So nice to see a positive thread getting a boost. Every day is a school day and I'm definitely at the learning stage with excess stock - as in I've got too much of it.
As part of this learning journey, focusing on stock, I've learnt every industry has norms for stock rotation and targets for super star sellers (the percentage of good turn over items that you don't need to be discounting). But you don't need to have industry averages, if you've got a business formula that works for you, you just need to decide your write down points. What none of us want is to sell off our good stuff by discounting but end up with a whole load of slow moving stuff - that will eventually sell but its a bit depressing to have lots of not really shifting stuff.
So as a completely made up numbers example lets say typically 10% of listings you might expect a sale in a month, another 20% within three months, at 90 days you're refreshing listings with a bit of a kick and promoting either advertising and/ or coupons and another 20% sells in months 3-6, at second renewal (180 days) you might get into more serious discounting - higher percentages and combining offers and another 20% goes over months 6-12. If twelve months is your typical stock rotation, for in this example 70% of your stock to clear through, you may decide that at 12 months you do a low start auction/ accept any offer/ write off.
I'm over stocked. I've had help from a couple of weeks of eBay protrader with kick stating a bit of a clear out of my not Ojewellery branded lines a couple of months ago. My newer stock, my own designs, I now do a full monthly sales analysis of looking at sales per platform and have rules to label the stock, which I run on a monthly basis, to identify it as:
Current stock good seller (regular seller keep stocked to good levels)
Current stock
Current stock slow mover (fairly new stock but its not flying)
Old stock (slow moving and hanging around don't replenish)
Obsolete (sell pretty much at any price and don't replenish)
I look at sales in last month, average sales/ month over twelve months, total sales last rolling twelve months, current stock holding and average profit/ sale. Then have forumla to allocate to a stock type category so I can administer the actions for that stock block and reorder stock if the spreadsheet shows stock of less than time to order plus one months typical use remaining. Each stock item has a time to order allocated to it.
It sounds a bit more complex than the simple csv dumps and import into a spreadsheet with formula it is.
The biggest thing from my new data gathering is restricting my spend on restocking current lines (as I can accurately see sell through rates) and stopping spend on replenishment of ones that just aren't giving a good enough return. A shared percentage of sales from write off lines goes into my pocket and reinvestment in new designs. My aim is to reduce my overall stock holding but also to maintain a balance between the different types of stock with the obvious focus being on the current stock good sellers and current stock and reduce/ cap the obsolete and old stock percentages.
Its more than reducing listings and associated business overhead, its improving sell through (overall profitability) on a smaller catalogue.
I currently have a whole load of resting listings. Ones I'm revisiting and relisting. It came about from a tech blip that lost the majority of my listings for 5 days a few months ago. They were recovered but they have been corrupted and the image galleries are incomplete and don't relist. I thought I'd take the opportunity to work on them.
POINT 2: I wondered whether having 2 basic shops would make more sense at a certain business stage than one featured store.
There are a couple of reasons - one is to have a no bells and whistles outlet version, cheaper slower postage, older stock, blanket coupons and discounts. Then the primary store as a new stock, exceptional service, fast delivery, higher turnover items, don't keep hold of the slow movers - shift those to the outlet. Use promotions as a marketing tool but not mega discounts and offers.
This would give 500 included listings for a lower price and would work out slightly cheaper at the 700sih listings required to justify a feature store.
Disadvantages, slightly higher admin, search from within shop search would be eBay not shop (although thats not as consistent anyway), loss of international free listings (deminished post Brexit).
POINT 3, Christmas strategy
Its in progress - rolling discounts, coupons, sales, using promoted and I'm just doing a new trial with Promoted pay per click (can't remember the current eBay rebrand name) on just my top around 7% of listings based on twelve months across platform sales data. Putting my money into the listings which are my good performers to keep growing those and hopefully increase the number that fall into that category. I have a plan to do a plan for more heavily discounting older lines in the Christmas run up - a sort of Christmas clear out. I don't want it to impact my good line sellers though so I'm getting my head around it. I might yet make it a big early Christmas shopper September/ early October clear out.
