Tuesday, July 22, 2008

My eBay Story

We have been members since Feb. 1998 and just started with buying and selling a few things a year for the 1st few years. The 1st item that got us hooked was a set of (Pillsbury Dough Boy) Poppin' Fresh's Grandma and Grandpa. The set sold for $80.00 with a lot of bidding. We thought that was amazing and have been in awe of what people will buy (and more importantly - pay) ever since.

In 2002 I was chairlady of a card party at our church for St. Patricks Day. I had seen long scarves with shamrocks, in a store, and set out to find them, to give as prizes. After a lot of searching on the internet and on eBay, we determined there were none. We were living in NY at the time and stumbled upon a scarf supplier.

When I told them I needed 40 scarves on the one design, they sorta laughed and said all their product needs to be bought by the dozen and they have a $500 minimum order. WHAT!!!??

So we talked about it and thought that since we couldn't find them online after a very intense search, there could be a market for us.

We went back to the wholesaler and said we are ready to buy. They looked at us like we were nuts. Now we have over 85 designs and have sold 1000's of the scarves, both wholesale and retail. Even tho' there are other scarf sellers, I believe we have the largest selection in the retail market.

Since then we have added other product lines along the way including shoelaces, no headache sun visors and headbands.

When we left NY in 2005 we moved with many, many boxes from the home we inherited, with the anticipation of selling them on eBay over the next several years. So those one of a kind items are slowly being listed along with several other previously owned things we have gathered from here and there, including some of our own collections.

In March 2008 we became Powersellers and were able to attend eBay LIVE in Chicago in June.

No comments: