Proposed Ability to Reset Pricing to Averages for Your OWN Country Only

Calibrick

Hi! Unsure if this is at all plausible as I do not know the BO database design, but it would be very useful to me in the Seller/Inventory screen to *have the option* to reset selected category prices based on **averages from my own country ONLY** (or even region, i.e., North America, if country isn't possible).

Of benefit to many sellers is the ability to mass set pricing based on local averages you may be more typically competing against when shipping is taken into consideration. The sales prices and their averages in Europe, for example, are of limited aid to me, whereas other US sellers are my target benchmark when I manually set my set prices during key sales (e.g., big sets) - 99.99% of my buyers are also in the US (since I only ship using tracked methods, overseas is frankly cost-prohibitive for my customers). :-)

Another major benefit is eliminating major pricing skews from other nations from the averages, e.g., there is one particular store in South America that REALLY skews a surprising number of part price averages, particularly those with fewer sellers obviously (their inventory is massive). I'm sure their prices are great for their region (this has nothing to do with that), but compared to other regions, they are super high. If I was manually pricing LEGO Design ID 64680, as an example, I'd be setting it between $1.50 - $2.50. The average system price was $4.56 this afternoon, with that store driving it up significant as only six sellers have this part in the system. I've run into this more times than I can count.

An alternative to this, though not as desirable but would at least take care of the skew noted above, would be the option to eliminate the two or three lowest and highest prices from the averages you choose to use for price setting. That sounds harder to me though from a coding POV. :-)

Thank you in advance for listening... please advise if this is plausible, and if so, perhaps this message can be used to gauge other seller's interest (i.e., if those reading this like this idea, please hit Vote at the message listing). :-)

Calibrick

I meant to say a store in Europe, not South America, by the way... I really need to learn the flags better. ;-)

Hoddie

The Portuguese store? Yeah, odd isn't it but they still get orders so they obviously know more than me :)

Jay37

Sounds a good idea to me. If I add something and it shows as 99.00 (rather than a 6 month average), I'll check the existing prices for the UK (or worldwide if no current UK sellers), ignore the two lowest and two highest, then set my price accordingly. And yes, I've often wondered about that particular store - not just prices but minimum order limit too!

Teup

Yes, I've always been in favour of localising the priceguide. But I am not sure if many countries have numbers that are big enough. Probably America, the UK and the NL will have, but for other countries it may get tricky.

But anyway, I have no clue how the current system works here on BrickOwl. I think the way it currently is is not really OK, as priceguide involves dilemma choices that the viewer should be aware of - and better yet, be able to change.

For example, you may want to see prices including VAT if you want to know what people worldwide were willing to spent on a part. Or you may want to look at the prices excluding VAT if you want to know what sellers worldwide were earning on a part.

Then there's the currency system, for L6MS, probably, it converts all transactions that are not in the viewing currency using the exchange rate of the day of the transaction, while for the current average it uses today's exchange rate.

But such things are all choices that we need to at least be aware of, so that we know what we're looking at.


Over the years alot of people have talked about the race to the bottom - why it happens and what the results are. Many shops can't handle the competition and go out of business. I too need twice the inventory I needed before for the same turnover. Personally, I believe there is one huge majorly important cause for the race to the bottom:

THE PRICEGUIDE CONTAINS TRANSACTIONS WITHOUT VAT, WHILE MANY SELLERS PRICES INCLUDE VAT.

For example: I look at the priceguide and price a part accordingly, say €0.10. A buyer orders it and I pay VAT. I look in the priceguide, see my transaction and the average of the past 6 months is still €0.10 as the priceguide looks at selling prices including VAT.
Now.... someone from America buys that part. The price is lower since there is no VAT, €0.08. I then look in the priceguide, and will find the average of the past 6 months has now dropped because of my €0.08 sale, let's say it's now €0.09.
Next time I list the item again, I will price them at €0.09. And the cycle repeats.

This VAT issue affects not just Europe, it affects everyone equally. Many sellers find themselves to be more expensive than themselves, and compete with themselves, and prices go down.

Having a priceguide per country could help. But I see two main problems:The low amount of figures, and a chance that there really is a difference in demand between countries. Would be a shame to lose your parts for a price that is average for your country but worldwide is much too low and you sell the part instantly.

Calibrick

@Teup, I had not considered VAT nor currency exchange rates - those are definitely two areas that would affect price guide interpretation, absolutely great point.

@Jay37, @hoddie , yes, that is exactly the store I am talking about. Interesting that we all knew who I meant, lol. As we all say though, we don't know the Portuguese market and they do, so more power to them - except for when it skews the price guide so much.

And @Teup raised another valid point about the "race to the bottom" - some stores that charge unfathomably small amounts for their parts simply cannot be competed with for most of us. My original price guide points focused on the "high" skew impact, but this applies equally to "low" - I can't complete with someone selling parts for a few pennies that I myself paid more than that for, even in bulk used. ;-)

Perhaps instead of per country (that was a great point as there are very few countries stand-alone that would have enough data) we could look at a per region option and/or an algorithm that excludes the top and bottom 5% of pricing to reach an optional alternative average? I'm just brainstorming out loud here.

I'm not sure the VAT and exchange rate issues are solvable though, I can't think of any way around those offhand. :-(

Teup

> @Calibrick said:
> I'm not sure the VAT and exchange rate issues are solvable though, I can't think of any way around those offhand. :-(

Yeah, I also don't know, I feel like any choice of how to calculate it is really just a choice. I think the best thing we can have is simply some info on how it works, or a setting would be even better. (On the other site you can edit a parameter in the link to include or exclude VAT and to change the currency.) I guess people just have to get some awareness of this race to the bottom effect and that the priceguide isn't holy. It also took me many years to realise it.

Your proposal for separate priceguides could solve it a little bit though. Maybe an EU-as-a-whole priceguide would be good, just like an American priceguide. And then an Asian priceguide, maybe. This at least avoids the messy situation when mixing together VAT/EUR and non-VAT/USD transaction in arbitrary ways.

I don't think I'm really in favour of making the calculation more "intelligent", since it again promotes the priceguide as holy and people may mistake it for being THE authority for pricing even though it will probably always have these imperfections that cause downward pressure on the prices (especially that inc-VAT and then selling without VAT cycle). I think when we all start taking the priceguide a little bit less serious and feel more free to make our own prices, that race to the bottom effect can be remedied a bit. Taking the priceguide just as a fairly good source to come up with our own prices.

(By the way, the VAT and currency issue renders Brickstock useless for European sellers. Brickstock just uses USD/no-VAT prices and doesn't offer any options besides a quick-and-dirty multiplier to "convert" to another currency, but using it for pricing in Europe is a really bad idea. That too is a factor in the race to the bottom: Brickstock suggests prices that are without VAT, and the seller does not realise they still need to add VAT, nor is it possible to do so, because it's unknown how much % of the transactions had VAT. I really hope Brickstock will add settings for this, I'd like to try it out as I think many sellers use it.)

Brikomania

From what I know of PauloRenato, the portuguese store you talk about, it works different than from most of us. He has in inventory multiples of very rare and hard to find parts, and apart from that he has one of the most varied inventories I've ever seen.

He bases his high prices in the fact that usually, thanks to that large number of lots, including HTF parts, he gets more orders due to the fact that he is probably the only store that has all of the parts, or most, that a buyer wants.

Couple that with excellent, premium service and he can raise prices to another level.

Just to put it in perspective, I remember talking to him a couple years ago, and he had a bunch of green grocers that he was about to part out... in 2016 :-D

Graham

If average was set as (mean + median divide by two) the wild extremes would be less pronounced.
I’ve suggested this before.

Country specific averages would be a very nice option

Mrs Swoop

Gets my vote. Most of my customers are in the UK so that's the market that my prices need to reflect.

Calibrick

Thanks for upvoting, @"Mrs Swoop"!
I also like @graham's thought from December 2018 - anything to help offset these skews. :-)