Inventory storage
I started a store to sell off the excess stuff I have. When I started a year ago, that wasn't much. Then a big auction happened, and another, and another... now I have boxes and totes everywhere. After taking pictures and listing stuff, I put it in a glassine and write the auction number on it and put it in a shoe box so that it is easy to find if/when it sells. I have too much now, and my current storage system will become unmanageable soon. What is everyone else doing to keep track of things? Anything different? Bigger shoe box?
Comments
I'm thinking I should seriously write a series of articles (or a book) on how to be an online stamp dealer.
It's different than if you're going to shows all the time. The most important thing you can do is stop buying stuff just because it looks cool (that you're going to resell) and sell off the accumulation first.
You can make the occasional exception when something big falls in your lap, but focus first on selling off the mass of material you have already.
I respectfully disagree with some of what you wrote. I think the biggest problem most sellers have is answering the question of what are their short term and long goals? If the sellers long term goals are to have the most listings on the site and they don't care what the selling price is, how is that a mistake for that seller, because that's their goal? That is not your goal. You may be able to question the wisdom of what they are doing, but you can not claim it's a mistake if they are making their goals.
Now as far as some sellers having a larger store, having a very large inventory that is listed can be become a problem if the listed inventory becomes too large for that seller to handle it. Part of that is being able to set up the inventory in a way that a person can list it, pull, pack it and ship quickly and easily. Part of it is what are the long terms goals that the seller is looking at. Now as far as the number of copies per item listed, it's a whole different story when you do have some sellers listing 100's to 1,000's of the same stamp as opposed to sellers that are trying to list 10 or less of each.
Having a 1,000,000 stamps is NOT the problem, the problem is what the seller is planning on doing with them and trying to reach that goal. If the sellers goal is to sell box lots or packets or poundage, they will not last as long you think.
While what you are saying has some truisms for YOUR goals doesn't mean they are not viable for another sellers goals. Unless the seller states one way or another how do you know for a fact that some of those sellers aren't doing shows or have a brick and mortar or the fact they may be transitioning from that? And you also some sellers that all they are trying to do is customer service to help other collectors fill in holes with some listings that many sellers will not list for various reasons. Really what difference does it make to anyone when those sellers are trying to fill the niche that they have decided to fill, and they are happy with it?
When I finally started looking at becoming a full time seller, I had 3 things happen between 2000 and 2005. My wife died in 2000, in 2002 there was some other family dynamics which were coming up and I need to be able have something to do that could provide my basic needs which are minimal in comparison to the US national average for a single person, which as of right now is $3,200 a month. I also needed the time to be able to take care of the family dynamics, that was far more important to me to take care of. And for over the last 17 years every single goal I had set, in the end were met. And also enjoy doing this.
One of the things I found is that the more you can store your inventory by size or item types, the more you can maximize your storage space. You can also have # 4 glassines and 104 cards as one size, and 107 cards for certain plate blocks and other slightly larger blocks that are not as large as the oversized items, they do make storage boxes for those also.
For storing the boxes 102 cards I adapted one of the bedroom closets. in which that room is used for storage of material that is listed.. Took off the doors and left it opened. My father built 2 racks out of scrap lumber. One of them was built to take 102 card boxes, stacked 2 high on each shelf, 5 shelves, and being able to hold 14 boxes per shelf.
On the other shelf that was built to handle 104 cards and #4 glassine boxes on the top 3 shelves, the bottom shelves hold UN FDC's. On top of those racks I keep the standard size worldwide FDC's. The reason for keeping the FDCs that way is because after doing this long enough is that most people will buy either US, UN or worldwide, not all 3 at one time so it makes it a bit quicker to find them as you don't have to spend as much time locating them.
On the lower value sets and singles I figured out a way to keep those in stock books and I found a way to give them a private ID where I can list them, and find them quickly, and you don't have the expense or storage problems of putting those into 102 cards. (At $50 a box per 1,000 that's going to cost you over $200 to store them in those cards)
whereas if you can store them in a stock book and have the inventory number figured out. a 64 page stock book with 9 lines per page and 8 stamps per line, 1 book will hold over 4,500 stamps and you can get lightly used at a show from $10 up. And anything I store in those books are the items that are less than $3, with the exceptions being sets of 5 or more. ( The problem with trying to store sets of 5 stamps or more is that they will shift in the book.)
If you find them and repurpose them, you can use lightly used manila stock cards or the black cards to ship them out on. On the manila stock cards you can get size from 3 x 5 up to the full size stock cards depending on the number of stamps they buying.
Just a couple of ideas for you. Please don't let some of these sellers that have a skewed perspective of what you should and should list and how you should run your business, when they have no clue of what your goals are and what's going on in your private life, get to you.
Bob
Or enough extra rooms after 35 years !!!
Admittedly, 1/2 my stamp den is piled up floor-to-ceiling (mostly boxes with covers). I've been considering investing in a bunch of those rolling organizers that have large baskets stacked in a frame. This way I wouldn't have to un-pile boxes to get something out of a stack's middle which gets kinda tiresome. With the baskets, it would just be a question of sliding the basket out from its frame to pull what's needed.
A number of those type of sellers that sell the high price lower sales volume, forget that if it wasn't for the time and effort of the sellers who list that type of material, they themselves would have a harder time selling their material as the vast majority of most people DO NOT start collecting $50 stamps right away. They benefit from the fact that many of those don't carry much or a lot of higher priced material and once the customers reach that who do those sellers think are going to go to for the customers to fill in those holes?
Some dealers made money both when the Zepps were rocketing into the stratosphere, as well as when they were falling like a stone.
They did not do that by holding onto inventory.
Which reminds me, I have a few bankers boxes of "stuff" hanging around since the 80's.......................................
I should have stated this more clearly. As a general rule of thumb most people who are selling their duplication off usually will not need much in the way of storage, which is why I wasn't going to deal that. I do apologize for the misunderstanding.
Michael, I started out some time ago just selling off duplicates. I started to really like selling, finding Hipstamp and getting away from Ebay made it even better. Right now, I am about 10 years short of retirement. My current goal is to build up some inventory and a client base so I can have something to do once I retire. The money is nice, it helps support my stamp habit, but I much prefer the smiles when I happen to have that one item that someone has been looking for. I don't give much thought to what I am selling. Right now, I sell whatever I can find and re-sell at a reasonable price. My price point is also a bit of a moving target, generally nothing less than $1.00. I try to package stuff in a manner that it is worth my time to list, but also something that I think someone else would buy. I look for groups and sets. Maybe down the road, I'll find something to specialize in. For now, I live and learn.
Shoe boxes are great storage media for FDCs. I use binders with appropriate stock pages or sheet protectors for sheets, oversized plate blocks, souvenir sheets, etc. 102 or 104 dealer cards stored in red boxes suffice for the rest. Binders and boxes can be labeled and organized in whatever fashion your space allows. The red box solution works great because the boxes are a uniform size and stack well in a deep shelf bookcase. Dealer cards also fit nicely in a standard envelope should you choose to use them as protectors when you mail your lots.
Im guessing that closet and/or bookcase space will become your biggest challenge over time.
Amen.
I set up Red Boxes for 102 cards - numbered them RB1-10 to start (RB=Red Box - clever???). Found some tubs at office depot that covers fit into nicely and numbered them CB (Cover Box!) 1-, I even found a custom made file set of 12 drawers that was perfect for covers too - I kept the CB for them. Then an old fashioned 3x5 index card drawer (like libraries used to use) for small glassines (Labeled them DA-DM (Drawer). Finally repurposed some of the cover bins for large Glassines (labelled them GW - I have no idea why. Finally a flat drawer set on wheels for extra large items (sheets etc) - Label RC. I then put all my stuff in a separate database that also held the scans of each item. I use the DB record number for a Private ID along with the location of the item. 32765/RB6 is in Red Box 5 where all the items are in numerical order with no regard for scott number or country. Two consecutive numbers may well be in completely separate locations. A label on each item identifies the Private ID along with a description. At one point I had over 15,000 items in a space only 7' x 2' along one wall including space to fill orders. Add to that an excel sheet for large orders that lists everything in order by location and number and filling orders becomes a breeze.
It took years for me to break out of the Scott numbers are gospel mind set and find a better way. An article on Amazon got me going - they just put stuff on the the first available shelf space and tie the location to their own stock number for quick retrieval and the best use of space.