Sales Down

[1404wonderfulcollectables]

Hi.  May sales have dropped 50% in the last 3 months.  My products are non- essential items - Toys and gifts.

Perhaps due to current pressures because of interest rate rises?

Just wondering if others are experiencing the same thing. 

Thanks

[sugar249]

---

@davewil1964 wrote:

I disagree with you.

I have triple your listings and find checking prices every 6 months not to be onerous.

With 600ish listings, for you that would be 3 a day.

Hardly time consuming.

---

I guess some people aren't up with business basics.

In the case of OP in a few minutes I found they are charging around $10 more on items, which for 50 or 60 dollars items is massive.

In fact Ebay make it massively easy to do it (the comparison that is)

[eol-products]

I use to do the price checking thing but after talking to a few other sellers over the years have changed from that method.

I find checking prices to see if your the cheapest does not serve any purpose for me. You set your price and move on. Having best offer allows the buyer to do the work for you.

[sugar249]

---

@eol-products wrote:

I use to do the price checking thing but after talking to a few other sellers over the years have changed from that method.

I find checking prices to see if your the cheapest does not serve any purpose for me. You set your price and move on. Having best offer allows the buyer to do the work for you.

---

I guess thats like the big green hardware store saying they will beat any price by 5%,  they do it,  but I know one of the top people there they still have a team doing price checking,  because they found most people couldnt be bothered with applying for it.

Why would I use best offer with you when Joe blow has it far cheaper,   may as well get it now, rather than wait for you to accept or reject my offer and take forever to do it.  Poor business strategy.

[eol-products]

I think you will find its 10%.

[eol-products]

Very basic understanding of business unfortunately. They call it a race to the bottom and it is what sends many businesses broke.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/6-strategies-for-avoiding-the-race-to-the-bottom-pri... 

[davewil1964]

I don't race to the bottom.

I aim to best about the third cheapest AUSTRALIAN seller, ignoring the bottom feeders.

I still make sales, but checking my prices periodically and adjusting up or down, as indicated, works for me.

For the cost of a few minutes a day.

[*sons_n_daughters*]

---

@sugar249 wrote:

---

I guess thats like the big green hardware store saying they will beat any price by 5%,  they do it,  but I know one of the top people there they still have a team doing price checking,  because they found most people couldnt be bothered with applying for it.

 The big green hardware store can be quite sneaky with their products. The product code at the cheaper store must match. Think of say an XYZ brand ceiling fan. You can get them there, or you can get them at say KMart. KMart has them $20 cheaper, so we'll get the big green store to price match, because we're there anyway. The product code for the big green store is 12345JK. The one from KMart is 12345JL. The item in the box is identical. The box is identical. That one different letter in the product code stops you being able to price match.

Of course that isn't the case with all their items. Things like Dulux paint should be the same wherever you go, but there are certainly a lot that have one different digit or letter.

[springyzone]

---

@sugar249 wrote:

---

@springyzone wrote:

I had a quick browse through the list of your ads and the items look great. I have no idea of how they compare to similar ads, I didn't go that far as to search. But your ads look excellent.

---

I had a look at a few more beyond the one I checked yesterday.  All well above the price of other sellers.

At any time, but in particular in difficult times,  buyers are in general an astute lot (accept when buying from low feedback sellers),   so why would they buy from OP if they can get them elsewhere.

I do wonder if OP has taken the 2 minutes it took me to check out their competitors.  I have hundreds of items listed and do it on a semi regular basis,  it is actually a good approach,  as you see if you are being undercut,  but on a few items I could actually increase my price and still have consistent sales.

---

I do agree that price matters and that most buyers do a search so sellers need to be on top of things, knowing roughly what competition they are up against etc.

How often they need to do a check, I don't know as when we sold, it was mainly second hand things so it wasn't an issue.

The most important thing though from my perspective as a buyer is that it is actually an exact comparison, apples with apples.

That can at times be tricky online unless you know the exact codes for something.

Anyway, I decided to see what came up with one of OP's items, it was the second down that showed in my list, a green John Deere tractor. 

Maybe it wasn't the ideal one for me to test as I quickly found that OP had several of these, all 9r 540 4WD 1/32 scale etc but different prices. It seems there is normal model, prestige edition and so on. I did see another seller who had a couple of the models a few dollars cheaper.

To complicate matters though, some of OP's items came up with a $10 discount code for me, while it didn't seem to apply to the other sellers.

Also OP offers free returns within 30 days, where the seller will pay return costs.

To me, that is unusual and it could well be enough to persuade a collector to to pay the extra $5-$10, especially as OP has had over 2.8k of sales. 

So while price is really important, there are other factors I know that I as a buyer look at too. Location is the main one as there is no way on earth I'd buy one of these from eg China, at any price.

OP seems to have a lot of watchers so who knows, maybe towards Christmas sales may pick up.

[numis_phil]

Set your price and move on. If you're constantly monitoring who is cheaper than you, eventually you will be the cheapest.......and broke.