SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome to Resale Unlisted. This is our first episode, and we're um really glad you're here. We thought that this might be the best place to start with us, um, not just who we are, but actually how we run our businesses, what we sell, and how we actually do resale. And we all have different experiences, we all have different systems. Trust me, Vicky and I are very different, um, different ways that we do our inventory, we have different experiences. And today we're basically opening up the doors and we're gonna show each of you how it works, and we're gonna do a little bit of backstage kind of magic and show you all of our processes. So thank you guys for being here. It's so exciting!

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Thank you, Trish.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I'm so excited, super excited. You know, you guys are two of my favorite sellers, both because of your capabilities as sellers and because both of you uh it's so important to you, both that other sellers learn from you and that they're learning good practices and doing great things. And so I think the three of us together on this, I'm just super excited to uh to be part of this.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Me too. Exactly. I'm so happy that you said yes. This was a little bit of an idea that I had, and I brought it to Vic, and Vicky immediately said she thinks we should talk to you, and so we did, and so I'm glad this all this has been a great thing. I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm glad that everybody's interested and we're all on the same page. So we're gonna kind of start with who we are. So um, Miss Victoria, I think we'll go in a little round robin, I think we decided. So uh Vic, how the heck are you? Good. How long have you been reselling?

SPEAKER_04 1:45

So I've been reselling since 1998. Um, I've been I started as a casual buyer on eBay and I started buying obscure um 80s hairband collectibles and music. That's kind of my one of my favorite things. And uh it used to be when you could, you know, log on to eBay and view every single listing in like 15, 20 pages that and and imagine that. But uh I started as a buyer and I started selling occasionally here and there. And then I went all in in 2003 as a very solid part-time seller, listing a hundred items a week or whatever while I still had a full-time job. And then in 2009, shortly after the banking crisis that um imploded a lot of you know what I was doing in the financial sector in this country, um, I was laid off from my my big banking job and said, oh crap, I need to make something else work. So I had an eBay business and I decided to scale up full-time, and I have been virtually unhirable ever since. You're a little feral. I am, I kind of am.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Um so, Chuck, how about you?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Oh, well, let's see. Um, my superhero origin story is a little bit different. Um I I grew up in Ohio in the late 90s. I moved to the West Coast, and um, so I moved out for a girl who I'm now married to, which is so happy ending there. Uh, but we uh we lived in Bellingham, Washington for a couple years and didn't know anybody. So I spent a lot of my time um hitting garage sales and I collected vintage computer parts and video games, which nobody did back then. This would have been like '96 or something. And um, I wanted to sell them. I realized there was an opportunity to make a little extra money, and there was no eBay yet. It was just forming, and so I was selling on Usenet. I don't know if anyone remembers that. Um, different online forums where it was like, you know, send me a check, send me cash in the mail kind of thing. Um, and then when eBay popped up, uh, I quickly realized what an opportunity there was there, jumped on it right away. Um, always had a full-time job, but always had this side hustle and this hustle mentality, all the way through like when PayPal came around and became part of eBay and then credit cards got into the mix, and and uh so I've always had that going for me in the background at some level. In fact, when my son was born, my son's 23 now. When he was born, um I was working as a uh part-time consultant uh in the computer tech industry and supplemented our income so that I could spend the first year of his life with him with selling on eBay. And that was going to the bins when it was no one was going to the bins. That was like not cool to go to the bins back in those days. So uh always just kind of had that eBay thing in the background and um worked in the tech industry, and then about 10 years ago, I had an opportunity of a lifetime to go work at eBay. Um, I was hired to work in the buyer experience side of the business, and uh I did a whole bunch of things there, project management, managed teams of software quality engineers, and then finally ended up as a uh seller advocate there, where I got to talk to sellers, kind of like we're doing right now, and learn from them. And uh, so that for me was the best job I ever had, most rewarding job. Um, I really enjoyed it and always was one of the top employees at eBay in terms of uh sales. So I had you know my work there, and then I had uh selling on eBay on the side, and uh, you know, life kind of ebbs and flows, and you have different changes that go on. And late last year, um a couple things happened. My dad passed away, um, and uh just some other changes in my life where I decided um that I got a lot more enjoyment in my life and satisfaction from the side hustle than I did from the the main hustle. So I made uh this decision in November um a very tough decision to leave my job at eBay to leave behind all the security of that and go uh um full time with the selling thing. And I know that's been kind of the story of a lot. There's a few different online uh resale influencers who have done that similar kind of thing. Um, so it was very scary. So here we are in September. I'm almost a full year, a couple months away. Still here, still paying the mortgage, everything's working out good, still um talking to sellers uh a lot on different channels, and eBay uh invites me to come speak to their sellers, and uh so yeah, so that's where I am now. The business has scaled significantly since I left uh my full-time job. Um, I'd say maybe tripled in in size, but I'm pushing hard to uh to do better. And yeah, that's my uh that's where I am today, and I still want to stay engaged with sellers, so that's why one of the reasons I agreed to to join you guys um for this.

SPEAKER_03 7:06

Well, we appreciate it. Um so for me, I have been um uh really a seller since um 2017. Um I owned a failing, I some of you guys will have already heard this story, but I owned a failing consignment store. Um it was an abject failure on any sense of the level. It was a terrible, terrible decision on my point. And I had to get out of it and I owed my family money, as in like my husband and myself money. I my dad had given me some money to stay afloat. I did not own, I owe any of consigners any money. Um I always paid them, but I couldn't make it work. And when I closed the business, I ended up with three 10 by 30 storage units of clothing that people did not want back. And I don't know what everybody knows about consignment, but most of the time is you have two weeks to come pick it up, and if not, it reverts to the um to the store. And for a long time I donated it, and then I was doing so badly that I had it's these big sales when I knew it was gonna be clothing and I um clothing and I would do everything for two or five bucks, depending on how much it was. And a woman came in and spent a thousand dollars and I said to her, What are you doing with those clothes? And she had this look of sheer horror on her face, and I could tell she did not want to tell me what she was doing with those clothes. And I said to her, just out of instinct, I don't care what you're doing with them, and you can still buy them. Like I didn't want her to think I was, you know, she said, I sell them on eBay, and I literally laughed. I went, Who's gonna buy this crap on eBay? Like I literally did not understand. And she said, and then she got a little annoyed with me, and I felt bad because it was just like I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I had been struggling so much with this used clothing that I could not understand that people were buying it on eBay. And she said, That's how I make my full-time living in this very like put down way. And then I was like, I am so sorry if I insulted you. I'm just I was just shocked. And so I ended up closing the business. I ended up with three storage units, I started selling them just to make back the money and to get myself out of all of this stuff. And I thought, as soon as I'm done, I'm gonna go back and get a job. I had been in the construction world before that. I did OSHA regulations for a construction company, and I thought I'll just go back to work and start doing that again. And um, I went online and found a meetup, which is now called a seller circle. And if you're not in one, you should all be one in one. And I'm sure we will end up talking about those um some point during these podcasts. But um I went to one and I met a woman, Diane LaSonde, who became my best friend in life at the moment. Um, she has since passed away, but she said to me on the second time I met her, she said, Do you want to go to eBay open? And I said, Okay. Like when I I didn't have a job, I had all these clothes. I was like, Yeah, sure, I'll go. So I flew to eBay open um in 2018 and or 2017, I don't know. One of those two, 18. Um, I met Vic at that time, and um, it changed my whole life. And I I by the time I finished the second storage unit of clothing of getting that listed, um, I said to my husband, I have to figure out a way to buy clothes. And he laughed at me. He goes, You're joking, right? Because I had been miserable. I had been miserable. The joke was that I was gonna be a nudist because I hated clothes so much. Like I hated it. And I was never in love with clothing. I mean, this is you know, I know a lot of people end up selling what they love and they sell because they're passionate or they have a this was never about that for me. I was a process girl, right? Like I just got a really good process. I could get clothes, I could list 50 to 100 a day. And this is before AI. I mean, I I just had everything down, and you know, I was just really dialed in and I was making really good money. And um, so for me, I just kind of fell into eBay, and I'm very thankful that I did. So that's kind of my story. My evil, what did you call it? Your villain origin story? I love that.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, uh superhero origin story. So isn't it crazy though, how um, like you told the story of this seller coming into your store and buying things from you, and that how awakening it was for you to learn that there was room, so much stuff that you were struggling to sell, that your business was failing, and there was room in that still for her to make a living on. I mean, that to me is the most amazing and powerful thing about selling online is that you open yourself up to this new audience and you have new ways of marketing that you couldn't do in a brick and mortar situation. Um, in fact, I just did my quarterly taxes. You know, those are due here on the 15th, everyone. Um, and I uh was so I was looking at my total cost of goods as a percentage of the whole business and realized that for me, cost of goods is like one of the lowest costs for me right now. It's shipping, yes, all these uh you know, pack materials, um, eBay fees, other fees, um, which I I'm not complaining about. The eBay fees I think is a completely fair amount of money to pay, but uh, it's when I first considered doing this as a full-time business, I felt like, oh man, cost of goods is gonna be the big number, getting all the stuff. It is not the hard part. Oh my god. I I have to be really particular and really choosy and know when to say, okay, it's time to put the brakes on that for a while while I get the rest of the business going and being smart about when to do that.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah, so let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about I listen, I sold used clothing when I owned a consignment store. I still sell used clothing. Okay, so what I sell, that's all I sell. I'm not gonna, if something falls into my lap, that's a really great deal. Will I branch out a little? Yes, but I don't branch out often, and I don't branch out often because I have a really good process, I have really good inventory, everything's really easy. And if it doesn't fit into those systems, it's usually not worth my time, personally. So for me, I'm still a used clothing seller. So, Chuck and then Vic, I'd love to know like what are you selling? Like, what do you sell? And I have another follow-up question on that. Because for me, it's no. Do you like what you sell? Are you interested in what you sell? Is it important to you what you sell, or are you, like me, an opportunistic seller?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Um, can I pass to Vicky first? So I think about it.

SPEAKER_04 14:00

Sure. So I started selling things around my house, right? Already my own things when I first started selling. Now, the very first thing that was my aha moment, kind of like you with that woman that came into your store, I decided when I got married to my ex-husband, we both owned our own homes, right? And we all had duplicates of so much crap as one does when you're an adult and you own a house. So I initially decided to start selling our duplicates of like CDs and DVDs back when they were selling more for more than they, well, they're coming back around, but when they were still selling uh well, like when there was half.com as part of eBay and things like that. So I traditionally started doing that and I thought that was easy. It was my own stuff. So I didn't care what I got for it. My very first time I bought something with the intention to resell was in 2003. I went to a garage sale and I had never gone to garage sales. I've told the story before a couple of times, but I grew up very normal middle class in New England. I'm from Rhode Island. My mother abhorred garage sales and thrift stores, and anything that was used was dirty in her mind, right? So I that's how I grew up thinking I'm not buying anything used, I'm not wearing anything used. Now ask me if I buy anything new. But um, but I went to a garage sale and there was it was New England, and as it is out there, um, you know, you you go to a garage sale and you're finding things that are antique for 25 cents. Well, there was an antique national cash register made out of brass and wood, and um, I just the kind that would sit on a five and dime countertop in the late 1800s. And it was at this garage sale, and this woman was packing up for the day, and she did not want to bring it in the house, and this thing probably weighed 50 pounds. And she's like, I was like, Are you selling this? She said, Yeah, what are you gonna give? I'm like, How much do you want? She goes, What do you got? I'm like, I have no idea what to offer you. She's like, I know, you got a couple bucks, take it. I don't want to bring it back. I paid $2. I went home, I knew nothing about it. I went to the library to research it because this is before Google. And I figured out what it was and enough to make a rudimentary listing, and I put it in auction back in the day, everything would go in auction. And it sold for something like $1,100. I had paid $2, it sold for $1,100, then I had to figure out how to ship it. I had to take it to a UPS store so they could package it and ship it and tell me how much it would cost to package it and ship it, so then I could bill my buyer for the package and shipping. Anyway, it was a whole rigmarole that took probably a week to get it out to the buyer back then. That was what we did. And um I said, well, that was stupid easy. Why isn't everybody doing this? And that was when I decided to intentionally buy things for resale, and I became an antiques and collectible seller. And that was my first love was going to auctions with a bunch of dirty, greasy old men, literally, that never sold online, knew nothing about online, and I would just buy everything. And if I thought it was cool and it was old and it was interesting, and I didn't know what it was, or I did know what it was, I would bid. I bought, I used to go at an auction every single week in Fall River, Massachusetts, every Thursday night, and at a at a VFW, an Eagles Lounge, something like that. And I would buy $700 to $1,000 a week. I would take it home, I would research it, I would list it, I would photograph it. Every single thing that I would buy would go up an auction on Sunday nights. So from Thursday to Sunday, I would photograph and list everything. And 75% of what I would list would sell an auction the first week. And then I would relist it the second week. And then if it didn't sell, then I would put it up as a static listing. Now, this was before stores or anything like that. But back when listings would cost us five cents, or I think it was 10 cents for an auction or something like that. Um, you know, we didn't have digital cameras. We had, you would take a photo with my first thing was my Sony Navica camera that I used that you would upload your photos. Um, but I would also get CDs. You'd put the photo on a CD and you would put it in your computer and you would have one or two photos for for each item, and people would mail us cash and checks and things like that. And I had done a pretty, I was doing probably $30,000 a year part-time as I was working full-time, and this was fun. And that was my play money, it was my vacation money, it was whatever. And so when I had to go full-time in 2009, I I knew what to do. I just knew that I needed to scale it up and I started going to more than one auction a week and things like that. My first love is antiques and collectibles. And people that know me now, I sell a lot of vintage, a lot of vintage clothing. I hated clothing. So I was kind of like Trish. I had never been in a thrift store. I didn't like clothing. I didn't like know anything about vintage clothing. And then I moved across the country. I moved from Rhode Island, where you have it's rich in antiques and collectibles and old things, to Nevada, and I live in Las Vegas, and there's nothing old in Las Vegas. We have no history here, it's not a very old area, and everyone that lives here is transient. There's not a lot of people that have moved here that have people that have lived here for generations. Most people have moved here from elsewhere. When someone tells you I've I'm born and raised in Nevada, or I'm born and raised in Las Vegas, you're like, really? You're it's an anomaly. So people get rid of their stuff before they move here. You don't, you we don't have old things. And the first few months that I was here, I started going to auctions here locally, and there was nothing that I would normally buy. And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to transition my business. So I started going to thrift stores and I started buying clothing. And at first, I would buy brand names or or couture. At least I knew fashion. I didn't know what it sold for, but I knew how to pick out fashion and good quality. And then I started gravitating towards vintage items, and then I became really self-taught on vintage, and I've really focused and specialized in that. And I love it, and that is definitely something I sell the majority of now. Probably 70% of my business is vintage clothing, and the other 30% is anything else I can get my hands on. Doesn't matter whether it's vintage or it's electronics or whatever. I will sell anything. I've sold vehicles, I've sold motorcycles, I've sold gold, bullion, I've sold everything, and I will always sell everything. Uh, but my my focus has definitely been, that's my love, even if it's not necessarily the most profitable category any longer. That's my my passion. So I've had to supplement it over the years, um, trying different things, always trying and pivoting, because if I do focus on just one category and that category has waxed and waned as it does, I needed to supplement it so that I can still pay my bills and still bring in as enough money to you know continue to do this and be feral and not have to work for somebody else.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

The whole reason we do this, we do not want to work for someone else. Well, I do work for someone else, to be honest with you guys now, but but I didn't for a long time. Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Uh that's a great story, Vicky. I don't know if I knew your uh your origin story. And uh you mentioned a couple things in there that I was like, half.com, I totally forgot about that. Like that that was even a thing. Like, so uh going in the wayback machine here for sure. But uh as far as what I sell, so um I'm really different than the two of you, and then I sell almost no clothing. Um I'll usually only sell clothing if it's um an obvious slam dung, new with tags, you know, clothes. Sometimes you stumble across things, you know, that are outside your wheelhouse and you'll still buy them because they're available. But um my top categories are always in um electronics, uh music media, um photography. Um currently my top category is CDs, music CDs. Um very desirable right now. There's a huge resurgence in physical media, and I'm riding that wave um for sure. I've just gotten really good at uh sourcing them, um, really good at picking them out and curating. So uh I'd say uh about half of the orders I ship uh today every day are uh are CDs. Then my another big category for me is Cameras and photography equipment. Um, everyone's got old cameras. It's one of the easiest items for me to source. Um every weekend I get a bunch of photography stuff. It's pretty pretty easy for me. Um and then uh wristwatches became a huge category for me. I've kind of let off the gas on that. Um all of the things that I'm talking about are things that I'm passionate about, and I think that's why I'm successful, is I try not to get too deep into things that I don't have a lot of interest in. So I'm super interested in gadgets and electronics, and uh so music, um cameras and photography, those are all kind of around the electronics area. Um and uh I do a lot in the home improvement space. So I go to garage sales and everyone I'm in their garage, right? So everyone's got a home improvement project that they bought for and then didn't finish or have extra stuff left over. So every garage sale has these items, and I'm just really good because I've done I've remodeled two houses myself, and I know what a box of deck screws costs. I know it's like $50 for a little tiny box of deck screws. So when I see that box for a dollar at a garage sale, I am buying the deck screws and selling it for $44.99. And um that for me is a really good category, and I'm also passionate about it because it's something I'm familiar with and I've done all this work myself. So when I stay in these areas that I know um it it's safer for me, I know I'm not uh making a bad buy, uh, I know I'm going to not burn out because I'm like, God bless you, you sell clothes. If I listed clothes every day, I would lose my mind. Like it would not be for me. But uh I could fix cameras all day long. I could clean CDs and and listen to them and curate them all day long. It's something that I'm really passionate about. So that's what I would if I was gonna give our audience a takeaway, it would be that uh um you'll be the most successful in the space that you're you're passionate about.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Trying to think if there's about money, Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

What's that?

SPEAKER_02 24:21

I said I'm passionate about money, Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Me too. Me too. And that's not to say I don't mean to say that any of these other categories aren't profitable, they are very profitable. They're just not for me, you know.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

No, no, I was just I was just being funny at what you said about being passionate. I and I guess I get the passion from the sale things, yeah, from the sales. Yes, so it's no different, it's just a different opposite, is all I was saying. I'm glad you brought the sourcing.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Sorry you love sourcing?

SPEAKER_04 24:52

I love sourcing, and I but uh but I hate I do hate listing clothing. I'm not gonna lie. I hate the photography, I hate the listing. I used to outsource it, but you know, sales have come down, so I I no longer have a lister, so I'm doing it myself, and I complain the entire time that I've taken photos.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Push in pain. Yeah, I've learned to do things in my setup, um, which we'll see later. I think we're gonna see all of our workspaces um to to make it more efficient and less boring for the things I don't like. Because I mean, you're right. When I shoot CDs, one of the things that differentiates me is I photograph the actual CD that the customer's gonna buy, and I shoot six pictures of each one. So um, but I've got a system and it's super fast. And so I can like put a movie on and just like boom, boom, boom, and I can do a thousand CDs like in a few hours, and uh and then use AI software to list them, and it's all super fast and keeps me from getting super burned out from it.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Right. Well, and I think that's we're gonna talk about this later on about process, um, and maybe not even today, but we'll get into process at some point. And I think that you know what we do if you have a process, everything is easier, right? Like, no matter what category you're in, no matter what you're selling, process can make or break you with in this business. You can go down a rabbit hole and be down there for a real I mean this analysis, paralysis, that is a real thing, you know, not knowing what to sell, how to do it. But all right, so let's just quickly, because the three of us like to pontificate. I don't know if you guys have noticed.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm already sensing this podcast is gonna be so long. Sorry, I can't wait to we see the comments and they're like, these people will never shut up.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Exactly. All right, quickly tell me what we're gonna go through what just tell me what uh platforms you're on, platforms, whether this is full-time, part-time, um, and if you have any employees.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Okay, I'll go first. Um I am on primarily eBay. 95% of my business is on eBay. Um, I um sell full-time, obviously. Uh, and I do have one employee. It's my son. We work together on the business now, and that's been um probably one of the single most rewarding things that has happened to me since I quit my eBay job is working with my son has been thumbs up, both thumbs.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Because I am I am part-time technically. My business is full-time. I my daughter works for me.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

I was gonna say, where's the thumb? Where's the thumbs? That's um, that's all right. She's she's for those listening, she's done the sideways thumbs, which I'm gonna call it.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

It wasn't up, wasn't down, it's medium.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

I think she was a neutral, neutral reaction.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Neutral. Um, I do out of full disclosure, I work for Liz Perfectly. Um, I am the director of events and education for them. So I spend my whole day working with resellers in the reseller space. I run a mastermind class in the morning and we talk about reselling topics. So even though I don't run my business full-time, this is my full-time life reselling. Okay, I just want, you know what I mean. Um, and she, I just think she started working for me during the pandemic because she had a job and she lost it. And so for her, it's just not where she wants to be. It's just not her jam. I wish it was. It's just not.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

So it's not for everybody.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

It's not, and it's not for her. So she's going to be moving on. We're we're transitioning right now. We're gonna be figuring some stuff out. So that's another thing that we'll talk about. I'm sure I'm gonna change everything about my business. That's what's gonna happen moving forward. Um, I am like Chuck, 95%, 90% on eBay. I am on Poshmark and I do a little whatnot. Vicki.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

Um, I am full-time. I have been full-time since 2009. And uh right now I have one part-time um virtual assistant that just does my cross-posting for me. And then I do have a friend that has worked for me off and on, but I actually have not used her at all this entire year that would do um just photos and drafts for clothing for me. So she still has all her stuff. If I need her, she just checks in with me every once in a while. You got anything? I'm like, no, still can't afford to pay you. Uh so I have had as many as two employees, two part-time employees, but now I have one who's really part-time. She just does the cross-posting and probably $75 a week that I pay to her to cross-post. So I am 100% on eBay. And because I sell a lot of vintage, I would say 90% of my inventory is also on Etsy. And everything I sell is also on Poshmark. So those are my three biggest platforms, and then I do dabble in whatnot. Uh, Trish and I have done a bunch of shows, and we need to get back onto that. Um, and then I'm also on vintage relatively recently. I haven't sold anything yet, but I only have like 40 things listed in this last week. And I'm also on Macari and a little bit on Depop. I think at the end of this year, I will be eliminating both Depop and Macari. They just don't do anything for me. Um, I will keep my things there, but it is not worth my time. I sell nothing on those platforms. Um, I do about $3,000 a year on Macari and I have 5,000 items listed. Um, and then on Depop, I have only a couple hundred items. This is my third try on Depop. My items are not Depop. Here's the thing about Deep.

SPEAKER_03 30:48

It's gonna change. eBay bought it, it's gonna change. They're already shoveling people over there. If you're I mean, Chuck, I don't know what you know about this, but I mean, if you are in the in the clothing category, it will say, Do you want to look at this on Depop? And you hit a and you go right over.

SPEAKER_04 31:06

I mean, you know, yes, but it doesn't bring you to that person's store, which it should.

SPEAKER_03 31:10

No, it brings you to the Bring you just to Depop me. No, it looked brings you to the item you had put in. So if you put in Adidas Leopard dress and you it would bring you right over to Deepop to Adidas Leopard dresses. Um, I I'm not saying whether that's good or bad. I'm just saying it is what it's happening.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah, this is probably a good time to mention that. Um, as a former eBay employee, everything I say is my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_04 31:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Nothing uh, and I haven't been at eBay since November, so I'm not privy to any special information. Um, but regarding the Depop acquisition and the transition I'm that we're all seeing, when you do a search in the fashion category, clearly there's a big banner now that takes you over to Depop and does the same search on Depop. Usually I search for men's clothes, so for me, the result um has been on average, uh, if there's 30,000 um results on eBay, there'll be 5,000 on Depop. I've heard different on women's clothes, but I'm not sure. Um, so I mean on the surface that seems weird, right? Why would eBay take a buyer from a larger pool of positive results to a smaller pool? I mean, you could argue about well, you know, what is the search algorithm returning on eBay versus on Depop or what's listed or whatever. But I don't think my opinion, I don't think the goal is for eBay to like move all their fashion business to the Depop platform. I just don't think that is their intent. I I don't I think their intent is to make money and to help their seller customers make money from their buyer customers. Um, but I do think that um the reason eBay acquired Depop, again my opinion, that Dpop clearly serves an underserved buyer segment on um the on eBay, which is younger buyers and new younger buyers coming onto the platform. That um we've all heard the the tropes. Um, you know, you tell your kids, hey, have you tried eBay? That's still around, or all these kind of things, and um that's a real perception that's out there, and so I think eBay has been trying and trying and trying through various marketing. Um, we can argue about uh if they're trying the right things to be successful for that, but um they're finally to the point where they're like, Well, we could acquire this customer segment by buying this business, Depop. And they are clearly my daughter. When she wanted to sell, she went, she didn't even go to eBay, she went right to Depop and started selling there for several reasons. Her peer group is telling her that's the place to go. Um, the shipping on Depop is hella easy compared to eBay, it is literally obfuscated completely from the seller. As long as you put the item in relatively accurately, Depop handles all the shipping stuff and charges the buyer and craps out a print label, a shipping label, and that's all you have to do is take that, stick it on your package, and you're done. And that was appealing to her because um she's worked in my business doing shipping on eBay, and she knows how difficult it is and was like, Oh, I don't have to do any of that. Yeah, that sounds really great. So, anyways, it's a long-winded way of saying um I think eBay is definitely trying to find this connection between their their core eBay and their um depop businesses. I don't think it's to kick all the fashion people out of it.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

I don't either. I I don't either. All I'm saying is is if they're going to be showing eBay people depop and vice versa, right? If we're getting, I think it may be worth for her to stay on because we never know what's gonna come from it. I certainly do not think that they're gonna stop selling fashion on eBay.

SPEAKER_04 35:08

No, I don't think so either. I do think I'm like I do agree with what Chuck says about they're just trying to gather that segment of the population that they have failed at bringing over to eBay abysmally for the last 10 to 15 years, even though they say they've been trying, it doesn't work. Whatever marketing they have done to capture, you know, Gen Z, it is not working. They're they are not coming to eBay as buyers or sellers, really. Um, so I agree. They're trying to, okay, if we can't beat them, we'll join them. Um part of me thinks that maybe they're trying to siphon off the used clothing segment um uh uh onto Depop uh and maybe only allow new with tags on eBay at some point. I don't know. I obviously I don't know. This is pure speculation.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Have you seen anything that made you think that?

SPEAKER_04 35:55

No, it's just I I don't know why. I'm just it's just a a feeling. I get like anything else, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

You gotta trust your gut. I mean, maybe there's something there, you know.

SPEAKER_04 36:04

I I mean I'm not saying I'm right. Obviously, only time will tell, but I, you know, it certainly would clear up a lot of the server space on eBay and a lot of poor sellers. Because if we're gonna think about the sellers that are not, you know, real sellers or full-time sellers or at least committed part-time sellers to continue their education and give the best version of their stores or their listings, a lot of that falls into the used fashion category.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Let me ask you guys this as clothing sellers, how do you feel as a buyer, the difference between the the presentation to buyers on Depop versus eBay for clothing? Because I I did a little shopping on there and I felt like the the photography and the the way I could look at a little more detail of the fabrics and things was still better on eBay than Depop.

SPEAKER_04 36:52

But I wonder what you way better. Oh, wait, yeah. Because the eBay listing process is so much more in depth and requires so many more things and item specifics and titles and things like that. Depop doesn't even have titles. So it's entire it's entirely different. They're they're completely, you can't even, it's apples to apples to giraffes. It's not even apples to oranges. Like it's they're so different. But as a as a buyer, the the thing that I find easier on Depop or then you know to source on Depop versus on on eBay is because there are fewer listings and fewer sellers, their search is actually easier. eBay search, as we know, is problematic at best and brings up a lot of things that are completely irrelevant to what you're searching for. And you have to really slog through thousands and thousands of items sometimes. And that's it, and that's as a savvy buyer that knows how to navigate the drop-down left left-hand navigation. So being a casual buyer, I do think Depop is easier to both sell on and list on. I tell people all the time in my train, and when I train people or I teach people that if you are able to be a good and successful seller on eBay, if you're able to master the eBay app or the eBay website, then you can sell anywhere because every other platform is so much easier. That if you learn on eBay first, like we did, and we all did when there was it was a lot harder, then get jumping on a new platform is like so easy. But um, you know, I don't know what they're gonna do with it. I don't know. I don't I don't necessarily think you're wrong that you we should I should probably stay on it, it's just not worth my time right now.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

No, no, I get it. I I I totally get that. And I think that personally, I think Depop looks like a yard sale. Um, not that eBay, some some some listings don't look professional, but I think there are a lot of professional sellers on eBay who do a really good job in the used clothing category. Their items are really crest, they have great photos. Um, in that you don't see a lot of like laying on the floor, laying on the bed, whereas on Depop, you saw a lot of that. Um, I just think it's a different it that will change now that eBay owns it, right? I think a lot of people will end up migrating over there and it will get a get a different class, different class of listing.

SPEAKER_04 39:06

Um I do hope that they do not implement a lot of I don't I hope they don't eBay it up too much. I gotta be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

We will see. I agree, I agree. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Okay, so we're gonna do really quickly, you're just gonna answer. Um high volume, high SAP, me, high volume, Vic, high SAP, Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

SAP.

SPEAKER_03 39:28

I love Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

ASP.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

ASP.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

What did I say? You said SAP. I knew what you meant.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

I think I knew what you meant, but I was thinking I there was some cool acronym I didn't know.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Okay, here we go.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

High volume or high ASP. Um, I prefer both. I mean, do I have to pick one? I like so I recently raised my ASP from it used to be ten dollars across all categories, I would sell something for, and then obviously today that is not a possible amount to sell things for unless it's uh you know trading cards or something. So I my average that I try to buy for at cry sales is twenty dollars or higher. That's not average, that's the low end. So I've if I can't sell for twenty dollars, I'm not gonna buy it. Um, but then I'm also having to raise my volume because I'm scaling the business. So both for me.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Okay. Um do you mostly sell one-offs or multiples, Vic? One-offs. Chuck. One-offs, Trish, one-offs. Um, do you cross-post everything or choose platform by item by item? I cross-post everything, Vic.

SPEAKER_04 40:36

Everything that's applicable. Me too.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

I don't cross-post currently.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

Chuck's like, this isn't about me. Um, well, it will be.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

I mean, I'm my intent is like you said, I like money.

SPEAKER_04 40:48

Exactly. You need to branch out, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I need to scale my business to where I can make, you know, because every new platform I add is a new process, right? So I'm just I'm just lazy and hesitant to add new process.

SPEAKER_04 41:02

But I will tell you this that I'm an at a huge advocate for it because I will say, based on even just what you sell, even if you just branched to Etsy. Oh, you should so be on Etsy. You can add an extra 40-50 grand a year.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

You've told me that before, Trish, and I'm definitely taking that to heart. And I think Etsy will probably be my next Etsy and maybe vintage only because currently the deals they're giving out to sellers are kind of compelling.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

But really, Etsy should be where you put your focus, in my opinion. And I think Vic would agree with that. I totally agree. Um, okay, how much how much inventory do you have currently? I have just under 9,000, which is the lowest I have had in the last five years, Vic.

SPEAKER_04 41:45

I have just under 6,000 listed, and probably because I just received a huge consignment, uh, probably about four or five hundred unlisted. Okay, and let me ask you a question. Is that usually where you stay about the 5,000 mark? Between five and six thousand is where I hover. Yeah. Um, I I haven't dipped below 5,000 in a couple years. Okay. Um, I do tend to overall stay in the same. I don't grow too much because I the ideally you want to have, you know, a good sell-through rate, even if it's not something you calculate. I don't, we'll talk about that another time, but I don't calculate it monthly or whatever. It's more of an average of let's keep my store around the same size. So I want to be selling roughly what I'm listing number wise. Um, but yeah, I try to stay around there. I also don't normally have so many unlisted items. I normally have, you know, people talk about a death pile or money mountain or whatever the heck you want to call it. Um I normally don't have more than 50 items that are not listed any given time. I usually have to source every single week. Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Wow. I have a huge money mountain. It is massive. But it has to be in it's the reason for a reason we can talk about later. But I um I have currently 9,300 items in my store. Um, I'm really careful to not use that number to measure myself because I feel like um a lot of sellers will see that number go up and think they're doing well, and it's only because the bottom 50% of their inventory that is either garbage or price too high will just sit and recycle every month, and then that builds up, builds up, builds up. And now the the you have this thin crusty layer on top of good stuff with this giant iceberg of garbage underneath it. If you're not doing proper um inventory sanitation, I guess, and getting rid of the things or bundling up the things that don't sell. So, yeah, for me, I'm right at that 10,000 point, which means that I need to make a really tough decision about whether to upgrade from the $70 a month eBay store to the $300 eBay store. Um, so I'm currently having that in internal dialogue with myself.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

Okay, so I have another question based on this. What right now we're I am in my space, which is in my home, I can reasonably have about 15,000 items. Not that I want to anymore, but I could. What are you maxed out, Vic? Like inventory-wise, could you what could you have there?

SPEAKER_04 44:16

I could I have enough room to probably double. Okay. If I needed to. I don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

No, no, get it. I get it. Yeah. Chuck.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Um, the preponderance of my inventory are CDs, so I have tons of room for those. Okay. And the other things I sell are a little bigger, but um space isn't my biggest concern. I do have a storage space that I put a lot of uh death pile stuff or money mountain stuff into. Um, so real short, in Portland, uh seasonal garage sale season, very seasonal. So I have to do the preponderance of my picking between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And so um obviously I'm not gonna turn down anything that I think I can sell even if I can't possibly get it all listed. Because once uh November rolls around, I won't be sourcing at all until like March. So I'll just be eating out of the out of the storage space for that time.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Yeah, and I think that that is a very um, you know, a lot of us during the pandemic had an issue because they didn't have enough inventory, right? Um, and I am somebody who have always had a a lot of inventory um because of the way that I source. I would source, I would go to the bins. They're not in Massachusetts. I'd have to drive to New Hampshire. It's not that far. I mean, it's a little place up here. Um, but I would go, I would spend the whole day, I would sleep over, go the whole next day, and I would come home with literally with a van full, like 800 pounds, and I would work out of that until I went again. So I was somebody who always had a lot of inventory. And so where Vic and Katie, they were very like, they would buy it and they would list it. And they would buy it and they would list it. But when I think now you like having some backstock, I do. Yeah, because when the pandemic happened, what happened?

SPEAKER_04 46:19

I had to source from my Facebook group and from other resellers. Uh Vegas was closed down almost identically to California. So we were closed down longer than a lot of other states as far as stores and the ability to source. We actually did a lot of road trips to source because Arizona was wide open and we were not. So um, yeah, I had maybe a week's worth of inventory and started to panic. I didn't know where my inventory was coming from, and we didn't know what the heck was happening back then in, you know, as far as how long things were going to be closed. I had to source from my Facebook group from other resellers. I'm like, I know you all have money mountains, send me your stuff, I'll buy it from you.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

There are some resellers who have this very strict of like, I only buy what I can list. I am somebody who really believes in backstock, right? And I also am somebody who really believes in sourcing opportunities. And so I think the fact that you are willing to spend the time and the money and the energy buying all season because then it's going to be gone is smart. And people who limit themselves, I think it's a little short-sighted because you never know what's going to happen in life.

unknown 47:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

When up when opportunity knocks, you've got to answer the door. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 47:35

You gotta have not just a money mountain, but you also have to have a financial reserve to jump on opportunities when that happens. Because I also have, you know, I don't go to garage sales very often. I love garage sailing, but I don't, I just don't do it because I don't have time and I have other easier ways for me to get an inventory, namely the bins, but also be doing bulk buys, estate buyouts, things like that. It's more quantity for you know, less work. Um, although I love garage sailing. Um and Katie hates it, so I hate going alone. But I would love to go and spend a day and just and buy stuff, and I do sometimes, but we're also limited too because it's too hot. So our garage sale season is like October through April. It's like the opposite of most of the rest of the country.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

October through April, you say.

SPEAKER_04 48:22

Yeah, you want to come hang out in Vegas. You got a good reason. Come source, come hang out, my friend. I'll go with you. Uh and we don't even buy the same stuff, so hey. Yeah, so it wouldn't even matter. Um, but yeah, and then the bins are open year-round here. So, and that's you know, when I really want I'm going weekly to get inventory, I'm buying it at the bins. I go once a week and I fill a cart and a couple hundred items, and I'm that's good for me.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

So, and you do get large amounts sometimes. You do have belt buys, you've done I do.

SPEAKER_04 48:52

I have bulk buys. I mean, I filled an 18-wheeler last year, that's a whole 18-wheeler, 18-foot truck, and I'm about to fill a 12-foot truck. So it happens.

SPEAKER_03 49:00

Yep. So, Chuck, do you ever do any like big buys like that?

SPEAKER_00 49:05

Oh, yeah, if I get the opportunity, I mean, what Vicky was saying about having access to capital is so true. Um, like I personally feel like if you do garage sales as a major source, garage sales and estate sales, if you don't go in the door of a garage sale with at least like a thousand dollars accessible to you, I don't mean you need to carry like you know, five grand in your pocket, but um, you're doing it wrong because you need to be prepared. Like I said, opportunity knocks, you listen, and when you go into a garage sale and you say, Y'all got any cameras? And they're like, Grandpa died and he left the basement full, and they're a burden to me. And if someone would just give me $500, I'd let it all go. Here's $500. You don't know, you don't go to the ATM, you don't leave the space, you make the deal, and you get out. That is the the way it works. And man, that is not a common thing, that's not gonna happen to you every day. But when it does, is you want to get it, or the other dude who has the money in his pocket. You know, you just gotta be ready for those moments when they happen. And yes, I will buy a huge lot if it's the right price.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

Um, and so now we're gonna we're gonna take a look at each of our we're gonna have three little videos and we're gonna show you kind of our our areas, our backstage. So I think are we all home based? Yeah. So I don't have any off-site stuff. I know Vic doesn't either. Chuck, but you have an off-site storage.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

I have a storage space, yeah. I basically had to move so we have a three-car garage, which I took over 100% um with a really high ceiling, and I had to move everything that would normally be in a garage um to the storage space. So it's you know a lot of garden tools and and building supplies and all that kind of stuff. Um, and then I moved currently, I have a ton of my photography inventory down there just because I had to make some space. So um, yeah, that's the only off-site thing I have, and I rarely have to go there. So my whole day is literally in this house. I wake up, my home office, I do the clerical work, and then head out there, and you'll see it in the video. My little uh um universe I've created out there to run the business.

SPEAKER_04 51:28

So for me, oh you go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead, Vic. All right, I was gonna say I I'm similar to Chuck. I have a I have a pretty large house. Um, I have a three-car garage that I have a hundred percent of. And also my dining room last year was converted to another storage space, and you'll see that in the video. Um, the dining room that I used twice a year, but I still loved it. Has been sacrificed for inventory. Um, someday I'll get it back, hopefully. I don't know, we'll see. Um, but yeah, I keep everything under the same roof. And I did just like Chuck, I am someone that celebrates Christmas really big. I have like nine Christmas trees and themes in every room.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Oh, that's what's in my storage face. It's all Christmas supplies. You're right.

SPEAKER_04 52:09

Exactly. My entire storage, I have a storage unit, and my entire storage unit is like 30 bins of Christmas stuff for sure. I have an eight by ten storage unit and it's all Christmas.

SPEAKER_03 52:20

Okay, I don't have anything on anything off site, um, but I live in a large New England farmhouse. Um, it is has an attached in-law apartment where my daughter and her girlfriend live. Um, because my daughter works for me, uh, she has sacrificed one bedroom in there where she works out of. That's where the photography is. I will you'll see that in my video. Um, and she does the shipping over there. Over here is all the inventory listed and unlisted. And I took over what I would call the Paula, the dining room, a bathroom, and a bedroom and in my office. So I took up the majority of my house, but I decided after spending so many years of going back and forth to storage units that it was worth my time and effort and the sacrifice of not having my house exactly aesthetically pleasing. Um, you know, I don't care. You know, come over. This is what it is.

SPEAKER_04 53:20

Most of my friends are resellers. I figure they get it, right? Most of my friends they come to visit. I'm like, sorry, ignore that. That's inventory. Yeah, exactly. They get it.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Do you do you really need a dining room? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 53:30

Yes. I only used it on Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving. Let's be real.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:34

We want it twice a year to look cute, Chuck. That's what we want. It looked pretty.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yeah, I have a gentleman's agreement with my wife about what areas of the house can have the business in them. And uh, you know, we just keep it in the boundaries and everything's cool.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

Yeah, and I think my husband thought he had that agreement, and it turned out he didn't.

SPEAKER_04 53:53

So there you go. My wife is also a reseller, so 70% of our house is reselling related. And then we're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

See, you gotta know, yeah, there's no no one has any ground to stand on there.

SPEAKER_04 54:04

No, it's all over. We try to keep it out of the main living spaces, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

Yeah. Welcome to our workshop here. This is uh where recycled gadgets happens. This is a three-car garage, and uh, we do almost all of our work in here. It's a tandem garage, so this side is twice as deep, and we've got uh you know pretty good distance from front to back, but you can see we're making use of every square inch of the space here. This side is where new inventory comes in. It's a little bit piled up with things that still have to be processed in Portland. The garage sales are good in the summer, so we build up as much inventory as we can. This is all inventory that is listed on uh whatever platform. Generally, that's eBay for us. We use the two-letter code, make it really easy. That's this is our main photo station. This is just racking from Home Depot, and I put a tabletop surface on it. Um, trying to do everything really budget-wise. It looks a little chaotic, but it works pretty well. And this is a little side table that just is the latest pile of stuff that I want to photograph. These tables we use to sort. Uh right now it's cameras. We have a second photo station. We discovered photo taking was one of our bottlenecks. So since there are two of us, my son and I work together. Um, this is another one that we have. This is our uh CD uh drawer system. So we use our custom skews, it might say C D7, and I know in that drawer will be the CD I'm looking for. Try to keep it as simple as we can. This is our shipping station over here. This is Evan. Evan, what are you doing today? How many packages do we have? Uh we have 16 packages today. 16, and that's the CDEs. Yeah, that's less than we usually have, right? Yes. Because we put our store, we're about to leave on a trip and we put our store on time away. But we're doing one more push here. At least half of our orders, generally are CDs. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah. Show us how you do a pack of CDs. So you do a piece of cardboard. Yep. We put a piece of cardboard, yeah, put it around, just stick it in the envelope, you know, close it up, and easy as that. We do about um, I'd say these days, about 40 shipments a day get processed through here. And uh and then this is the garage door, so it just gets loaded right back out and uh into a car and off to the post office.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

This is our intake and photo setup. So here Liz is um doing some intake. This is her station that she works at. My daughter, this is her office. This is my office where I work out of. And this is our shipping station. So here she is bagging up and moving it along. A Rola printer. So this is a bathroom that we didn't need anymore. So I turned it into storage. Um, that's the tub right there. I do use a a lot of different kinds of storage. I also have everything on wheels, so anything behind I can still use. I don't want any wasted space. So that's really important to me. So this is what I grew up calling the pala, uh formal living room. Um, my husband made sure that every single space, every single inch of this was usable space. So we have lots of um shelving, and then this is where we leave empty totes. But then he also bought me some smaller um things that could be for filling in space, and then again, anything behind this, there is a whole nother section of it. Again, so everything around the wall has all the buckets, and he did this again, so every single space was used up. Now, then as you saw in that last photo, in front of them there are also more buckets, and here I am. I'm gonna show you. These are on dollies, these are on appliance dollies, and you can just push them right out of the way. So I can move these very easily and get to every single thing behind it, and you can do it with no hard trouble at all. Um, I'm gonna show you how I can put these back right where they were, um, but it's very easy. I can do it with one hand. Here I am doing it with one hand, um, and this just makes utilizing all of the space very easily, and it gives me the ability to move things around, to get at things, and then you can just push them back where they belong. And so this was a great um thing my husband did, and you know, these appliance dollies are really rather cheap on Amazon, and they have worked out fabulously. Voila! Um, and then we're gonna go upstairs. I do have one room upstairs. Um, it was an old bedroom that I turned into again for listed inventory. This room does have a certain amount of unlisted inventory in it, also. But as you can see, I am have been downsizing my inventory, so there are some open spaces, but that way it just gives me the ability to add.

SPEAKER_04 59:29

This is my photography area. I have uh two ring lights and a flat wall. I usually remove the background, it's a beige wall, but sometimes white things show better there. Um, I usually start by hanging my items on a rack before I put a rack up. And then for hard goods, I put a table right here. This is my shipping office. It's literally just for shipping. Um so I have my printer here and some tables. Um, I have bubble wrap, different sized, and then of course, every reseller's dream, the pile of boxes. And then I do have this little area here for the more organized day-to-day pieces that I use. This is some of my inventory. This is actually most of my hard goods. This is my was my dining room that have been taken over um by some inventory. I do have a lot more room here if I wanted to expand for sure. This is the majority of the hard goods that I sourced from Diane's uh from Diane's inventory when she passed away. Right. This is the majority of the rest of my inventory. This is a two-car garage. I have double hanging PVC um piping on three sides of the garage. So I have this is one side, two sides, and here's the back of the garage with also more. And then the rest of my clothing is sorted into bins, you know, based on what they're what they are. And there's quite a few about 50 bins. The shelf has some hard goods organized and books organized by um what they are. And then these shelves back here have uh shoes and lots of different cases with shoes as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:30

So those were our those those were our setups. I hope you guys found that interesting um and helpful. I know as a reseller, I always find something else. Like when I watch another reseller's setup, I'm like, oh, why didn't I ever think of that? So I'm really thankful for you both of you guys to show everybody your setup because I think it's really helpful. Um, and you know, for me, when I first started doing this and I got serious, I don't know if you guys have done this, and I would I would suggest anybody do this. Video yourself working. And when I was at my shipping station, I videoed myself one day all day, and I realized I kept walking out of frame and I would walk out of frame and I would get a lint roller and I'd come over and I would roll the sweatshirt or whatever I was doing, and then I would go and put it back because that's where it belonged. Well, why didn't I have a rent lint roller on the damn station? I don't know, but that in my head I never clicked until I saw myself do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

It's so funny you say that. One of the biggest like um efficiency improvers for me was to buy multiples of everything. Like I buy um, like we created a second, which you saw in my video. I had a photo station that I made, and I made a intentionally a stand-up photo station because it's the thing I do for the most hours, and I wanted just for health reasons to be like standing up, and it's just more efficient. And then when I realized my son and I were clashing because we both needed to use a photo station sometimes, I bought a new sort of fold-together giant light cube over there. Um, and so for that I had to re-equip it with all of the things I need. Um, you know, a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels and a roll of uh inventory stickers and all those things. So I doubled up on all that stuff, and even if it costs a little extra, um the the repetitive movement over and over, doing the same thing over and over, it's the easiest place where you can shave a little bits of efficiency, not having to walk to get the lint roller in the room and that kind of stuff. Get another lint roller.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:32

Exactly. Like, why didn't it like why didn't I ever think of it?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:36

You know, why don't I have I have a scale where I ship and I have a scale where I list? Yes, yes, yes, I did not have a scale where I listed for the longest time. I was guessing right why am I doing that basically?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

We got scales for days, we got scales for days here. I didn't mention this earlier. Yeah, my wife uh sells on whatnot, she does jewelry on there, and so I had to get another scale because she has to keep one right next to the whatnot studio so that she can make sure she's you know putting the right shipping amount on all these things. So we keep scales everywhere. Um, it's such a small investment to make sure you don't um burn yourself on the shipping costs.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:19

But all those backups matter. I have I have extra Rolo printers, you know. Um I have I have one that I use every day, I have an extra one in a bag. So if I we lost electricity, I live up the north, you get snow and ice, and we lost electricity, and my dad's house has a generator, so I have a bag, and if I have to, I can just go over there and go bag for reselling. I do reselling go bag. I do have a go bag for reselling, but then I have another one that's brand new that I could open at any moment if in case one crops the bed, one of them crops the bed, because those are the things that can really mean you it's Monday morning, you got 40 packages to ship out, and you don't have a printer, like then you're what printing them out on paper, like the olden days, and we're taping them on. I mean, you know, it so it just those things can really matter, you know, in the end.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:18

So speaking of printers, I gotta ask you guys one word answer are you on team Rolo or Team Dymo?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:25

Rolo. I was zebra, but now Rolo.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:29

Okay, two Rolos. I'm on Team Dymo only because I bought a 4XL at a uh a red, white, and blue thrift store for eight dollars once, and I have used it for 15 years.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:41

I used my zebra for 15 years. It's a workhorse.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

I just found another 4XL at another garage sale for 10 bucks, and I'm like, this is my backup.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:50

That's awesome. So now I I uh I I won the Rolo at the first boss or the second boss. I won a Rolo at Boss.

unknown 1:05:59

So

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

That's how I ended up with it. Before that, I printed them out on paper and taped them on. And everyone would be like, Why don't you have a wrong? I'm like, who needs it? It's it takes five seconds, and I had to laser printer, so you know, it wasn't caught, it wasn't like I was using ink, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:17

Oh my god, the first sounds like someone who doesn't value their time.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:21

Exactly! Not anymore. Trust me, not anymore, Chuck. All about the process and the value.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

You gotta learn as a seller. The biggest lesson you learn as a seller as you scale is how to throw money at a problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:35

And when to throw money at a problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

Yeah, that's the biggest. I wish I could just like osmosis that into sellers' brains. Like, you do what manually? Are you kidding me? Like, why? Oh, I'm saving so much money by doing it myself. I'm like, you are not saving anything.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:54

You go to the post office every day and scan and stand in line and have them scan your QR code. What is the matter with you? Oh, and having them print it out? Is that what you mean? Or they scan the QR codes or what? I've never used a QR code.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

Some sellers believe, um, and I don't think eBay does a good job of communicating why this isn't a good idea, but some sellers believe that if they don't go to the post office and get each package scanned, that um they will not they'll get a defect from eBay when it doesn't register as uh having an acceptance scan at the post office. I literally go to my local distribution center, they have a giant Gaylord there, and I dump my crap in it, and I'll leave it. And I've never had a problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:36

I I love you both sincerely, but you are both so wrong. Wait a minute, how am I wrong? I get scanned.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:44

We said two different things. How are they both wrong?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:47

Chuck.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:48

Okay, I disagree with Chuck. I just I agree with Vic. All right, I want to hear it. My mail lady picks up every single day and scans every single package.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:55

I have her heart. I have no complaints. The first time you go and drop off 200 packages and they don't get scanned, and you get 200 demerits, you let me know because it will happen. It's never happened.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:09

It will, it may not. I have to be fair, it does depend on your post office, right? If you have a relationship and you're good, like I used to, I I've I have no issues. I had pickup in Rhode Island 14 years ago, and I have pickup here, and I have had fantastic people.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:26

I talk to sellers every day, and every six months, every four months, somebody will come in and have 25, 25 things on their account because they dropped them off at the post office and they didn't get scanned.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

So here's my theory on that. If that's happening to you, I think you are printing your postage, waiting three days to drop it off at the post office.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:53

You just have a crappy post. She is a full-time reseller. She's a full-time reseller.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

Really? I'll even say who it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

It's Pam Arnold. She's a full-time reseller. She goes to the post office every single day. This is her full-time job. She brought in over 50 packages one morning on a Monday morning, and none of they took them from her. None of them got scanned until the next day. So she got a late scan on 50 packages.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:23

So hold on though, because I I've had it had to be late delivery. It's when the package arrives. If the package arrives before the date that it's due, eBay doesn't care.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

Believe me, I've not let's well, it shows.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

This is episode two.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:42

This is what we're is we're talking about right now. We need to get into this. We need to get right down in there and figure out what's going on because this is really good discussion.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:50

Because the metrics matter, and I'll show you. We're gonna talk about this. The next I'm saying the next podcast is gonna be about metrics.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

I want to hear what sellers think about this. I want to hear experiences, and I want to really understand. So I've dropped packages off before where I've dropped off 40, and some of them will not show as acceptance scanned for days, but then all of a sudden they show up in Albuquerque, they get they get an acceptance scan there, and then they end up arriving by the time that I promise the package. And I don't get a defect for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:22

No, that's you're right. You are right. That is how it works. But if you dropped it off late and you didn't get the acceptance scan, and then it goes away and it doesn't show up within time, eBay is not gonna back you. So you run the risk, you run the risk of not getting when you drop it off and you get the acceptance scan, right? Within the within the 24 hours or whatever it is, whenever it tells you, you get the if the post office screws up, it is not your fault because you can prove when you dropped it off. Right in the in what you just said, you can't prove that you dropped it off on time.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:00

So are you saying that if somebody I don't know, I'm just struggling with this. Like you you just said the person maybe drops the package off late. I I so I I ship every day, and so everything that sold in the last 24 hours goes each day. So I'm yeah, I I don't know if these are folks that are trying to fudge out the amount of days that they can hold on to the package. No, I don't know, I don't have a lot of sympathy for that situation. No, but you're I didn't say that.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

No, no, no, no. She's a full-time seller who goes to the post office every single day.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

Every day, every day.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:35

There wasn't any fudging trying to fudge out the numbers by any means.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:39

I guess I'm I'm a I'm a use case of one. I've been selling for years and I've always done it this way, and I've never had a problem. So that's all I can say. It doesn't mean that anyone else doesn't have a valid critique or their post office is like wack-adoo or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:55

I think some people have a lot of difficulty trusting pickups, not having pickups, not having a safe area to pick up. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why. Yeah, um, I'm thankfully not one of them. I know how good I have it, but I will tell you what, I tip her very well. She gets a 300 tip.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

Take care of your delivery people. And I know that's good. I I left snacks and drinks out on my they do that. We do that too. Yeah, so like on a hot day, I got like an energy drink and uh and some pretzels or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:32

And they she loves Diet Coke, she gets an iced diet coke, and I put it in a cooler for her. And she we haven't done that this year. We didn't do it this way.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:38

Such a small investment to take care of your service workers. And you know, I'll tell you, people man, diss on the post office so much, and I'm not saying they're perfect, but um, man, it's what an amazing business that um hopefully our government will continue to uh fund. Um, and the people they're just generally you know, not every single person, but they all what I see is they're working pretty hard and they want to be um good uh um they want to provide a good service.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:10

I d and I don't disagree with you about that. I and I also think that this is based on the I mean there is a post office, there's two post offices very close to me. One post office, I could bring in a hundred packages and they would scan them and give me a receipt. The other one, the postmaster says I'll scan five.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:28

So that's it really in the world. And here's the thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

I just want to say one thing. Here's the thing. My father was a judge, and I have this thing in my head, him saying to me, you never give anybody anything without a receipt, ever. Money, your car, anything. So the fact that two things you buy it from me, I no longer own it, you own it. Okay. I package up Chuck's thing that I'm sending to Chuck. I don't own it. I bring it to the post office, and I can't get a receipt for it. I can't prove to Chuck that I upheld my end of the boggin. So for me, I am never giving anybody anything without getting a receipt for it. It's just ingrained in me, right? Especially when it's not my merchandise, it's your merchandise.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

So here's my flip side to that argument. It's a great argument. Um, my flip side is that my time is so valuable that if I end up spending a half hour standing in line to deal with a postmaster who's surly and won't scan all my packages or whatever, even if they're not surly, but I stand in line that that time lost is lost opportunity cost for me to do something else for my business that would make me much more money than I would lose on the occasional lost package or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:52

That's my I don't think you've got to you've got to weigh it. I don't disagree with that. I'm just telling you, I think if you have a good post office, then you don't worry about this, right? Like if they've proven to you over and over again that they do the right thing, then you can take the occasional hit if it happens.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:11

That's how I feel. Like my lady will pick up sometimes if we're if we're, you know, holidays, super busy, hasn't happened the last couple of Q4s, but certain times when you're like on a Saturday or what we only do, we ship Monday through Friday. I don't ship on the weekends, but sometimes I will during Q4. I'll ship on a Saturday um just as a courtesy so that people aren't waiting as long. But sometimes if we miss pickup for whatever reason, we've had to drive to our central hub. We have a hub that's 20 minutes away that's open till nine o'clock. Now I don't get a scan when I drop off there. I'm dropping it into a gay lord, I'm dropping it off at the dock. I will say that 99.5% of the time I'll get a scan before midnight, same day. Sometimes it'll be the middle of the night because they'll still be processing one, two, three o'clock in the morning. So it won't get that same day scan, but it has never caused a defect because it's gotten delivered on time. Time, you know. So for me, that's a small enough risk for me to take because of past, you know, they've done it so many times that I know that that's the process. But I get what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:14

You built some trust up.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:15

Yeah, there's some trust that I know that we happen to have a really good hub where we live. Um, and I'm very fortunate for that. I know that that's not the case for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

I love how how spicy we're all getting on this topic, just because I know that boy sellers, man, this is spicy. Hot takes galore, and I love it. I love it so much that just having these conversations is I think cathartic and important. Um, so yeah, I and I love that it's you guys because you know, we can joke around and and uh, you know, obviously we're all not uh dying on the sword for our position, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:52

No, and we need to be able to listen, there's a lot of things that are problematic with what we do for a living, whether it's platforms, third party issues, our own issues, our own pain and pressure points. So we need to be able to talk about this stuff, honestly. Because if I have a problem with it, I'm not the only person who has a problem with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:11

No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:12

Somebody else needs to know. So we need to figure out if there's problems, what do we do for solutions? What do we do for workarounds? What do we do to figure out those pain points and pressure points? Because we've all gone through them, especially those of us that have been selling a really long time. We've been through every incarnation from platforms and third-party software that has existed, right? We've gone through all of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:32

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:34

So we've had to figure out a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:36

One thing about the shipping. I have a great relationship with my postmaster. I just drop off a bag, I get a receipt the next day. Like she hands, she holds a receipt. I don't have to wait in line. I I'm not saying to everybody, I just want to clarify my position. I don't think everyone needs to wait in line. I think you need to make sure you understand what's happening with your stuff, right? And that you are not just trusting. And so I have built up enough trust now that I know I'm gonna get the receipt the next day. Um, for a long time I waited in line, especially when I was new. And the numbers, you know, if you're new and you get one bad thing, it can really tank you. You can really be in trouble. And so you've got to make sure you're doing all the things right, I think, at the beginning. The more successful you are and the more packages you send, you can you can, you know, take a little bit more risk. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:28

Well said. Well said.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:30

Um, all right. Well, this was fun. I hope you guys had a great time. I hope you learned something. We'd love to know what you guys thought of our of our spaces. If you guys have any questions about the spaces, we could talk about that next time. Um, and thank you both so much. I hope this was fun. It did get a little spicy. Sorry. I wore my spicy's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:50

I love it.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:50

Sometimes the Boston comes out and me, I don't mean it to, it just happened. So sorry.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:55

No viewers.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:56

This is a lot of fun. I'm excited to see where we go with this. Um, I like the idea of having three different perspectives on reselling. We all do things a little bit differently. Um, and we don't all have to agree. So I want us to get some feedback from some of our viewers about what type of topics they want us to uh spicily debate next time or or in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:18

Yeah, I'll reinforce the the view that uh um you know we're all gonna have different ways of doing things. I love that we can have these conversations together. And um, yeah, I look forward to doing this more in the future. And I really hope that anyone listening will um if you think we're worth uh another listen, you know, bookmark us or whatever, uh, please come back and and do communicate with us, use the comments or whatever. I want to hear the things that you're interested in hearing from us and the things you'd like us to debate. And uh, if you think there's any areas where each of us has um, you know, we all have these unique things we bring to the table. And I think um, you know, I work for eBay and Vicky ran the Boss Free Seller Remix and Trish works with uh um Liz Perfectly and does her mastermind classes. These are all things that I think um have different points of view that may be interesting to you. We just need to know what the topics are that you guys are super into, and also just the format if you have any feedback. Um, if you want us to not talk so long, you know, we can work on that too.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:18

And we really tried not to talk on top of each other because that that is difficult. That's hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:24

I'm guilty.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:26

I think you did pretty good at that, really. I mean, I I mean there was a few times I was like, shut up, Trish, don't say anything. Um, thank you guys. And again, we're resale unlisted, and we we uh look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:42

So long, everyone.