hard to sell at the moment on Ebay?

morganedge

I was just wondering how other peoples Ebaying was going at the moment.

The last few months I've been trying to sell lots of clothing items, mainly from Topshop and the like.
All the stuff is brand new - still with tags.
I try to choose what I think will be popular items, an sure enough, I usually have around 10-20 watchers on each item.

I typically have a starting auction price of a little over half of what you would pay in the shops.
Yet, each week I seem to have so much unsold stuff.

I'm confused as to how shops are able to make any money, if nobody is seemingly willing to spend any in these tough times?

I have 100% positive feedback and a few hundred stars to my name.

People seem to want me to give it all away for free.

I had a £150 topman jacket brand new with tags on last month with a starting price of 70.00. 8 watchers. No sale in the end, and then lots of messages after teh auction had finished with offers of....wait for it....£20.00! Would cost them £150 to walk to the shops that day and buy the thing! lol

Is this just the way things are at the moment? Same for everyone?

alykatz

I personally when buying from ebay would never pay the prices your quoting quite honestly.Once someone has bought an item an decides to sell it on even though it hasnt been used it depreciates in value substantially.
If your items are not selling then i would say that its because your prices are too high for the buyers.For me when buying from someone i dont know [unlike purchasing from a known outlet] theres no way im going to pay a high price for something which i have not seen for myself or inspected first.
I know from personal experience that even though its advertised as new with tags when it arrives yes it has the tags on but is also marked by being tried on or not as pristine as you would expect it to be.Myself like many others have been burned this way so are more than cautious and are only willing to pay a fraction of the price.

soolin

I'm with alykatz, your prices are much higher than I would expect on eBay.

I assume you you are a business If you are selling all these new and tagged items, which might also mean that there might be something in your returns policy or t and cs putting people off.

Check out completed listings for similar items though to see if other sellers are getting the prices you are asking, if so it would suggest an issue with your listings.

One other thing, places like topman have sales all the time now, (I have two sons who buy lots from there) so most loyal buyers would be expecting to pay around half price from the shop anyway, some Online maybe even half that again.

forgotmyname

Are you registered as a business? I think private seller new tagged items. I think your maybe not being 100% honest and maybe a PITA to deal with if i had an problems.

Very expensive looking at past sales. Even their harris tweed jackets fetch half of what your listing your jacket for.

It maybe £150 from there now. But how much in the sales? And can you get a similar jacket from the supermarket for less?

Splashy

Truthfully - if I see a seller (esp private) with loads of BNWT on sale, I avoid them like the plague, I am probably being unfair but my mind goes into overdrive and wonders why they have so much current available stock for sale on eBay

morganedge

EH? One of my replies has been deleted?!!! why??

samanthaknd

alykatz wrote: »

I personally when buying from ebay would never pay the prices your quoting quite honestly.Once someone has bought an item an decides to sell it on even though it hasnt been used it depreciates in value substantially.
If your items are not selling then i would say that its because your prices are too high for the buyers.For me when buying from someone i dont know [unlike purchasing from a known outlet] theres no way im going to pay a high price for something which i have not seen for myself or inspected first.
I know from personal experience that even though its advertised as new with tags when it arrives yes it has the tags on but is also marked by being tried on or not as pristine as you would expect it to be.Myself like many others have been burned this way so are more than cautious and are only willing to pay a fraction of the price.

I totally agree, if the starting price is high I avoid like the plague

markwilkinson

High starting prices are a direct result of these free listing weekends, in my view.

People seem to have a very over-inflated idea of what their item is worth.

There are a couple of items that I'm on the look-out for and I search eBay for them. I generally find them after a free listing weekend at staggering starting prices, way above what they are worth/ what I'm willing to pay, knowing the value of such things.

When I sell privately I dont wait for free listing weekends, I just set at a 99p starting price (free) and let market forces decide. If I'm selling on my private account, I just want shot of the item so I'm not too bothered by the sale price, a couple of quid back for me is a bonus over putting things into the charity bag.

Crowqueen

Personally I'm finding eBay a bit slow, and Amazon excellent (sold only three items on eBay so far this summer whereas I've lost track after two months on Amazon - after expenses I'm £24 better off but expenses were about 75% of the selling price on average, including spending one large sale on the mailers I need to post everything out with, so that's easily about £100 I've turned over) but I'm with the others. You will never get serious money for something on eBay without inspiring confidence in your customers, and while you may not be buying these specifically to sell on, you may begin to look like you are.

Be realistic about prices and you will do a bit better. There's a thread on the buyer forums at the moment about someone who wants £350 for three dresses but the auction only fetched £20 - the thread is from the buyer's POV. They are going to end up being bitterly disappointed - but once you lower your expectations enough you will do fairly well.

soolin

It's odd isn't it that we all have different experiences, which I suppsoe shows it really depends on the exact things that are selling.

I have been busy delisting from Amazon and posting on ebay instead, so far in the past 4 weeks I've sold 2 books over £50 that I had had on Amazon for over 3 years, and a more recent DVD box set.

Once I get rid of this blasted virus I'll get more out of my stock and see what I can switch to ebay.

Mind you, it does seem for me at least like ebay have switched the 'on' switch on. I have never had so many sales a day- and I am a terribly teeny little business.

These things seem quite circular, at the begining of the year I actually had 3 or 4 sales on ebid, which was about as many as I'd had in the past 8 years. since then- nothing. very odd

pulliptears

I agree with other comments, no way would I pay that much for something, especially old stock.

If it's new stock and still in the store then I'd question how and why the seller was managing to sell it for half the price. Did anyone see the Channel 4 program on shoplifters the other week? The police were saying that most of the BNWT stuff on eBay thats half the price of the stores was stolen goods and that eBay was by far the best way of getting rid of the items.

Obviously I'm not saying that OP is stealing stock lol, but when I see BNWT items that are still available in store I do have to wonder how they manage to sell them cheaply.