Do your own research. Attend trade shows and look formanufacturers and wholesalers in your area of business. You can also the websites ofdrop-shippers and sign up so that you can sell their merchandise. When you find acandidate, follow these steps:
1. Talk to the drop-shipper personally. Ask how far removed the supplier is fromthe actual manufacturer of the items it offers for sale. If the drop-shipper is atthe end of a long chain of middlemen, its supply chain may not be strong; youmight run into a bad situation—someone places an order, and you discoverthat your drop-shipper is out of stock. You then have to immediately offer afull refund and hope you don’t get negative feedback.
2. Get the contact information for one or two sellers who use the drop-shipper,
and check out the references.
3. Pay for a few samples you can inspect and put up for sale.4. Create your own descriptions and take your own photos so they are betterfrom those of any other sellers who carry the same merchandise from thesame supplier.
5. If you are happy with the results, put in a bigger bulk order.
Tip: Troy Breitmeyer, a seller who has worked extensively with drop-shippers, published an informative article about the pros and cons ofworking with them at http://ezinearticles.com/?Drop-Shipping-Can-It-Work-for-Your-Small-Business?&id(cid:4)79155. In addition, eBayRadio also has regular features on product sourcing. You can listento archives of past shows and read transcripts at http://www.ebayradio.info.
Finding Help with Sourcing
If you already have a student, a relative, or other employee to help you, you knowhow much having an extra pair of hands can help with completing transactions.Having other eyes and hands at your disposal can help you to find merchandise tosell, too. You don’t have to rely solely on your own initiative. Look around your list
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of acquaintances and make a list of the people you already have on hand who canhelp you do your searching. Some suggestions for assembling a sourcing ‘‘team’’ arementioned in the sections that follow.
Tip: Plenty of Web-based businesses are happy to help you ﬁnd sup-pliers. One of them, World Wide Brands, is run by the person whocontributes product sourcing information to eBay Radio. Check it outat http://www.worldwidebrands.com/wwb/default.asp.
Hire Neighborhood ‘‘Pickers’’It’s difficult to keep on top of all the garage sales in your area as well as the newstock that comes in to the local secondhand store on a daily basis. I’ve heard of atleast one eBay seller who hired a network of people in her neighborhood to gathermerchandise for her to resell online. You can do this too, on a small scale, by enlistingthe help of friends, relatives, and neighbors. Offer to pay them a bounty on each itemthey bring in, which will give them an incentive to find as many items as they can.
Caution: Never pay someone to send you leads for wholesalers. Youhave no way of knowing how recent the data is.
Make Friends with Your WholesalersI’ve discovered that, over the years, when I visit the same secondhand stores orantique shops, the proprietors get to know me. If I ask, they’ll put me on a list to callme when a particular type of item comes in. I’ve heard that some buyers are able tomake friends with the managers of the local Goodwill store or other secondhandstore; at the very least, the managers will let them know when the next shipment ofmerchandise is coming in. In fact, on the Goodwill website (http://www.goodwill.org/page/guest/about/howweoperate/Shopping/bargainhuntingtips) you read the follow-ing suggestion from the company itself:
Introduce yourself to the staff, and ask them about items you’re look-ing for or what they would suggest as a good buy. Establish yourself as
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a regular customer and the staff may even call you to let you knowwhen certain items arrive in the store.
At the most, you might be allowed the first chance at some choice merchandisebecause you are a repeat customer. The point is that you have to ask: find out whenyour local consignment shop or secondhand store puts out the items you want, andbe as friendly as you can to the people who work there.
One of the best ways to get on a wholesaler’s good side is to buy a large amountof merchandise on a regular basis. Many of the resale store chains allow companiesand individuals to buy in bulk. You have to buy a huge amount of stuff, and you haveto make the purchase from the chain’s distribution center rather than an individualstore. You might have to pay several hundred or even a few thousand dollars, but youget as much as 40,000 pounds of merchandise—enough to fill a tractor trailer truck.That sort of inventory can last you for months and bring you big profits.
The author of the Seller Sourcebook Blog writes (at http://blog.sellersourcebook.com/blog/_archives/2005/4/1/541454.html) about striking up an agreement with theSt. Vincent de Paul distribution center and being able to sort through inventory ondays when the center is closed to the public. He came out with eight full shoppingcarts of clothing for $165. The same author suggests contacting your local dry clean-ers and offering to purchase unclaimed clothing. In most cases, the cleaners arehappy to make some money from the items they’ve already worked on.
Caution: The obvious place to look for wholesale merchandise,eBay’s own Wholesale Lots section, requires you to do a lot of search-ing if you are to ﬁnd a diamond in the rough—in other words, a bulksupply of desirable merchandise you can resell for a proﬁt. Ask your-self: if a merchant can go through the effort to list the bulk lot oneBay, why couldn’t that person have simply sold the merchandisehimself or herself? It’s likely to be second-rate merchandise thatwouldn’t sell otherwise. You might have to browse through dozens ofpages’ worth of listings to ﬁnd one that ﬁts your needs.
One of the best resources for wholesalers is China, but it’s a difficult market tobreak into because of language and cultural barriers. In Chapter 21, you’ll find re-sources for finding both suppliers and buyers by taking advantage of internationalmarketplaces.
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Reaching Overseas Buyers
The reason that eBay and other online marketplaces work is because they enable youto find buyers for what you have to sell from around the world. It’s a thrill whensomeone located thousands of miles away buys what you are offering and leaves youpositive feedback for it, too. Often, you discover that there is a special market forspecial products. I’ve been amazed to find that brightly colored Nike TN cross-training shoes sell especially well in France. I know that if I could find a steadysupply of Nike TNs in the right colors and match them up consistently with Frenchbuyers, I could sell lots of them.
Sourcing the merchandise is a challenge all by itself, and it’s one that was exam-ined in Chapter 20. This chapter suggests more efficient and effective ways of reach-ing overseas buyers for what you have to sell. The strategy is easily overlooked, giventhe fact that iOffer, Amazon.com, and other marketplaces already attract potentialbuyers from other countries.
I’m talking about accessing websites located in other countries, the contents ofwhich are often presented in languages other than English. Although a large part ofthe world visits the U.S. version of eBay, eBay itself has locations in many othercountries. If you speak a foreign language, you can find an audience of potentialcustomers for your specialized products. There are also many auction sites other thaneBay that are located in other countries. By listing your products there you can standout from the crowd and find the customers you want.
Looking at Chinese Marketplaces
When speaking at a conference in May 2005, eBay’s CEO Meg Whitman commentedthat China could be eBay’s largest local marketplace in the next five to ten years(http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y05/m05/i16/s03). When you look at the numbersand consider China’s rapidly growing economy, you have to wonder at how great
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China’s influence will be on e-commerce in general and online auction sites in partic-ular. For sellers who are hungry for new customers, China is rich with promise. ButChina is also important as a source of wholesale suppliers. The primary marketplacesavailable to sellers in China (some of which are limited to those who have somefluency in Chinese or can have their listings translated into Chinese) are listed next.
AlibabaAlibaba was founded in 1999 by an entrepreneur named Jack Ma. In August 2005, itpartnered with Yahoo!. Under the agreement, the two companies will work coopera-tively to build Yahoo!’s brand in China. Alibaba consists of several separate market-places:
•
Alibaba International (http://www.alibaba.com). This is the Alibaba business-to-business (B2B) market for global trade, which has 1.5 million registered users.Nearly half of its business is reported to be from North America and Europe. Thehome page is in English; this site is meant for a worldwide audience.
•
Alibaba China (http://www.alibaba.cn). This is Alibaba’s Chinese marketplace
for online B2B transactions within China itself. The site is completely in Chinese.
•
TaoBao (http://www.taobao.com). This is a consumer marketplace and person-
to-person marketplace much like eBay.
•
AliPay (http://www.alipay.com). This is Alibaba’s payment system, which is
supported by China’s four largest banks.
If you speak Chinese and have items to sell to individual buyers, turn to TaoBao.Otherwise, turn to Alibaba—but it’s primarily a resource for finding wholesale sup-pliers.
TaoBaoTaoBao (the name means ‘‘digging for treasure’’ in Mandarin) is Alibaba’s consumerauctions site and a direct competitor to eBay in China. It has grown to 9 millionregistered users since being founded in 2003. The site is in Chinese, however; this isthe place to turn if you speak Chinese and you want to reach individual buyers inChina. Taobao.com has become the most successful challenger to eBay in the Chi-nese marketplace, taking in more than 40 percent of the Chinese online auctionbusiness in 2004.
TaoBao’s main advantage over eBay is the absence of service fees for basic usage.
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Listings are free, and no Final Value Fees are charged. The site draws its revenuefrom large businesses that purchase extra services such as accreditation. Taobao hasplaced itself as the true ‘‘Chinese’’ auction site, emphasizing its all-China staff andonly presenting a Chinese language version of this site. Keep a close eye on TaoBao:China is widely considered to be the fastest-expanding region for online business,soon to have over 100 million online users, second only to the Unites States—andgrowing at a faster rate than the United States.
Alibaba’s B2B MarketplaceAs stated earlier, Taobao.com’s parent site, Alibaba.com, is the largest online Chinesemarketplace with more than 1 million registered users, most of them small- andmedium-size businesses. As with Taobao, there are no fees for basic services, butthere is a wide array of extra products to purchase to help increase your business’scredibility and visibility through the site. You can also purchase a Trustpass, a systemof accreditation to increase buyer confidence, which allows you to post your inven-tory on Alibaba’s Hot Products channels. These products are the first seen by visitorsto the site and act as in-site advertising for your sales.
Suppose you want to sell supplies in bulk to another business. Begin by registeringto use the site; select your country from the list at http://us.my.alibaba.com/user/join.biz and click CONTINUE. On the next page, you are asked to specify whether youwant to sign up to buy or sell on the site—or both. In either case, you are signing upfor a basic level of services that include the following:
•
For buyers, the ability to search for products and send inquiries directly tosuppliers
• Rather than searching for products, the ability to post Trade Leads that tell
sellers what you are looking for, and receive quotations from themFor sellers, the chance to submit quotes on Trade Leads that buyers havepostedThe ability to post twenty Sell Trade Leads, which are essentially sales listingsThe ability to display a total of five photos of each productSpace for publishing a profile of your business
•
•••
Each sales lead you post (as well as each Trade Lead) is reviewed by Alibaba. It’spossible you might be asked to submit more information about what you want to sell.Alibaba also offers an innovative software program called TradeManager that youdownload and install on your computer. The software keeps track of Alibaba mem-
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bers with whom you have had contact so that you can get in touch with them moreeasily. You can use the software to have a conference call with your contacts; you caneven send e-mails to a group of your contacts at the same time—for instance, whenyou want to announce that you have a new line of products for sale.
Note: Alibaba.com is a well-developed business-to-business site with alarge community of buyers and sellers. Anecdotal comments left oneBay’s discussion boards by PowerSellers indicate that Alibaba can be agood source for suppliers, but emphasize the importance of making surethe seller has the Alibaba TrustPass. The TrustPass program authenticatesthe identity of the seller with a third-party credit agency.
eBay’s EachNetEachNet (http://www.ebay.com.cn) is eBay’s person-to-person sales marketplace inChina. The site is completely in Chinese. The site was purchased by eBay in 2003 ata time when there was virtually no competition in the auction market in China; sincethen Taobao has become a serious competitor. One reason is that Taobao does notcharge for listings, while EachNet does. However, EachNet has cut its listing fees; anarticle in China Daily (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/09/content_440384.htm) reported that listing fees were the equivalent of 7.5 cents or lessper sale. In summer 2005, eBay launched a Chinese version of its payment servicePayPal to help streamline transactions.
EachNet claims that, by charging fees for listings, it avoids the flood of low-quality items that (it claims) populates Taobao. For sellers who are fluent in Chineseand want to break into the market, it is important to pay attention to both market-places. See which venue sells the type of merchandise you already carry, and placeyour energies there. You might also consider selling the same quantity of similaritems in both locations, as an experiment, and then evaluating which site yields betterresults.
eBay’s Reseller MarketplaceGlobal Sources Ltd. is a partner with eBay that enables its clients to post merchan-dise on eBay’s EachNet. The service is provided outside of eBay through ResellerMarketplace, a site specifically intended to enable eBay PowerSellers to locate mer-chandise they can resell online.
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Selling on eBay’s Global Sites
If you are fluent enough in a language other than English to be able to write auctiondescriptions in that language, you have a big advantage over other sellers. You havethe opportunity to reach the millions of potential buyers who live in non-English-speaking countries and who shop on one of the twenty-six international sites listed atthe bottom of eBay’s home page. A representative selection of the sites, and somesuggestions of what you might sell there, appear in Table 21-1.
Table 21-1. eBay’s international sites.
Country
Name
URL
Argentina
MercadoLibre
Australia
eBayAustralia
http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/home_visitor.html
http://www.ebay.com.au/
Canada
eBay.ca
http://www.ebay.ca
Hong Kong
eBay.hk
http://www.ebay.com.hk
Merchandise of LocalInterest
Champagne and cigars
Australian FootballLeague caps andjackets
Canadian beercoasters, bottles,promotional items
Dolls and accessoriesrelated to the BlytheBarbie doll
Philippines
eBay.ph
http://www.ebay.ph/home
Philippine coin sets
UnitedKingdom
eBay UK
http://www.ebay.co.uk
Wedgwood, RoyalDoulton porcelain
An overseas marketplace enables individuals to trade items of local interest inlanguages other than English and currencies other than the U.S. dollar. Overseas sitesare of particular interest if you have items that are in demand in other countries. Ifyou are able to purchase a group of the Nike TN shoes I mentioned at the beginningof this chapter, for instance, you’ll find some shoppers who speak English wellenough to shop on the main U.S. website. But you are likely to reach more buyers ifyou can write the descriptions in French and offer the shoes on the eBay Francewebsite. An antique copy of Don Quixote, in Spanish, will sell in eBay Spain. Youcan quickly perform currency conversion, so that you can offer the item in the cur-rency used on the marketplace (such as Euros) by using the Universal CurrencyConverter at http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/currencyconverter.html.
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Tip: Timeshares and vacation properties are among the most popularitems to buy and sell internationally. If you have a property thatmight appeal to someone overseas, don’t hesitate to offer it in aninternational marketplace.
Language ConsiderationsAs a seller, you’ve probably received e-mail messages from individuals whose graspof English is weak. As long as they get the essential message across, everything isOK. When you are creating an auction description, a mistake in a size or brand nameor model number can be a disaster. If you write a description in English and youhope to reach overseas bidders, you need to use language that is as clear and simpleas possible in your descriptions. The same applies if you attempt to write a descrip-tion in a language that is not your mother tongue.
You can use free translation services like BabelFish (http://babelfish.altavista.com) to write a description in English and translate it to any of eleven differentlanguages, including Chinese (either simple or traditional), Dutch, French, German,Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, and Japanese. But stay clear of slang phrases like ‘‘thispair of sunglasses is eye-catching’’ or ‘‘this jacket is all that.’’ You’re more likely toend up with gibberish than with a translation that makes sense.
Note: BabelFish isn’t the only online translation service around. Youmight compare the translation you get from BabelFish to the one pro-duced by WorldLingo’s Free Online Language Translator (http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html).However, don’t expect an online utility to do as well as a human being; ifyou can find a friend or a student to translate your listings, you’ll be muchbetter off.
International Payment ServicesAnyone who has had to ship to other countries and deal with customs forms knowsthat things are more complicated when you deal with international buyers. In manycountries, PayPal is accepted, and if it is, your payment system is no different thanfrom domestic buyers. Western Union BidPay also gives you a good alternative; buy-ers can use it as long as they have an American Express or Visa card for debitingpurposes.
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If PayPal isn’t accepted and BidPay isn’t available, you can choose from one ofseveral escrow services that facilitate online payments. As described in Chapter 15,an escrow service acts as an intermediary between buyer and seller. The escrow ser-vice receives payment from the buyer and holds on to the money until the buyer hashad an opportunity to inspect and approve of the item that has been shipped. Onlythen is payment released to you, the seller. The best-known escrow service is Escrow.com (http://www.escrow.com). However, you might also make use of the followingother payment services:
• Moneybookers.com (http://www.moneybookers.com). This isn’t an escrow ser-vice as such, but a PayPal-style online payment service that is especially setup for European users.
• Escrow! (http://www.escrow-europa.com). This service accepts payments in
•
•
U.S. dollars, Euros, or British Pounds.Iloxx Safe Trade (http://www.iloxx.de/ebay). Use this service only if you speakGerman; the site is not available in English.Triple Deal (http://www.tripledeal.com). A European payment service that re-quires a one-time setup fee of 2,000 Euros or a monthly subscription fee of85 Euros.
Escrow services aren’t without their faults, of course. Dishonest users send fraud-ulent e-mails pretending to be from escrow services, and these sometimes trick usersinto giving up their money. The same precautions you take with spoof e-mails thatpurport to be from eBay apply to other payment services: don’t click on links embed-ded in e-mails; carefully inspect the URL at the top of a Web page that purports toan escrow service; enter the escrow service with which you have an account by typingin the URL of its home page. And don’t respond to any requests from a paymentservice for your credit card numbers, social security numbers, bank account numbers,or other personal information; they already have the information they need and won’tbe asking you to confirm it by e-mail.
Tip: Be sure to keep time zone considerations in mind when youschedule your auction. If you start a seven-day sale at 9 P.M. in yourlocal time zone and you don’t do any extra scheduling, the sale willend at 9 P.M. the following week, which is around 3 A.M. in Europe.Remember that what is a good time for you isn’t necessarily a goodtime for your overseas customers.
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There are good and bad people in every country. However, the bad people who preyon online auction sellers frequently come from a handful of countries. Yahoo!, in theHelp section of its Classﬁeds service (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/class/class-45.html), suggests that sellers be wary of buyers who come from Romania, Macedo-nia, Belarus, Pakistan, Russia, Lithuania, Egypt, Nigeria, Colombia, Malaysia, andIndonesia. (The Philippines is sometimes cited as a country frequented by fraudartists.)
Does this mean you should turn away anyone who makes a purchase from yousimply because of where they come from? That would be sure to attract negativefeedback. Instead, be extra careful with buyers from those countries. But rememberthat most people are basically good. If someone buys something inexpensive fromyou, chances are you’ll have no problem with them. But if you sell computers orhigh-end electronics equipment, you’ve need to be careful. Make sure the buyer hasan obvious e-mail address that is easily traceable. If someone asks you if they canpay by wire transfer or cashier’s check, consider these to be warning ﬂags.
Even then, you might ﬁnd that the person is basically honest. I had a customerfrom Belarus make a relatively inexpensive ($40 or so) purchase from me. He saidhe could not obtain a PayPal account and could not use BidPay because he had aproblem with his credit card. He asked to pay by wire transfer. I tried to stay patientand polite, and gently said I preferred PayPal or a money order. After several weeks,he was able to get a PayPal account after all. The deal went through, and he turnedout to be a very nice person.
Exploring Other International Marketplaces
If you’re the adventurous type and you have a love of travel, you’ll enjoy exploringsome of the many international auction and sales marketplaces around the world.Often, these sites feature exotic or unusual items you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Ifyou have an item you think the local customers might want, you can put it up forsale. Here are a few examples:
Bidorbuy (South Africa)This site (http://www.bidorbuy.co.za) welcomes members from Afghanistan tonearby Zimbabwe. As a shopper, you might be able to find exotic items like Tanza-nian blue opal jewels. In fact, the Diamonds and Fine Gemstones categories are
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among the most popular on the site. One interesting feature for sellers is the optionto restrict bids to only those individuals who have a credit card on file with Bidorbuy.Starting prices have to be in South African Rands. The site automatically relists youritem for you if it doesn’t sell. It’s free to list items for sale. If they are sold, you arecharged a ‘‘Success Fee’’ of 3.5 to 5 percent depending on the amount of the winningbid.
DeRemate.comThis trading community operates in the following ten countries: Argentina, Brazil,Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the UnitedStates. Go to the site’s home page (http://www.deremate.com), where you are pre-sented with a list of the countries covered. Click on the name of a country, and yougo to a site specifically devoted to merchandise from that country. All listings are inSpanish, but if you are located in the United States, your listings can appear in theU.S. version of the site (http://usa.deremate.com).
Eurobid.comEurobid.com, an auction marketplace based in Paris, France, is ideally suited forsellers in the United States and other countries. The obvious reason is that the site isin English (though, as described in the bulleted list that follows, you can use multiplelanguages for a single description). Another good reason is that it is free to sell onEurobid.com. The site charges no listing fees, no ‘‘Success Fees,‘‘ and no Final ValueFees. Here are some other notable features that overseas sellers will find attractive:
Sales can last anywhere from seven to thirty days.The site has its own escrow service for payments.
••• You can specify that sales are automatically renewed after the original sales
period ends.
• You can have your auction title description presented in as many as four offive possible languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.• Eurobid.com will scan your photos and e-mail them back to you if you arewilling to go through the time and effort of mailing the images to their officein France.
• You specify your own bid increment of between 10 and 40 percent.
Another nice feature is that the Sell an Item form includes a button labeledTRANSLATOR. You can write your description in your native language and have ittranslated instantly by the auction site.
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Kijiji.comThis network of classified ad sites isn’t well known to U.S. sellers. That is becauseKijiji—the name means ‘‘village’’ in Swahili—posts classified ads in Germany, China,Spain, Canada, England, France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Poland, Turkey, Taiwan,Japan, and a few other countries, but not in the United States. Kijiji, which is affili-ated with eBay, is not a single site but a group of networked classified ad sites. InNew Zealand, Australia, and other English-speaking countries, the individual sites goby the name of Gumtree. In Switzerland, the name Kijiji is used and listings are inGerman. In the Netherlands, the local site is in Dutch and called Marketplaats.
If you speak the language and have a connection to a city or region somewhere elsein the world, Kijiji gives sellers a way to market items that are very local in interest. Keepin mind that the classified ads are primarily of houses for sale and apartments for rent.And the site is oriented toward local buyers and sellers who want to connect to oneanother across town rather than around the world. Nevertheless, in virtually all the citiesincluded in the Kijiji network of sites, there are categories such as ‘‘Stuff for Sale,’’‘‘Miscellaneous,’’ and ‘‘Business Services’’ that might be relevant to overseas sellers.
It’s free to post ads, but be selective: read the current contents of the Stuff forSale section and see if there is anything remotely like what you have for sale. Youdon’t want to be accused of submitting ads that are considered spam. Most of theads are