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Pricing/Sales
Hi everyone,
I'm new to selling lego parts and would like some help of anyone would like to share there experience with me.
I'm particularly interested in gaining more sales, as I imagine most are. At the moment i have only had two sales and the only reasons I can think of is:
1) My prices are to high - (I price all my pieces with the average selling price it states when listing pieces) if this is the current problem it would be kind of you to give me a little guidance to adjust my prices.
2) My inventory is currently to small to appeal to many customers.
3) Theres a problem with my shipping or theres problem with my payments.
If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be greatly appreciative.
I know most of you may not have the time to help or may not want to help future competition but it's worth trying anyway.
Thank you very much in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.
I'm new to selling lego parts and would like some help of anyone would like to share there experience with me.
I'm particularly interested in gaining more sales, as I imagine most are. At the moment i have only had two sales and the only reasons I can think of is:
1) My prices are to high - (I price all my pieces with the average selling price it states when listing pieces) if this is the current problem it would be kind of you to give me a little guidance to adjust my prices.
2) My inventory is currently to small to appeal to many customers.
3) Theres a problem with my shipping or theres problem with my payments.
If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be greatly appreciative.
I know most of you may not have the time to help or may not want to help future competition but it's worth trying anyway.
Thank you very much in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.
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Comments
I think you've started to do some really good analytics yourself here... I learned with the greater the diversity of inventory, the better chance of hitting the wish lists (as many users are attempting to part out a particular set, or are MOCers).
As for price, I did initially open with current average less 10% in 2018 and found that to not be reasonably competitive... you don't want too low obviously as that eats into your back-end operating costs and profit, but too high will price you out of the market also.
Another user mentioned somewhere here (I don't recall who or I'd credit them) that they use the "eyeball" method, pricing to physically show up in the middle of all the listings for an item. I started doing that combined with a fair shipping price (actual cost + 0.50 to cover packaging, etc.) in 2018 and my sales increased substantially and stayed steady (well, last year cleaned out a LOT of my stock, lol) - but I also opened at that time with 14k unique lots at 140k parts, so for me, pricing was my starting prob vs. variety.
Being in the US, I'm not equipped to comment on your shipping rates and terms, but I do respectfully suggest a focus on expanding your diversity (more unique lots) to bump you up in those wish lists! :-) Good luck and all the best to you!
I echo what @Calibrick says regarding stock levels; I added a fair number of parts before going live with my store which gave me a heads up as to types of parts, colours and how I chose to grade condition.
I've had a quick look at your shipping rates and my advice (which is by no means the same advice that others may give!) is to tweak your domestic shipping rates, as I suspect that it where most of your orders will come from you. As you've subdivided your international rates by weight, you can do so with UK rates. You have two 1st class rates but there is no explanation as to whether one is Large Letter or Small Parcel, and the 2nd class has only one entry, again unclear as to what method it is. If you haven't already done so, pop to your local post office and ask for the current price leaflet. Then stick the kettle on, make a cuppa, and see if you want to change anything. I think the first time I did it, it took an afternoon, but was time well spent. The beauty of BO is the autocalculation of shipping, so some of the heavy lifting is already done for you. Also take into account packaging weight - a bubble envelope and grip seal bags can weigh more than you think!
And don't worry about asking questions from the competition! We all started out somewhere, all had questions that needed answering. Use the forum - there are a lot of people who are always willing to help.
Best of luck and happy selling!
Firstly I'd like to thank you both for replying to my SOS, and for sharing your experiences with me. I'm honestly very appreciative of both your in depth replys.
I have taken everything you've said and taken it on board and I'll be making a few changes. I do have a lot more interesting stock to list, figures, wheels etc so hopefully this makes some improvement, I'll also be tweaking my prices and having a look into my postage options a little more in depth.
14k Unique parts, that's very impressive and I commend you on your patience and persistence. I can understand that that's a lot of work, not only listing but organising to.
@Jay37 that sure sounds like a plan, the kettle is working overtime at the minute, thankfully it's not getting paid by the cup lol.
Thank you again for replying to me, I hope you both have a great weekend and I wish you all the best.
Kind regards
Basically, I would say that you need much more volume in your store. circs 9000 parts / 1400 lots means low numbers of a lot of your items. Plus you have some low cost items (for example) twice ours and our stock is around 6ma.
I would say to start a shop and generate decent orders you need minimum 50k parts, with the more lots the better. The more stock you have the more sales this will generate.
If you concentrate on building up your stock levels, eventually the sales will increase. Anything you pick up along the way is a bonus and will allow you to reinvest that money onto more stock.
I will strongly advise against running any sales to try and boost sales as this simply allow people to cheery pick you best items at low cost and make your development even harder.
My advise (for what it is worth) is build up your store. Add some quantity to your lots, resist saes, and be patient. It is a slow build at first but if you are patient it will create you a great store long term.
Hope this helps you.
Good luck and welcome to the community!
Thank you very much for the insights.
Its greatly appreciated and I will be using some of the knowledge you've all provided to further enhance my shop.
I would never expect anyone to do the work for me and I'm very appreciative that you know i have done my research before extending this to the community who have been very helpful and insightful
Kind regards