Bikes

Parkers-Bolton has been selling on eBay for over two years and has feedback of nearly 3000. Here's his story:

"We've been in the cycle trade for 20 years and sell over 8000 new and used cycles a year through retail, Internet, and wholesale channels. We pride ourselves on stocking the major brands including Scott, Kona, Giant, Falcon, GT, Saracen, Pulse, Raleigh, Claud Butler, British Eagle & Haro.

On 16 Jan 2001, our first eBay listing was done by Pam in the wholesale dept. It was just a bit of fun really. But we were pleasantly surprised to discover that people actually started bidding on our listing. For months after our first sale, we trundled along quite happily doing about 2 listings per week. All our listings had reserves, we used no HTML and had a single picture - in fact we didn't spend much time on them at all.

We continued along these lines with our eBay sales until Feb 2002 when I was bored one day and decided to dive into the site and have a proper poke around. Quite quickly I spotted that there was more potential for us, and thought that our clearance lines would do really well. As I delved deeper I could see that there was a market there for new, returns and seconds and it seemed like an opportunity that we'd really only begun to scratch the surface of. To tell the truth we were in the dark for ages about eBay like most businesses.

Then we started to experiment. We cottoned on to the fact that people might want to see more detail in the auctions. So we began including two or three nice quality pictures in our auctions, always choosing the gallery option, and giving far more detail in the descriptions.

Our new-found attention to detail did improve our sales, but the real turning point came when we decided to try starting our auctions at £1 and not using reserves (£1NR auctions). The difference was amazing. We began to list all of our cycles at £1NR - and suddenly it became an absolute feeding frenzy. We have plenty of stock - in fact we have up to 250 cycles delivered each week - so we were happy to take a hit on some cycles if the overall profits made sense. We've seen other sellers get nervous or even stop an auction because they're cautious at starting with low prices, but for us it's very clear that the returns are better. It's the £1NR auctions across all categories that are the valuable ones as far as I'm concerned as they let the buyers decide the value of the item.

It was a tough time in the cycle trade - independent retailers were starting to get squeezed out - the trade had had a terrible time after the foot and mouth, and the large supermarket chains were beginning to become a real threat.

What most excites me about eBay is that it provides a market where businesses like us really can compete with the big boys. eBay's level playing field is encouraging for me because it means that any seller can reach to the millions of buyers - you just need to get under the skin of eBay to make it work.

Car Parts

Rochford Tyres have been in the business since 1987 selling car wheels and alloys. Their user ID is rochfordtyres and they have feedback of 750. Here's their story:

Traditionally car wheels and alloys are touchy, feely, tangible products - buyers like to check out the product up close. When they part with anything over £500 that's to be expected and so that's why I never thought selling them on the Internet would work. I am thrilled to say that I was wrong!

Back in April 2003 we were sitting on around £60,000 worth of stock. In the motor industry, where fashions and tastes change quicker than a Ferrari pit stop, this was a little risky and understandably my accountant was warning me to halve that. We were bang on the edge of our overdraft facility and couldn't pay the bills without the up front capital. Turning to eBay saved us as it meant - thanks to a sudden burst of new sales - we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and keep the wolf away from our door.

It was Dave who saw the potential in eBay, marrying the British car loving public and Rochford Tyres with the power of the Internet. He came in, casually mentioning eBay, took some wheels and listed them on the site. For the remainder of the weekend my mobile was red hot with questions from him about the wheels. It seemed that the community were very keen on the product and wanted to know more. The buzz and element of energy surrounding the sale surprised me most of all and I gave Dave the nod to list some more. I'm pleased to say that the same buzz still remains with us today.

It was really encouraging to see our name and brand up in lights and buoyed by this early success we settled on giving eBay a serious go. For me, a self-confessed technophobe, this was a huge and highly unusual step but I simply couldn't argue with the numbers and sales we were seeing. Upping the stakes is easier if you have the ability to buy cheaply and so that's where the wholesale leads that we'd worked hard to build over the years became so valuable. In no time at all we have doubled and then tripled staff levels; it has been a brilliant and exciting journey.

Cameras

A.bargain runs a photographic shop in Letchworth and started selling on just a few years ago. His user ID is a.bargain and he has feedback of nearly 4000. Here's his story:

"It all started when we used to throw some old stock into a box at the front of the shop and sell everything in it for next to nothing. Someone gave us the idea of selling on eBay and suddenly instead of getting about £10 for our left over bits and pieces, we were getting £200. We haven't looked back since; eBay alone generated £50,000 in April from over 350 photographic items ranging from mini tripods to digital SLRs.

I put our success down to the large market we can reach through eBay.co.uk. Now that we know we've got this huge market, we've started buying in much larger quantities at cheaper prices. We often approach companies to buy their excess stock and we're getting a name for ourselves as a channel for photographic companies to use when they need to move goods. Some of our products don't go in the shop at all now - they're exclusive to eBay.

If you speak to anyone in the photographic industry it's well known that 'through the door' sales are falling. When we started we didn't really think that eBay would account for more than 10% of our sales but now eBay represents up to 70% of our hardware business.

If you were to ask me the secret of my success it is to 'do it now'. People generally don't like waiting. Many of our customers come back to us time and time again because we make it our business to be prompt in replying to e-mails and sending out parcels. In fact we've employed an additional member of staff to help with the post and packing. We make sure there's no time delay so as soon as the payment clears the product is packed and posted. We've had over 1000 repeat sales from happy eBay customers. I think it also helps that we're a well known shop so people trust us immediately.