Part II Opportunities with no Money down.

Sorry this post was a little later then I expected to post, I was trying my hand at creating a new header and so it took me awhile to figure it out.  But here you go.......

We are heading into the end of August 2015 already and that means "guess what is just around the corner" yes that is right,

HOLIDAY Time.  Oh my gosh wasn't it just January 2000!! Yikes it is almost time to set New Years Resolutions and Goals again.  BUT wait I have not finished all that I planned for this year.  Do you ever feel that way and that life is moving so fast we can't catch our breath at times.  So here are some thoughts about relieving that stress for selling for the Holidays if you are not sure what to do.

Well let us work on finishing up this year strong.  By that I mean accomplishing things that has been on our list of things to do.  I know for us we wanted this to be our best year yet, we wanted to fill our store with more items and reach 1700 pieces in our store minimum.  Well so far this year we have over 3000 items in our store.  Now you ask how????

We have learned another new aspect to selling on line and that is creating multi-variation items.  This can add up fast and is super great in the time factor of listing.  You list one item and have several variations of that product.  Then where do I find those type items.  Here are some clues for you.

Find a source like we did with a local manufacture that you can sell their items.  We found a swimwear line that is made locally in the good ole` USA.  Did you know that there are several who would probably love to have you sell their items on line because they do not want to take the time or have the time to do it themselves.  We doubled our listings by just doing that and we are selling those items by using promotions and social media to promote them.  It has increased our sale in just those items by $5000.

BUT there is more, we created a online consignment store. Like I posted in the previous post there is a right and wrong way to do it.  Mainly the wrong way is to think you have nothing to offer someone else, but read that post and hopefully you will think different about this possibility.

There are certain things that you can sell for others that have great profit for you and for them.  As an example we just got over 25 boxes of collectibles and dinnerware from a new client. One of the lines was Spode which I researched before I decided to take them on consignment.  Found that the Soup Tureen in this collection was worth $899.00.  I have about 108 pieces in this collection which I will piece out as opposed to selling as a set.

Why you may ask would I do that, thinking about two things here, one is many people who have this nice of a dinnerware set may have some pieces that they broke or they may want to add to the collection.  Maybe a son or daughter got married and now there is one more in the family and they need an additional piece to the set.  And two I know that Replacement. com runs a huge business just on replacements with over a million items.  So that tells me there is a business in replacements for dinnerware.

Next post I will talk about how I find the right consignors and who I will choose to sell for.  This is a major decision that you may want to think about before you consider doing this.

Are you missing a GREAT Opportunity for no cost inventory???

Happy August All

To start off with, you are about to enter into the $$$$$$$ part of the year, the HOLIDAYS, where everyone will be getting out their gift list and planning their holiday parties and family gatherings.  For most of us online sellers this is our BIG time of year!

So coming off of what some find a slower time of year the summertime and entering into the 4th quarter how is your stress level???

Do you have enough inventory to carry you through or are you trying to find things to stock your store with.

This is about finding things that do not cost you money up front, I am talking about selling items for other people.  NOW before you say NO WAY, let me give you some food for thought.  If you are running on low funds and need to add more things, get more listings done and improve your sells, then this might be an answer for you.

BUT let me give you some pointers that might work for you.  I have been selling for other people for over 5 years now.  So through this period of time I have learned some things that make it work well.

The first obstacle I had to overcome was not putting a value on me as a seller and a person.  You see for years I was to timid to charge for anything that I had experience at doing.  As a former hairdresser I was always giving away my time and talent for FREE.  I hated charging my friends and family for that service UNTIL it got out of hand.  I was almost doing more hair cuts, perms and colors free then I was doing at my full time job in the salon. And of course this caused stress on me.

Well the same thing holds true for you as a seller.  Think about the time and effort you have spent improving your business, striving to have a great reputation ( especially the customer service part) and I might add, how many times have you paid to learn new things to make your business more successful.

What do you bring to the table to sell things for others.  You know there are many consignment shops that sell things for others and usually their take is 60%, paying the person with the goods only 40%.  You see if you did not bring all your experience, reputation and knowledge and time to the table all they would have is an "item" that was setting in their home or business gathering dusts and being a constant eyesore to them.  Many times just donating it just to get it out of their sight.

Now let us see just what you have that would benefit those great people with "things".  Shall we compare us to a B&M.


Here is what B&M Stores offer: 
Open limited hours
Sell locally
Have to run newspaper ads
Usually their customer base is a radius of 5 miles
They have to wait for the customers to come in
Have to stay even if there are no customers
Have to rotate their inventory often.

Here is what YOU have to offer:
Open 24/7
Sell Internationally
Use Social Media Marketing
You have the benefit of the Internet that people shop on everyday.
You sell on a popular platform that has thousands of daily visitors.
You can work from anywhere with your mobile, the beach, at a coffee shop, etc.
You can keep your items in your store for years, because you have new eyes coming in every day





 This is just a few of the benefits that you offer as well as your good customer service, reputation and knowledge of how to sell items.  Most of the B&M's have employee's that may or may not know much about the items that are in the store.  I could go on and on, but I think you get the point now.
YOU are valuable to those that do not want to take the time and effort to sell their items themselves.
This is some of the things I will be selling for others from just one client!  I have 25 boxes of things from her,

These boxes are loaded with very high end dinnerware and glassware.





This is just some of the collectibles

 Yeah!!! Christmas Dishes










                                                                      Very expensive Minton China

Next post tomorrow will talk about how to do this successfully and make tons of money.

The Power of the Pattern

How to determine the patterns that dictates the direction of our lives and is it possible to change them.

We have been doing our life normally in a pattern that has gotten some of us some amount of success.  We have come up with ways to manage our work and play to be consistent in how we do things.  But are we going in the direction we are wanting to go in.

For the most part these patterns seem to work fine, but what if we want to grow.  What patterns do we need to change or add to move us further ahead.

You cannot believe your way out of problems that were created by patterns of behavior. Patterns that seem to worked so well in the past that do not seem to be working today.

One pattern that is so important is the way we think.  Do we still have old thinking in how to do something.  We live in a world that seems to be flying by pretty fast now with all the technology improvements.  And yet we seem to still have some old thinking about things.  I am not talking about good standards that are tried and true but just in general ways we do things such as:

The faith to step out is worthless without the faith to stick it out. What holds us back from stepping into something new and then staying there when some little set back may occur.  We do have to have something to stand on when we step out.  There will always be a little "pain" in stepping out of our comfort zone, but it has a purpose.  When pain has a purpose it will produce something new in us.

To produce something new we may have to be pruned a little.  And I know NO one wants to be pruned. LOL  This may come through circumstances or times of waiting.  We may be tested and tried to see if we have the faith to stick it out.

Life sometimes seems to be random but there is a pattern.  The pattern is not chasing after every little thing that comes to us, but being consistent with what we know is true. We may have to change the way we think about things such as how we do business or how we relate to people.

Is our thinking about things keeping us in that old way of doing things.  This reminds me of a tape I listened to years ago about change.  It talked about farmers in past days that farmed pretty much the way their fathers farmed.  Then one day they saw some of their fellow neighbor farmers were putting lights on their tractors so they could plow at night.  "That is not the way I will do that" they said.  Why would I want to work when it is dark.  So they did not embrace the change and later on their neighbors were producing huge crops and making much more money, and they were still struggling to get by.

This also reminds me of a time when I was talking to a lady that had a printing business.  I was sharing about how people were getting their printing done on the web and being able to do more business by making that option available.  She pretty much told me she was not going to learn how to do things on the internet and it would never work.  Well we know how that story ended.

to be continued.............

And.........March begins, which means that Baseball season and more specifically, the San Francisco Giants season is just around the corner!

Must be why we sold this so quickly!

And the point of that, just read an article that the Giants right fielder, Hunter Pence was hit by a pitch during a spring training game and broke his arm and will not be able to play for a period of time.

What caught my attention was the statement that Hunter made about the injury being part of the game of baseball and it just might be a Blessing! Talk about turning lemons to Lemonade!

In Life and in Business, we are faced with those "attitude" decisions every day, and even multiple times each day! Especially when dealing with customers, clients and people we deal with every day, we are faced with the opportunity to take those attitude testing situations and turn them into positive life giving, and maybe even life changing experiences!

Had a series of situations recently that really tested my "attitude". We had a package where the shipping label was taped to another package in error and the package (wrong one) was sent to my customer. It is a really long story, but my package disappeared and my customer coordinated with the other customer to get the correct package in the right place, that was delivered in error. We found another replacement for my customer as we sell mostly one of a kind items.

Another package went missing the same week, it simply disappeared, and that caused a little change in attitude! We have not lost a package prior to this in 12 years!
In both cases, we had to own it, take the best steps possible, refund the customer and keep a smile on our faces!
We owned it: our customers bought from us, even though the post office mishandled the items, it was still up to us to keep the customer happy and to provide a resolution.

We have found that being in business means that from time to time, we will have these little situations that test our "Attitude" and we have to decide to make these situations a "Blessing" making Lemonade out of lemons.

The case of the "Traveling Sweater"

We know sometimes that the Post Office may not be "our friend".  Packages don't get delivered in a timely manner or even delivered at all for that matter or maybe your  package was used to play football with during their lunch hour.  These can be some stress points that you have no control over.

Case in point, we shipped a nice sweater to a buyer in Australia, after about 2 weeks she called to say she noticed on the tracking that it had this message " Does not meet customs requirements - Return to Sender" what ???????  So instead of going into "stress mode" we emailed her right away and told her we would be checking this out.  Thinking maybe because my title on the package read. 

Tan Zebra Beaded Cardigan Sweater

and they thought we were sending a sweater made of Zebra.  I don't know but something was strange.  So the next day we started doing some searching, calling USPS, going to the post office personally trying to see what was going on.

Meantime we are in constant communication with our buyer who REALLY, REALLY wanted that sweater.  In fact here is one of her emails to us.

Thanks Alan and Sherry....I really love the sweater, I saw this one in a shop about 3-4 years ago, but when I went to buy it, it was already sold!!! Yes well I think the people who work in Post Offices in Australia are either dumb or have a commonsense problem, I don`t know which one would apply, however I think you should probably leave the word wooden out as well, as we can`t bring wood into Australia, and the wooden beads, could raise their alarm bells also, we don`t want to import any wooden zebras, maybe it would just be safer to put black and tan sweater...hopefully they won`t have an issue with that!!! and thank you again I will be looking forward to receiving it!!!

The only way we could get any of our questions about what was going on with the tracking and report it, was to be on their automated system on the phone and hold for hours.  (Don't ever complain about your wait time with eBay CS)

Sweater sold on August 28,  now on Sept. 23 and we get a message that the sweater is now in customs in Australia.  Seems someone did not know the difference between where Canada and Australia were located.  It went to Canada first then on to Australia.  September 29 a month later she received her sweater.  Oh my gosh!!

So we now have the "Traveling Sweater" and the funny thing it is going to Texas next week with her.  So in a month it went from California to Canada to Australia and now to Texas.  Those Zebras were movin` fast.

So funny, but I guess my lesson here is, why stress there is always a way to make Lemonade out of Lemons AND a new friend.  That is our goal with each item we sell, we want a new friend so we will do whatever we can to make that happen.

Here she is finally able to wear her sweater, thanks Robyn you are the best.

We preached it, now we test it!

Just another great day at the ole' Lemonade Stand.  Life is funny sometimes, Alan and I just finished doing a video on customer service for eBay toting the wonderful things you can do to make a customer happy and wouldn't you know it we get this email that same night that tells us a "Request" is open in the Resolution Center:

I had the item out under lights in my little store and noticed that it's actually been broken and repaired, hence the chip you mention. It was the most expensive set I purchased that day and it's the only one not as described. I can return or would negotiate less. Happy to provide photo. JOY

Get that pitcher out and the water, lemons and sugar, because this is going to make great lemonade.  (Now first of all I did ask her if I could share this and she gave me permission to do that, that is why I left her name in there because it plays a part of our dealing with her.

Question first, what would you do in a case like this????  Well some would surmise that she was just trying to get her item cheaper because she has a store which she seems to sell collectibles in, or you might say "I checked that before I sent it out and it was not broken. Maybe she dropped it and then is wanting me to give her a discount.  I mean why did she offer to negotiate???

Let me first tell you that my reaction was give her a refund and make her day. 

A similar situation happened to me,  I just had bought a cute Mexican Tonala Folk Art piece because I know they sell.  As I was cleaning it up and washing it out all of a sudden I see this crack inside.  Did not see anything on the outside though.

The crack on the inside

So I really missed that when I was buying it, but I thought I can either list it and show the crack on the inside because after all it is not showing on the outside.  Instead I decided to just use it myself.  So for breakfast the next morning I made pancakes with some homemade blueberry syrup.

And this is what I saw when I put the syrup in the pitcher. The syrup had stained the now very visable crack on the outside.

The reason why I brought this up is because it was totally possible that something so small on an item could be easily missed.   And obviously I MISSED it on the shaker.  So right away we sent her a message and refund.  Then I was proactive and sent a second email. 

Hi Joy, I know Alan already answered you and did the refund. Since I am the one who found these and did the picture, I just want to apologize for missing the issue on these. Thank you so much contacting us. I certainly would not want you to go to the trouble of taking a picture if you said so then I take your word for it. Your eyes are probably younger them mine so you saw it more easily :) Please come back and visit us again.
Sherry

And she responded with this message:

Thank you so much! I only meant for you to offer me a partial refund for the item. I didn't notice the break myself until I looked closely. I know you didn't do it on purpose. All the best, Joy

Joy, with a name like joyousone for an email, who could resist to not give you joy :0) It is no problem we felt we needed to bless someone today and tag your it. Hope you can still use them or bless someone else with them. If there is a flaw then I would only consider giving a refund I would never expect you to pay even a little for the item. So be blessed and have a blessed day
Sherry 

Our greatest purpose each day is to see who we can help make their day.  My question is do you think we will get a defect for this.  NO we will not, but that was not our only purpose it was to make her happy.  So when you set out to make someone else happy, you can be happy also and avoid those "dreaded" defects.

.  

The infamous but "flawed" Salt & Pepper Shakers

I know that summer is ending and the time for lemonade may be past, BUT is it really??

Seems like there are so many that are stressing today about their challenges selling on eBay.  Either it is a perceived problem or a real problem. 

Whichever it is, we want you to bring those lemons to "The Lemonade Stand" so we make them into lemonade.  Lemons are sometimes very sour or tart and make you pucker your face, but by adding some water to dilute the juice and add some sugar it now becomes easier to enjoy.

Lets take a lemon we just had to deal with to show you what we are talking about.

It was late Sunday night and we were just relaxing and enjoying our favorite Food Network shows when the phone rang.  I did not recognize the number so I did not answer it.  BUT they left an voice mail, and if someone leaves an voice mail I will for sure check it right away.

Seems like one of our customers we shipped a sweater to in Australia was checking her tracking on the package and she noticed this message. This package did not meet Custom requirements return to sender.  WHAT a sweater did not meet the requirements. So doing some more research we realized that the title of the sweater was

Vintage Design Options Black White Tan Zebra Beaded Cardigan Sweater 

Guess the custom peeps thought we were sending a sweater made of Zebra. LOL.  So what is the lesson here, do not ever use an animal name in your labels on the packages going to a international location.  All is well and something very valuable we learned here. Plus she gave us some more info to put in our hat.  Here is what she wrote back to us.

Thanks Alan and Sherry....I really love the sweater, I saw this one in a shop about 3-4 years ago, but when I went to buy it, it was already sold!!! Yes well I think the people who work in Post Offices in Australia are either dumb or have a commonsense problem, I don`t know which one would apply, however I think you should probably leave the word wooden out as well, as we can`t bring wood into Australia, and the wooden beads, could raise their alarm bells also, we don`t want to import any wooden zebras, maybe it would just be safer to put black and tan sweater...hopefully they won`t have an issue with that!!! and thank you again I will be looking forward to receiving it!!!

The main point here is we could have stressed or we could have been pro-active and looked for a solution.  It always pays to make Lemonade out of those lemons. :)