Seller Inventory

maninblack

My BL inventory being imported to my shop certainly saves a LOT of time/problems but I have a couple of questions.
If I get a sale here, is my BL inventory updated in return?
also,
If I get a sale on BL, how long before my inventory here is updated?

Lawrence

There is a BrickLink synchronisation tool in the inventory tab on the "My Store" link. This is unfortunately a manual process where you upload your inventory file to us, and we then give you some XML to give back to BrickLink. The page explains the process a bit more.

DadsAfol

Can you clarify a bit on how this should work? I've had a couple small orders, but there are no links to export the inventory change back to BL. How do I get those to appear?

Lawrence

If you follow the steps on the inventory Sync tool it should generate the XML after you have processed the orders.

Brikomania

You need to go through the sync tool every time you have an order here or in BL.

If the order was in BL, it will update the quantity here.

If the order was in BO, it will, after importing the CSV, make a mass update xml for you to delete the lots that were sold here on BL.

Brikomania

BTW, I would definitely extend the description in this tool, saying that you need to do it on every order you get in both sites...

I only figured out after getting my first order here, when I imported again (don't know why) my BL inventory, it spitted out a file to update it.

If not, I was thinking it was done automatically, or completely manual...

DadsAfol

OK, I got it. It's a little bit counterintuitive because if I had 10 of something synced to both sites, sold 2 on BO, then why do I need to tell BO that I still have 10 on BL? I get it now. Just seems like it would be cleaner to show a list of orders, and a "export inventory change" checkbox next to each, which generates the XML code. In other words, make the sync process asynchronous. Only post updates in if you have orders/changes on BL. Only post out if you have orders on BO.

Lawrence

I forget myself but I think it is related to the issue of marking an item as stockroom. If you have 10, and you sell 10, it has to mark it as stockroom or BrickLink will error.

The problem is, if you have 10, and you sell 10,but in between you set your BrickLink inventory to 20, my system would mark it as stockroom and then you would not sell the 10 you have remaining.

It would still be beneficial to have a button that says "I swear I have not changed my BrickLink inventory, trust me"

DadsAfol

LOL, yeah right! Just FYI, both Peeron and Rebrickable have figured how to pull the BL inventory automatically. I think there was an unofficial API that Dan J created for Peeron many years ago and that Rebrickable recently figured out how to leverage it. You may want to poke around and see what you can see.

But I think the stockroom/not for sale issue still exists. it might be because I use stockroom A/B/C and you might be looking for Y/N only on the import.

Lawrence

That's interesting, Eric was unhappy at the thought of me crawling for feedback, I think any kind of automatic access to BrickLink would be disallowed.

Did you just have the stockroom issue now, or earlier?

DadsAfol

It seems to be okay now, although I found another minor bug. I went to my store and searched for something I new was not zero and was in my BL stockroom. The search results showed the category and quantity, but didn't display the item. So you may want to tweak the search results to exclude not for sale from the counters.

Lawrence

That's now fixed. The stockroom issue was fixed earlier with the help of Troy. It was the ABC

bigdh

Admin (ljames28) 6:47PM
That's interesting, Eric was unhappy at the thought of me crawling for feedback, I think any kind of automatic access to BrickLink would be disallowed.


So, does this mean that those of us waiting for our BL feedback to be brought over here will be waiting forever? ;-)

I put the number on the bottom of my "About Me" page, but my feedback has not been transferred.

brickreservoir

Hi Admin, new to the site as well. But we given a lot of thought on what it would take to compete/coexist with BL. I think that sync with BL needs to be semi-realtime. A couple of ideas, one would be to ask users to automatically forward BL order emails, then have you parse it and make the adjustments on the fly here (most email clients can be configured for forwarding and filters). Another is for this site to HTML scrape based on store credentials the inventory, order, but I think over time they could cause your IP to be blocked. Now for updating sold items here, not sure what automation would be possible. It's hard but you need to get this right to build momentum with the big sellers on BL that make a living out of this and are less sentimental and need all the exposure to new customers. Also I'd be great to know more about how you plan to attract customers, SEO, SEA? I know you are starting, and it's a great start btw.

Lawrence

@bigdh Yes possibly

@brickreservoir

BrickLink real-time synchronisation is a must, but BrickLink won't allow that. I have considered the e-mail idea, we may implement that, but it only deals with half of the issue which puts me off investing time in it.

The site has been built with SEO in mind, because of the size of the site we're not even fully indexed by Google yet but once the site is more polished we will be pushing it more with regards to advertising other plans.

bigdh

@Admin - well that stinks, so those that got it done on day 1 have huge feedback ratings over those of us that came later. Guess I will whine about it not being fair. ;-)


Day late, dollar short

Sir Troys

I am not sure how you were pulling the feedback, but if you or someone you authorize were to manually look up each members feedback and then input it here, I do not see what issue BrickLink could have with it. They do not own the feedback, the members do. And it is publicly available for all to see, so it is not proprietary information. You could also do the same for eBay and Amazon for those of us that sell in those venues.

Obviously this is a one time thing though, as the feedback number would not update when more feedback is received on the other sites. I do believe that these feedbacks should be kept completely separate on this site, and that any spots that just show a single number should show only the BrickOwl feedback. The other feedbacks should just be a reference for new sellers.

So, something like this:

BrickOwl Feedback: 2
BrickLink Feedback: 17,730 (as of 6/30/2013)
Amazon Feedback: 886 (as of 6/30/2013)
eBay Feedback: 314 (as of 6/30/2013)

You could even link to the feedback pages at each site if you wanted to, but that may not be in the best interest of the site, as it sends people elsewhere where they can buy the same products.

I think the important thing is that members build feedback on BrickOwl and not rely entirely on old feedback from other sites. You also have the issue of how do you verify that the feedback on another site that a member claims is actually theirs?

I am fairly well known, as are some others, so it can be obvious what account on BrickLink is mine. It can be less obvious on Amazon and eBay because those use an older company name (Troy's Surplus) instead of the newer Sir Troy's Toy Kingdom.

Troy

Lawrence

I was pulling it manually, but they still had an issue with that. Today I've implemented feedback boosts, so you can give your feedback a boost based on your feedback on any marketplace. The main reason I want to do this is it looks very weird when a store has 1 million parts and no feedback, any new person visiting the site will find that very suspicious. I will only approve a boost if I'm absolutely certain it is legit. When users have received more Brick Owl feedback I may alter how the display of it works.

Thor

I like Troy's idea of showing feedback from different venues SEPARATELY. I agree that BO feedback should be stand-alone and that we should all start from zero.

DadsAfol

As the beneficiary of the biggest boost, i have no issues if that boost was moved to some sort of note instead. I'll happily start at zero and earn my way up. When I did the step to import, I had no idea that the process would be shut down and others would not have the same opportunity.

bigdh

I like Troy's idea too.

While great feedback from one site usually vouches for a seller, I is not always true.

Lar

I used to sell on Bonanza (nee Bonanzle)... It had an import from eBay mechanism but I found it impossible to keep things synchronized when I sold something on Bonanzle . So I kept different inventory. Same with eBay and BL, I had different inventories.

I see myself having different inventory here than on BL because unless synch is automatic and two way, it's not feasible for me. Crazy idea, what if you PAID BL something for letting the synch happen, at least temporarily? I don't know how to propose it, but if something was devised that was win win, and both sites grew as a result, it seems goodness... seems to me that if you get big enough, it is to BL's advantage to allow sync in both directions as much it is to yours too.

Sort of a syndicate of sites... that way you could target different markets and both grow.