Getting Ready For The Excitement: Spring Selling!
It’s that time of year again! This is my absolute favorite selling season ~ a fresh start in the New Year, and finally seeing GREEN.
Excitement is in the air!
On the Yahoo Groups for Gymboree and other name brands, “In Search Of” posts will start appearing, auctions will start doing much better, and as a result THOSE sellers will start bidding on your auctions because now they have money, etc. The selling/buying circle starts going moving again…don’t you just love it? It is the funnest time of the year for selling.
(Note: You can learn about the Yahoo Groups in the 14th archived issue…it’s a valuable and fun tool for sellers.)
www.auction-moms.com/newsletter/1-14.html
There are some important steps I want to share with you about preparing for the spring season. This is a busy time of year with the holidays, and it’s easy to forget about selling until after the New Year, but you’ll need to do some preparation so you can start selling when the prices are good.
1. When should I start selling for spring?
2. What exactly should I sell?
3. Organizing Your Inventory
4. Cross-Selling: This Method WORKS!!
1. When should I start selling for spring?
I’ve seen many sellers start as early as the day after Christmas, but with the holidays and traveling/family time, it’s better to wait until the New Year is over.
Once January 5 arrives, hit the ground running! Usually I recommend you start the day after New Years, but this year that day lands on a Friday, so probably a lot of people will still be traveling through the weekend.
Having the kids go back to school (on the 5th, Monday) is the key, because that is when you know moms are back into their daily routine, able to surf for clothes, etc.
2. What exactly should I sell?
You can sell pretty much everything having to do with spring and summer right from the beginning, with a few exceptions. Sell Valentine’s right away, but wait on the Easter holiday clothes until February. Also swimsuits & their accessories will probably sell better in February, but pretty much everything else you can sell immediately.
Lighter weight pants are still good sellers, since springtime tends to be cool on a lot of days, and light sweaters (especially cardigan style) are perfect for spring.
A good rule of thumb for this (especially Gymboree) is to sell it during the same season as when sold in the stores. For example, Gymboree Spring Blossoms came out in stores January of 2002, and it had long sleeved pieces because obviously it was still freezing outside. You can still sell these pieces in the spring, because they are all lightweight, including the leggings and the light sweaters.
You can see a list of all the lines with pictures and the year they were sold at Gymboree here:
www.gymbohaven.com
Still keep the swimsuits from this line, goggles, swim bags, and other accessories until February; they’re more likely to sell at a higher price in late Feb-April than in January.
3. Organizing Your Inventory
This is an important step I see a lot of sellers overlook. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of selling, and just take the best clothes and put them on Ebay first.
It is so much better to be organized here! You’ll find yourself breathing a lot easier if you follow a few simple steps.
Here is what I do:
First, I bring all the boxes into my living room. Throughout the year I am always going to the different consignment stores around town, and buying steals as I come across them. I put all the spring/summer stuff together, and the fall/winter clothes together. So when the season comes around, I dig out all the boxes labeled “Spring/Summer”.
Next I start making piles. As I empty each box, I pile it neatly in the size/sex category ~ making sure to put outfits together as I come to them. For instance, all around the room on the couches, chairs, etc will be piles of girls 0-3, 3-6, 6-12, 12-18, and on up. I also try to put the same size shoes with their corresponding size (girls toddler 8 shoes with 4T clothes, for instance)
It’s a mess, believe me. (grin!) But SO fun, because you can just SEE the potential here, wondering what they will all sell for, and excited to get started.
Once they’re organized into piles, the empty boxes are put to use. I put the clothing back in, only this time, each box gets a size and is labeled accordingly.
Now you’re ready to sell, starting wherever you’d like. I usually start at the top or the bottom, either 0-3 or at my largest size and work my way down. As I buy more inventory for spring, I’ll stick it in the box it’s sized at, ready to be sold.
(Side note: you can also just have boxes for each size throughout the year, but I love going through everything at the beginning of the season.)
4. Cross-Selling: This Method WORKS!!! You’ll be astonished!
This is the BEST part of why it’s so important to organize your inventory by size. Time and again, this method brings me multiple bids, as well as setting my auctions on fire with bidding wars...which we can all use, LOL!
This WILL bring you more bids. Guaranteed. I have been doing very well using this technique.
So…what’s the technique? Okay, here goes:
Say for example you are selling a Deux par Deux girl’s dress, size 2T. Instead of saying, "I will be listing many other auctions this week!" add something to this effect:
"Click Here to see lots of girl's size 2T I am listing this week ~ combine winnings to save on shipping!"
Use this html code (copy/paste it, inserting your auction link). Please note that there is NOT supposed to be a space between the "<" and the "a" in the beginning:
< a href="YOUR AUCTION URL HERE">Click Here to see lots of girl's size 2T I am listing this week ~ combine winnings to save on shipping!"
If html totally confuses you, feel free to email me here with your question and I’ll be happy to help you out.
As a bidder who this summer was buying the Gymboree Butterflies line for my daughter on Ebay, if someone said they had other Butterflies in size Medium for sale, I would have clicked over in a heartbeat because I love saving on shipping.
But if they didn't say that, chances are I probably wouldn't look at their other auctions. This is one of THE least used techniques, and it actually yields very high results.
So...how exactly does this create bidding wars?
Here’s an example:
Susan is looking for size 2T spring clothes for her daughter, especially the Deux par Deux brand. She finds your auction through a search for “Deux par Deux.” She decides to “watch” your auction, and is about to go back to her search, when she sees that link to “Click Here”.
She would love to buy more than one outfit from you and save on shipping, especially if all your stuff is as cute as the dress. Oh wow!! She sees FIVE auctions she would love! She immediately puts those on her watch list too.
Fast forward to the ending night. The auctions all have ½ hour to go, and she is now the top bidder on all five. (Already you’ve gotten bids on five more auctions just because of that little sentence telling her to look at more auctions)
Oh NO! Someone else has just outbid her on three of the auctions! Okay, she says, I’ll wait until 10 minutes to go, and then I’ll bid on them again.
And she does…
But meanwhile, another bidder “Mary” is also bidding on these auctions for the same reason: she loves several of the auctions and they’re the size 2T she is looking for. She’s anxious to save on shipping as well, by buying from one seller.
So back and forth it goes, with a bidding war that started all because you put that little “Click Here” sentence in all of your size 2T clothing auctions. It works!
This is the funnest part of the beginning of the season, because usually you will have a lot of clothes to work with. I would love to hear back from you on this, let me know how it works for you!
Update: On January 12th I received this email from one of my readers, Leslie Loftus ~ Ebay seller ID gardeningismypassion:
I have to tell you, I am ABSOLUTELY FLOORED at the prices some of my auctions closed at tonight. Unbelieveable! One person paid over $16 for Gymboree Fruit Punch hair clips~! My auctions aren't usually that spectacular. I used your cross selling technique and the link you gave me and I think I got much better results. Thanks so much!
© Sherah Taylor 2003-2005
