Last time I sat down to write a post, it was early in the morning at a Starbucks in Toronto in November. Things were beginning to turn around and I wrote at length about how important it is to have a vision and to have the staying power to see that vision through no matter what. As long as you know that there is demand for your product or service.
I now look up and realize that another 3 months have gone by. A lot of my readers must think that I've gone out of business and disappeared. That's not it of course. The reason I don't write very many posts is because I am working flat out to execute my vision. My typical day lasts for between 12 and 14 hours and 100% of this time is spent productively. There are no stupid, pointless meeetings, no memos, no reporting to anynone other than CRA, no TALKING about work. Just doing. And even so, it is a real challenge to get everything done on time. If you ever want to understand how valuable you really are to the companies you work for just try to start your own business. You will get a very realistic perspective as to how difficult it is to get a business off the ground without help from other people.
Now, three months after the last post, things have really started to come to fruition. I completed my listing template for one major section of Canadian stamps - the complete booklets and I have started using it to list 10,000 booklets that I have in stock. My listing system changes the way stamps are sold online and brings the retail of these items in line with what every other industry selling online does. I'll explain: when you go online to buy a pair of shoes, a dress, or a suit, you go to one product page and you select your options from drop-down menus. Then, when you have made your selections and are happy with them, you checkout.
This has historically not been the case with collectible stamps. Despite the fact that there are a lot of variants with stamps, such as grade, colour, paper, perforation and other attributes, most all sites that sell stamps force sellers to list everything in a classified format. Thus, if you looking for a specific variety in a specific grade, you may need to scroll through hundreds of similar listings. While this may not be a big deal for 1 or 2 items, it is a very unweildy way to shop for a lot of items. What my website will now start doing is allowing collectors to shop for a lot of different items from a much more limited set of listings. This has never been available in my industry before.
Related to this is a large purchase that I was able to make, of the stock of booklets from an Edmonton based dealer, who I met at the 2019 Royal show in June 2019. I had hoped to buy them with the proceeds of my ill-fated loan from BDC that never came through, but even after the financing fell through I continued the dialogue with this dealer. So finally in January he offered to finance my purchase in $1,500 monthly payments, and what started out as a $14,000 deal, turned into a $33,000 deal. All of the sudden, I overcame the financing problem, at least for inventory.
My weekly auction has continued to gather momentum, and while I did not make a lot of money on the early stamps I sold through it, the past few auctions have yielded some very excellent results for the modern material, which is what I have chosen to specialize in. It has also resulted in the building of a small, but dedicated core base of about 30-35 customers who bid every week. Most of them spend between $25 and $400 a week, or more. So, I now have the evidence to go back to potential financiers and explain better how the business model actually works. Now that the emotion has long since dissipated from my last attempt, I have been able to reflect and understand that while my last business plan was extensive, it was too much, and it didn't do a good job of addressing the most critical question an investor would have: what is the nature of the demand and what about the future of the market? I can now answer that question well and I can boil the entire model down to 5 or 6 key points.
One important thing the auction and being on social media has done for me is it has shown me what is happening with the hobby and it has shown me that the hobby is NOT dying. The number of collectors on social media is vast, and a lot of them are between 25 and 45. These collectors are new to the hobby and they are still figuring out what they like and what they are willing to pay for items. They are currently spending most of their money on large, bulk lots of stamps, which is the smart way to start. It isn't particularly good for my business at the moment, but what it does mean is that eventually as these collectors mature a lot of them will gravitate toward professional, trustworthy dealers like me. When they get to the point where they are looking for specific items that they don't have and want, they will move away from bulk lots to individual items. When they do, they will look for a trusted brand. That is what I am building now. So, my challenge has been serving the demands of the older collectors to keep the bills paid, while developing my brand.
By buying these booklets, and putting together a very focused and deep listing, I can now do two concrete things to drive traffic to my listings and promote my stock:
I now look up and realize that another 3 months have gone by. A lot of my readers must think that I've gone out of business and disappeared. That's not it of course. The reason I don't write very many posts is because I am working flat out to execute my vision. My typical day lasts for between 12 and 14 hours and 100% of this time is spent productively. There are no stupid, pointless meeetings, no memos, no reporting to anynone other than CRA, no TALKING about work. Just doing. And even so, it is a real challenge to get everything done on time. If you ever want to understand how valuable you really are to the companies you work for just try to start your own business. You will get a very realistic perspective as to how difficult it is to get a business off the ground without help from other people.
Now, three months after the last post, things have really started to come to fruition. I completed my listing template for one major section of Canadian stamps - the complete booklets and I have started using it to list 10,000 booklets that I have in stock. My listing system changes the way stamps are sold online and brings the retail of these items in line with what every other industry selling online does. I'll explain: when you go online to buy a pair of shoes, a dress, or a suit, you go to one product page and you select your options from drop-down menus. Then, when you have made your selections and are happy with them, you checkout.
This has historically not been the case with collectible stamps. Despite the fact that there are a lot of variants with stamps, such as grade, colour, paper, perforation and other attributes, most all sites that sell stamps force sellers to list everything in a classified format. Thus, if you looking for a specific variety in a specific grade, you may need to scroll through hundreds of similar listings. While this may not be a big deal for 1 or 2 items, it is a very unweildy way to shop for a lot of items. What my website will now start doing is allowing collectors to shop for a lot of different items from a much more limited set of listings. This has never been available in my industry before.
Related to this is a large purchase that I was able to make, of the stock of booklets from an Edmonton based dealer, who I met at the 2019 Royal show in June 2019. I had hoped to buy them with the proceeds of my ill-fated loan from BDC that never came through, but even after the financing fell through I continued the dialogue with this dealer. So finally in January he offered to finance my purchase in $1,500 monthly payments, and what started out as a $14,000 deal, turned into a $33,000 deal. All of the sudden, I overcame the financing problem, at least for inventory.
My weekly auction has continued to gather momentum, and while I did not make a lot of money on the early stamps I sold through it, the past few auctions have yielded some very excellent results for the modern material, which is what I have chosen to specialize in. It has also resulted in the building of a small, but dedicated core base of about 30-35 customers who bid every week. Most of them spend between $25 and $400 a week, or more. So, I now have the evidence to go back to potential financiers and explain better how the business model actually works. Now that the emotion has long since dissipated from my last attempt, I have been able to reflect and understand that while my last business plan was extensive, it was too much, and it didn't do a good job of addressing the most critical question an investor would have: what is the nature of the demand and what about the future of the market? I can now answer that question well and I can boil the entire model down to 5 or 6 key points.
One important thing the auction and being on social media has done for me is it has shown me what is happening with the hobby and it has shown me that the hobby is NOT dying. The number of collectors on social media is vast, and a lot of them are between 25 and 45. These collectors are new to the hobby and they are still figuring out what they like and what they are willing to pay for items. They are currently spending most of their money on large, bulk lots of stamps, which is the smart way to start. It isn't particularly good for my business at the moment, but what it does mean is that eventually as these collectors mature a lot of them will gravitate toward professional, trustworthy dealers like me. When they get to the point where they are looking for specific items that they don't have and want, they will move away from bulk lots to individual items. When they do, they will look for a trusted brand. That is what I am building now. So, my challenge has been serving the demands of the older collectors to keep the bills paid, while developing my brand.
By buying these booklets, and putting together a very focused and deep listing, I can now do two concrete things to drive traffic to my listings and promote my stock:
- I can write a comprehensive blog post or series of posts on the material I have just worked on, since it is fresh in my mind, and I have the material all identified and scanned. I publish that post and draw attention to it in my newsletter e-mails and share it on social media. This post will contain links to my permanent stock listings, so that someone who wants to shart collecting the items discussed in the post can do so.
- I then divide the material to be listed into 2 groups: The first of course are the permanent stock listings that will always be live. These are all items that are in the spreadsheet template that I developed. The second group are one-off, oddball varieties or grades that do not fit neatly into the template and are better suited to auction.
- Then, I list all the retail stuff using the template and so far I have found that the process is easily 10 times faster than what I did before. The retail listings will contain a hyperlink to the blog post.
- Then, I divide the auction material up into small lots of 3-10 items each. I divide them up so as to list between 2-3 lots each in each weekly auction over the next 10-12 weeks. The auction lots and the retails are 100% complimentary, with no overlap. The auction listings will contain a hyperlink to the blog post and to the retail listings.
What this plan does is capitalize on good SEO practices and builds traffic through cross-promotion. I've learned, in designing my template that permanent product listings containing lots of photos and structured information is exactly what Google is looking for when they rank web pages. Every time you post a product for sale online you create a web page. But if you create hundreds of similar listings that differ only on 1 or two attributes, Google regards that as either boilerplate or spun content and they won't rank those pages highly. That is why most stamp listings cannot be found online through a Google search. So, by having permanent listings that stay up that contain a lot of information, they can eventually rank, which will eventually draw outside traffic to them. Of the 5 or 6 key factors to this business plan, maintaning visibility online is critical: if customers can't find your listings, your sales will be limited.
The blog post sows the seeds of interest. Some of my long time customers have already told me that they are reconsidering whether to collect an issue of booklets that they had previously decided not to collect because of my article. Then, the auction gives my existing customers a chance to get their feet wet. Finally, as the interest takes hold there is an easy way for them to shop for what they want.
So my strategy has come into laser-sharp focus now. I list the booklets one issue at a time following the above and then I move on to single mint stamps, plate blocks and first day covers, expanding the auction and advertising through lead generation ads on Facebook to grow my mailing list. As I pay off the booklet purchase I can begin talking to other older dealers about buying their inventories on the same basis.
This month, I will have sold just over $8,000 in stamps, getting very close to that magic 10K a month number that I had dreamed of when I started out. I have paid upfront for attendance at two major shows in June and May, and will be paying for an April show next month. I am now a known name in the dealer circuit, with my own distinct brand. I have made the first payment on this booklet purchase and I head into March with a $2,500 reserve, and almost $25,000 in sales lined up. You see, while all this was going on I have been quietly processing that large collection of Centennials that I brought back with me on consignment. I pulled out all the valuable material and made up an excel list with prices and made scans of all the good items. After vetting it with my consignor, I sent it out to all my customers at the end of the week. Already, I have had expressions of interest totalling some $25,000, with more to come this next week. I'm only making 13% commission on this lot, but still, that's a full month of e-Bay sales from before, for a week's work. I am also doing a little bit of accounting work as well. So, I am heading into March with a considerable amount of momentum after surviving the move away from e-Bay.
It's been a huge learning process and I have to thank those who helped me in January last year when things were very dire. I couldn't have done this without all of you. I have to say that I am immensely proud of what I have been able to accomplish through determination and a lot of HARD work. I believe that anyone with the determination and some start-up capital can do it too. But you have to be adaptable, while still sticking to your vision. You have to understand that much of what you see online is heavily manipulated and often not the truth. For me, this was the most diabolical thing about e-Bay: their psychological war on their sellers. They manipulate your visibility, which affects your sales and then they blame you for it when you complain. It's total nonsense, cooked up to make them more money by sucking in as many sellers as possible into a stagnant market that they refuse to invest in trying to grow. I've written at length about this in other forums and most people think I am crazy, but if you really peel back the layers and take the time to understand how lucrative this is for e-Bay, then it doesn't seem all that far-fetched all of the sudden.
I very likely won't be writing a lot of posts going forward, because there is not a lot more to say. I will, likely write when I have something to report or a major milestone has been reached. But, the day to day work of running the business is pretty boring to write about. If you are reading this and want to read more frequent updates, I would encourage you to go to my website and sign up to be on my mailing list. There, you can receive my weekly newsletter, and in this I talk about the new developments for the week. You can access my site here:
