Consignments

I have two major consignors.   Both are friends or family and both have huge estates to liquidate.  Having this idea to incorporate consignments into my reselling business has probably been the best move I could make.  Not only because of the extra money, but because of the extra exposure and the complete knowledge I have gained about what sells and for how much!  I can't stress enough that if you want to really and truly get into the reselling business this is an excellent way to get your foot in the door and learn about inventory to buy on your own.  I have loads of inventory and have sales almost every day.  I say almost because I have just revamped the way I sell as I was only listing on Mondays.  More on that in another post.  Also, when I started reselling in October 2010 and letting people know that I was accepting consignments, I started getting donations!  I have a friend who has given me loads of stuff that he got from people who were just going to throw it away!  All completely sellable stuff!  He doesn't even want a dime!  So accepting consignments is a great way to go.

Now I do have a couple of rules that I apply to my consignments.  The first is that anything valued under $8.00 I will not sell.  It's just not worth it for my time.  If there are things under $8.00 that can be lumped together, I will sell them as a lot.  Like thimbles.  Boy do I hate thimbles!  But they sell great!  I got a lot of about 25 thimbles and the mistake that I made was selling them individually for $3.00 each.  So I made about $0.25 of each one which was definitely not worth the time it took to photograph, listing and package each one.  That's when I made that first rule!  The next time I came across thimbles, I would be selling them in a lot.  When I told my consignor he was absolutely fine with it because he would have made more money also! 

The second rule is that I charge a 25% flat fee on all items UNLESS you only have 20 items and under to consign.  With 20 items and under I charge a sliding scale because there is not a lot of earning potential.  So far, people tend to have a lot more than 20 items. 

The third rule is that if items are not sellable you either take it back or I donate it to the local Goodwill.  And one can not argue with me about the sellabilty of items.  I use Terapeak for research and the numbers don't lie.


The fourth and final rule is that my consignments are listed only on EBay.  Etsy and Alibris are only for my items.  It makes accounting at the end of the month much easier.  Also, EBay includes a field that I put in my consignors code so that when it does come time for accounting, I know who gets what, including me!

My plans are to make this a full time business as right now I am still working.  I hope to take advantage of EBay's trading assistant venue and post myself out there to accept others consignments.  At this point though, I am so inundated with these two estates that I have plenty to list before that happens!