One of the things I don't like about this business is retail selling. That sounds ridiculous - why even start a business selling china if you don't do retail?
Well for one thing because packing china properly for shipment is an exacting, exhausting, frustrating chore. Because putting things up for auctions online is extraordinarily time-consuming. But mostly because customers can be a problem, and not just for non-payment. After all, if they don't pay, I don't send them anything - we're even, no hard feelings. Nor would I complain about the people who report breakage. It happens no matter how well packed, and I send a partial refund immediately.
No, worst is the customer who gets a box full, tells you it's all broken, fails to send clear pictures of the breakage, and then insists on all the money back. I can see from other feedback that this person has pulled this stunt with other sellers, and then smeared them up and down if there was any other outcome than a full refund. It's unlikely everything in the package was broken, but this person knows darn well my reputation is worth more to me than the fifty bucks, and my time is worth more to me than the arduous process of proving a pattern of such behavior, so I refund the payment. All of it. And then feel sick for awhile.
But I don't want to give up on selling, either. I was able to provide nearly an entire set of Noritake china at a very good price to a family who wanted it for a wedding gift. Many times I've been able to replace individual pieces from beloved heirloom dinnerware sets - and have regularly gotten thank you notes from those buyers. You can't beat that.
I'm getting hints, however, that you can avoid selling directly to the consumer, but still keep in touch with them. It's harder to make money than on eBay, but it's do-able. Any consignment shop or antique mall, for example, takes the retail off your hands; they collect the money, deal with problems, answer questions, secure your merchandise, mail anything that needs to be mailed, and submit the sales tax to the state. You don't even need a tax ID number. I can still direct previous good customers to them and help out my fellow vendors at the same time with good marketing practices. The couple of thefts I've endured at the mall are somehow not nearly as creepy as being cheated online by someone in direct contact with me.
And I can sell from my own website, where I can make my own rules and develop a smaller, but better customer base. Yet another possibility is selling directly to specific collectors or dealing with collector's organizations. I don't know enough yet to do that, but it's an idea.
Finally, another venue I'm trying out is re-auctioning items at a higher-end auction house. Fingers crossed. First try this summer. The problem here, of course, is that the customer is kept at too great a distance, if not cut out altogether. That's not what I had in mind. If the main point of this business is getting something no one wants into the hands of someone who does want it, another auction disrupts that process, or at least lengthens it. I think what I'll do is put new things up either in the mall or on my website for a specific period of time and then take them to be re-auctioned if they don't sell there. Rotates the inventory, too.
Stay tuned.
--Gail
