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Friday, June 10, 2016

Sales For The First Week of June Approach $1,700!!

I don't want to jinx the rest of this month, but no sooner had a responded to comments about our sales targets, that sales have experienced a sharp uptick. The momentum has been VERY noticeable and most of the sales have come from relatively new customers that have very quickly become repeat customers. One of these is a fellow CA that first bought from me about two weeks ago. I know that the fact that I am from the same profession as him had a lot to do with his comfort level in coming back to me and purchasing again. Much of the sales have been in the very popular 1954-62 Wilding Issue plate blocks, where we now have 2 or 3 regular customers who are specializing in this issue. Where I haven't had the material in stock, I've been able to go and buy what is missing and turn it over right away. The margins on this are not as good, but they are still very good. This is one aspect of the business that I can see becoming a great source of sales and profit: keeping an eye out for customer wants. As I record the details of what our customers are collecting, we can keep an eye out for the material as it becomes available. This means sales that are more or less guaranteed, and happy customers.

Normally now, at the 10th of the month, we would be lucky to break $1,000. So far today, we are pushing $1,700 - and none of this is coming from extraordinarily large sales of individually expensive stamps. There was one return customer who in a week spent over $700 on about 50 items. He made offers on everything and while I didn't accept every offer, I did accept most of them, or countered at slightly higher prices. This customer illustrates why the business model works so well: he will feel that he got some fantastic deals, and we make profit on every item we sell. Generally, as long as we make a good margin on each item, we are happy to sell it. Occasionally, we will take a lower than normal margin on one or two items to keep the customer happy and coming back. This customer is the best kind to have in the sense that he collects all across Canada from early to modern, collects both mint, and used, as well as plate blocks and finally while he likes better quality, he will take lower quality if the price is right.

So heading into next week, we are very optimistic about the direction the business is going in. Also, it appears that E-bay have made some huge improvements to their listing migration tool, so many of our concerns about our US listings are dissipating, which is a huge weight off. Finally, material is getting listed quickly, with the store coming close to 4,800 items being offered for sale now.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you guys are doing well! Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete