to sell anything.

The remedy to this malaise of auctions is the client base, and to get a client base you have to know the clients that you want to attract. You must cater to their needs, and you must fulfil their expectations. If you do that you will see that your client base blossoms, and you will see more and more repeat business.

Different sales
Most of the wares sold on eBay fall into the second of two merchandize categories: the often-sold and the rarely-sold. Sue, in the example above, needs to buy food every or every other day for her family. The milk, butter, dinners and bread is what I mean by often-sold merchandize. Alec might want to buy a nice looking sports car, but he’ll only buy a car once every five years. A car is an excellent example of rarely-sold merchandize. In this category we can also find fridges, washing machines, power tools, collectibles, and art. That is, most of the items sold on eBay.

A clothes shop also sells rarely-sold items because it may be a few weeks or months between each purchase for any individual. The clothes shop then, to survive, needs to consider ways to ensure that when the client wants a new pair of trousers he will come back to the shop. He needs to build his customer base. If the clothes shop neglect to work for customer loyalty, then eventually the shop will face liquidation when market forces move the non-loyal customers to other shops. If all that the shop has are customers that couldn’t care less, the shop will fold.
So, with all this in mind, the answer is as in the other guide for stores to specialize, specialize, specialize. With specialization comes the client base, if that specialization is coupled with knowledge about the wares you sell. In this fluent marketplace, any customer that wants to shop at your store for more than one sale is a precious commodity.