How do you big time sellers keep your inventories straight?
eBay sync keeps giving me fits already costing me a double sale here in hip for something that sold a couple days earlier on ebay.
Then I keep looking at other sites, like delcampe and possibly abe (CAPHIL has his inventory on ABE, which surprised me as I always thought ABE was for books only heck the B stands for book in their name)....
Anyhow, since ebay is not really an option to keep everything on there for ever with their minimum of 2.5 cent fees for mega sellers over 120,000 listings I would like to spread myself everywhere.
Like I said, caphil is on at least delcampe, hippostcard and abe and a couple european sites.
What system do you guys suggest to keep inventory straight>
Once you get to a few dozen sales a day manually adjusting inventories becomes a real stupid task.
Time that should be spent listing more inventory.
I guess reason I am asking is, that I see some of these sites being real viable to move some inventory and I do not believe 'Just' hip would do it.
Even SCVIEW has a good chunk of his inv entory on eBay.
Seems he lists there first and after x amount of time he removes it there and puts it in his hip store for 'clearance'??!
He sells very well both sites, so just one site just seems to not be the smart way for someone (like me) that wants to build an actual sustainable business out of this.
Thanks in advance.
Martin
Then I keep looking at other sites, like delcampe and possibly abe (CAPHIL has his inventory on ABE, which surprised me as I always thought ABE was for books only heck the B stands for book in their name)....
Anyhow, since ebay is not really an option to keep everything on there for ever with their minimum of 2.5 cent fees for mega sellers over 120,000 listings I would like to spread myself everywhere.
Like I said, caphil is on at least delcampe, hippostcard and abe and a couple european sites.
What system do you guys suggest to keep inventory straight>
Once you get to a few dozen sales a day manually adjusting inventories becomes a real stupid task.
Time that should be spent listing more inventory.
I guess reason I am asking is, that I see some of these sites being real viable to move some inventory and I do not believe 'Just' hip would do it.
Even SCVIEW has a good chunk of his inv entory on eBay.
Seems he lists there first and after x amount of time he removes it there and puts it in his hip store for 'clearance'??!
He sells very well both sites, so just one site just seems to not be the smart way for someone (like me) that wants to build an actual sustainable business out of this.
Thanks in advance.
Martin
Comments
Here is an article from ecommercebytes about that issue.
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/abblog/blog.pl?/pl/2013/7/1373407108.html
Scview does comment in the comment section of what he did.
Any programmer realize what gigantic opportunity there is?????
I am an FT online seller since 1998 and it is beyond belief that no one has figured out a solid stable solution by now.
I am not a programmer (ZERO patience for tedious shite like that). but hole cow would I pay a fortune for a service like that. And tens of 1,000 of other online sellers as well.
A simple data entry form that takes your info and submits it to the various sites you sell on.
Simple check boxes and custom fields as needed.
I really think it would be very very simple.
Someone could make a crazy fortune doing this.
smh
Actually there are tools for each site.
A service for eBay (e.g. inkfrog)
Hips bulk listers for the hip sites.
Shopify's bulk lister....
You wouldn't even need to build any interfaces.
Just a data entry form that creates the proper fiules for the vartious sites.
I am gonna have to think about this for a minute..... my mind is going lol....
No need to re-invent the wheel! There are CSV files using file uploaders. But for real synchronization there are developers one can hire to create APIs to sync listings, sales, and ending of listings across multiple venues. Most of the big sellers like CPAPhil and SCView etc use these services. Stefano owner of SCView is generous in sharing his knowledge and experience so you might consider sending him a message. He has posted some very informative messages in the past on Delcampe forums so you might look there too. In the past I've had up to 4 sites synced just from what the venues themselves provided in the way of sync tools. Currently I'm down to 3, all three part of the monthly fee as it is here at HipPostcard.
Cheers, Brent
thanks, I did contact scview and they said their programmer in the middle east is MIA.... Not a good thing in that part of the world and they are currently deleting everything manually.
I have posted locally for a programmer to do just that.
Mostly for uploads though,
I create one basic data file on excel and then copy and paste in batches of 50 to my inkfrog (for eBay) and hippostcard files.
Super fast process. Just did 6 batches of 50 each and it took less than 20 minutes.
My only challenge is my shopify store.
Shopify requires an additional row for additional pics. Then the handle (SKU) needs to be at the proper field in the extra row. And you need to add a #2 for the position of the second file.
Not doing that right now, as it is painfiully tedious, But planning on timing myself on that.
Basically have to insert an add. row after each listing. Then cut and paste the 2nd image URL into that row.
Then add #2 in each add row for the image position and also manually copy and paste the SKU for each listing,
Very slow and tedious, while a little tool/app could do that in seconds.