posted on February 1, 2007 05:02:21 PM new
What's everyone think??
Good, bad, yawn!!!
Hi...I'm Christophe Gillet with eBay Stores. I'm pleased to introduce a new tool called Markdown Manager that is now available for our eBay Stores subscribers. This free tool allows you to offer discounted pricing to your buyers by putting your Fixed Price and Store Inventory items "on sale." Your Sale items will display special strike-through pricing on the item page, along with a "Sale" logo, so buyers can easily see the discount offered.
Key features of Markdown Manager include:
# A quick, easy process to create a Sale item.
# Easy management and scheduling capabilitie
# Ability to apply discounts to specific listings, categories, or across all your Store Inventory or Fixed Priced listings
posted on February 1, 2007 05:30:15 PM new
I don't know - best offer works pretty well for me but this could be another tool to reduce unwanted inventory.
Could be useful.
posted on February 1, 2007 06:35:00 PM new
Hope this isn't a tool to help sellers liquidate inventory when eBay decides to phase-out stores. I'm such a pessimist!
posted on February 1, 2007 09:13:34 PM new
Here is an example of this new feature. I don't like as it really makes me feel that Ebay is going away from its so called core action by offering this feature. it seems to me that it has become the bargain basement of the internet.
posted on February 2, 2007 02:39:16 AM new
I don't think I like it either, but then I left the store with the last fee increase so I am not a good one to judge.
posted on February 2, 2007 09:02:55 AM new
Hi Folks;
You know, mark-downs and mark-down strategies are as old as retail itself.
Most every retail vendor I have ever dealt with employed them as a means of factoring an aggregated net mark-up.
Adding this to eBay might just help...it reinforces urgency/savings. Its worth experimenting with, using items that you have the best historicals on and then setting the highest successful sales price as your opening, then gradually marking down.
You might be interested in zeeDive I interviewed the founder a couple of weeks ago. Interesting pricing model where you can actually watch the sales price come-down.
posted on February 2, 2007 09:40:16 AM new
C'mon, Michael, you can't expect to use phrases like "factoring an aggregated net markup" and just walk away clean.
You even lost me.
BTW, I agree with you. We have generations of shoppers trained to look for markdowns. The wonder is not that eBay has done it but that it has taken 11 years. But the person who mentioned Best Offer is on the side of the angels. BO is a fabulous way to offer selective markdowns to your best customers. There's no reason why a once-a-year buyer should expect to get the same discounts as my regulars who buy 40 or 50 things a month.
posted on February 2, 2007 11:09:10 AM new
Hey fLufF;
Yep..you got me there. My apologies for the "new-speak" phrase. All net aggregate mark-up means is that you blend the mark-ups over the entire sales cycle to come up with an average mark-up.
What it disciplines you to do is first, do your homework on past sales, studying the pricing (both your own and others)from high to low. With that range in mind, you then work a retail plan where the pricing starts at its highest then gradually comes down.
Ultimately, you are cashing out of your inventory and getting to cash sooner than holding on, collecting slow-movers, with only a fire-sale as a last resort.
Many sellers don't appreciate that cash trumps inventory and without a systematic approach to sales, you will inevitably find yourself inventory rich and cash poor.
And when I say many sellers, I'm including the big as well as the small.
I can't tell you how many major vendors I've dealt with over the years that don't have any systematized formula for liquidating overage. Typically, the overage accumulates until the accountants and the warehouse screams...and a fire-sale results.
Of course, it all comes down to what you sell. Each item/category has its idiosyncrasies. If your inventory is catch-as-catch-can, hoping for the best at market but essentially random, then it is obviously difficult to systematize pricing.
But I believe sellers, over time, tend to specialize and a natural extension of product knowledge is (or should be) a realistic approach to pricing that ultimately disciplines the buy and thus the business as a whole.
And yes, I agree about our habitualization to look for "sale" items and using the price-off balloon next to the item's price is actually a better way to prep or condition the buyer that this is, indeed, a sale.
posted on February 2, 2007 12:12:59 PM new
This is great. Increase store fees to beat away profits now ask to run discounts to a point you are in the red but ebay makes the $$ great idea for them but bad for the beat up seller.. now you will see those items listed for .99 cents $50 shipping now listing .01 $51 shipping Keep up the good work ebay..
posted on February 2, 2007 01:23:02 PM new
Hi tjferreira,
What Michael is saying (I think) is that with Markdown Manager, you can plan the "life" of your widget ahead of time.
Say I have a necklace. I paid $5 for it. At a price point of $30 I will get my cost back, pay my expenses, and bag a nice profit. One way or another I want the necklace gone in 30 days. I might start it at $60 and reduce it by $15 each week. When it reaches an asking price of $30, Markdown Manager shows it's 50% off...an attractive incentive to buy. At $15, it's 75% off, which is practically irresistible.
There's no reason why your markdowns have to be linear, BTW. I'd be interested in hearing opinions on what the markdown curve ought to be.
Now, this is not going to work for people who:
1) Can't get past the notion of selling their stuff for twice or three times what they paid for it (the old antiquer's rule)
2) Are so personally invested in their stuff that they can't liquidate it
3) Have such slim margins already (folks who sell coupons) that they are losing money right now and don't realize it.
posted on February 2, 2007 01:49:12 PM newThis is great. Increase store fees to beat away profits now ask to run discounts to a point you are in the red but ebay makes the $$ great idea for them but bad for the beat up seller.. now you will see those items listed for .99 cents $50 shipping now listing .01 $51 shipping Keep up the good work ebay..
Not much more I can add to this other than you hit the nail on the head.
posted on February 2, 2007 07:07:25 PM new
With the higher fees enacted last August, and the lack of visibility, Store seller's are already losing their shirts. Now we're supposed to be thrilled that eBay is encouraging us to give our stuff away, and make even less money? I'm not impressed.
This is what I would like to hear....
"Hi....I'm Christopher Gillet with eBay
Stores, and I'm happy to report that we
are putting ALL store items in search.
We're also rolling the fees back to 2 cents an item per month, and the FVF is being reduced to 5%. Thank-you for being such loyal eBay sellers, in spite of the fact that we've turned screwing you all into an art form."
posted on February 2, 2007 07:12:03 PM new
For the West Coasters not familiar with Filene's Basement, which is probably the most famous example of the automatic markdown system, a brief explanation lifted from Wikipedia suffices.
A description of The Basement's markdown system from a 1982 New York Times article:
". . . every article is marked with a tag showing the price and the date the article was first put on sale. Twelve days later, if it has not been sold, it is reduced by 25 percent. Six selling days later, it is cut by 50 percent and after an additional six days, it is offered at 75 percent off the original price. After six more days - or a total of 30 -if it is not sold, it is given to charity."
So the intervals are 12 - 6 - 6. Definitely not linear. What potentially makes it exciting for buyers is that you can be upfront about the markdown policy, thus creating a sense of urgency that heretofore has been completely missing from eBay Stores.
posted on February 2, 2007 07:13:58 PM newNow we're supposed to be thrilled that eBay is encouraging us to give our stuff away, and make even less money?
Can you explain to me how you are being encouraged to give your stuff away?
A markdown program properly implemented will bring you more money, not less.
posted on February 2, 2007 08:15:31 PM new
Fluff, most of my items are antique or vintage.....jewelry, linens, books, buttons, etc. Even when they're in the auction format (I hate the term "core," they usually sell for much less then they would in an antique store, or at an antique show.
The same for Stores....I usually mark the items fairly low, in the hopes they will find a buyer. I can't cut the price in half, then in half again over a period of time; the FVF fee and the PayPal fee would be greater than what I would get for the item.
Then there's the visibility factor.....potential buyers in many cases just don't see the items in a seller's store. When eBay Express started, my Store items tanked big time; I don't know if search was screwed up or what, they just stopped selling for the most part, and I closed my Store right after Christmas.
Your previous post about Filene's basement sales brought back memories. I lived near Boston years ago, when I was in high school,
and I remember that busy bargain basement.
Filene's made money because they had an avalanche of customers making a beeline for
the bargain basement day in and day out, and I'm sure many of the customers bought regularly priced merchandise from the main part of the store as well. There was a corporate buy-out recently, and the Filene's stores are now "Macy's".
[ edited by northwoodsguy on Feb 3, 2007 06:25 AM ]
posted on February 2, 2007 08:47:13 PM new
The "interesting" zeeDive concept gives buyers more reason to think that ALL items are overpriced and that all sellers are unrealistic about their sale prices. It perpetuates a virtual flea market where nothing is being sold but tube socks and illegal fake bags and sunglasses.
posted on February 2, 2007 11:33:20 PM new
The internet as a whole is a markdown marketplace, particularly for small sellers.
The web is a relentlessly efficient pricing engine and only grows more so each day.
Sites like zeeDive are not causal when it comes to price competition, nor in my opinion is eBay for that matter. The rule of commodity selling is price competition. The exception is price support.
What each of us sells is only as valuable as the market allows and the internet marketplace is far too fluid and transparent to permit any unaligned pricing to succeed. Large retailers speak in terms of customer acquisition cost and justify the spend to acquire a customer not upon the transaction & its profitability but upon the long term value of the relationship.
Most small sellers compete only on price and the thought of acquiring a customer at a loss with the thought of long-term amortization is the difference between well, small & big.
Fortunately, the means of production are also subject to price competition so that small sellers can actually create goods and realize manufacturer's margins at retail; providing of course that they have something in demand or can create demand....but that takes marketing money and that,ultimately,is the last dollar most small sellers want to part with.
posted on February 3, 2007 09:42:30 AM new
This is an interesting concept and we have a local consignment store that deals in everything except clothes & furniture. Their strategy is so simple.
The minimum price in the store is $4.00
If you want to consign a box of household items you have to state upfront whether you want unsold items back or whether they should go to a Charity shop.
Item is put on the shelf at what the Store owners feel it should sell for not what the Seller feels it is worth.
After exactly 30 days that price is reduced by half as long as it is not below $4.00.
After 60 days it is either returned to the Seller or donated. No old stock sitting around taking up space.
It is fun as a Buyer because although I have tried hard over 4 years I have never figured out their code on the tags so we don't know when it will be reduced or maybe sold before it is reduced therefore we are inclined to buy at the full price.
They have such an amzing business that they expanded the store.
I have digressed but maybe this is how the "Markdown" program will eventually work and may bring sales a little earlier once the Buyers understand it.
they usually sell for much less then they would in an antique store, or at an antique show.