As the holiday shopping season is coming to a close, there is something that I’ve been holding on to that I feel the need to address.
Let me backup a bit...
I run a small business. Strike that...I run a micro business. I quite literally run an online business from my bed. While I will always consider myself a writer first, it has been a struggle making money from it and then when I became ill a few years ago, I needed to find a way to get some kind of income no matter how small. Thanks to a series of events and a background in jewelry, research and social media marketing, selling vintage jewelry was where I landed and it’s been an interesting adventure since!
Selling is fun and I get to use my research skills to learn about the pieces I’m selling. I do all of my own marketing utilizing social platforms which saves money and I’ve become part of a reselling community that truly supports one another sharing ideas, tips and even speech other’s shops to help gain both followers and customers.
With so many folks buying from the big guys like Amazon and Walmart (including myself) and so used to getting discounts on this and that, folks tend to forget just what a small business owner has to do to maintain a business. So quite often we are either taken advantage of or many times potential customers try to negotiate prices or shipping down thinking this is an ok practice.
Now don’t get me wrong, being in a reseller business like vintage, negotiating can be part of the deal. A lot of sellers practice this, especially on platforms like Instagram or their own sites. It’s like going to a flea market of estate sale and doing the price dance until everyone is happy. This of course is fully acceptable and up to each seller.
Having said that, when sellers run their businesses on sites like Etsy or eBay, then the dance comes to a halt. For you see, now we sellers are no longer calling the shots themselves but rather having to work within the protocol set in place by these sites.
Let us take Etsy first...I’ve been on for over 12 years now over two shops. In the beginning it wa a great and a very supportive community. Over the last two years however, between rising fees, offsite ads for google and forcing us through much pressure to “offer” free shipping, our prices then have to go up to compensate for all that we are being charged. (During the height of the pandemic while other businesses were helping their people out, our fees were raised.)
Just as an example: in one of my sales of two items, after all the fees, shipping and taxes were taken out and my special packaging, the second item was sent for free and the first item, I paid another $2 on. I actually lost money when all was said and done. The problem is as much as I want to get off of it, Etsy has become a necessary evil letting our positive reviews, etc help build our business and reputations. (Somewhat) But a $55 ring will yield only a $44 return and because of that, running sales becomes a major issue.
On eBay, where I actually started doing this type of selling 22 years ago, we have a bit more freedom to have the customer pay for shipping, can offer price drops if we feel we can afford to do so, their fees are MUCH lower and we have a lot more flexibility with both pricing and selling formats. It has been very nice utilizing this site once again even though competition is a lot tougher for vintage sellers.
So imagine if you will the utter frustration when someone sends a message trying to negotiate down the price or the shipping fee.
Now look, in reality, I’m not just a seller, I’m a buyer as well. I’ve written pieces on never paying retail and how to save money on things. I get that people are used to discounts elsewhere but when you are buying from other sites, like say you want to order from a catalog. Do you contact them and say, “look I’ll buy this but you need to reduce the shipping?” No. You take their policies as is and either you buy it or you don’t. For some reason people think it is ok to do this with small sellers.
I once had a potential customer email me almost every hour for an entire weekend trying to get me to come down on the price of something. This particular item was already at the lowest I could go if I was going make any money off of it. I tried to explain that several times and yet she kept insisting. Top it off, with Covid, I’ve had to reverse my return policy to absolutely no returns. This person didn’t understand that and tried to negotiate a sort of rental on the item.
I pride myself on my customer service and I went out of my way to try and get the sale. The emails even consisted of my trying on the necklace she was interested in to show her what it looked like on. I was already offering free shipping and free gift packaging and yet she wanted me to come down in price by $20 and be able to return it. After (and this is no joke) 48 emails, many with my refusing her offers, she finally backed out and said that maybe someday she’d get it if I ever reversed my policies and never heard from her again. No thank you for the time or I understand your position...just wasted my time for two days only to back out with not so much as a polite end to the conversation. (Another pet peeve of mine, rudeness.)
Personally I would NEVER think to do this to a seller on Amazon (who now has also become a platform for small businesses), let alone any other site. Everything I use goes into my pricing from the padded envelopes and bubble wrap to the item itself, packaging and shipping, so when one tries to negotiate me down, they don’t understand that it will literally cost me in the end.
While it never hurts to ask, (because why not right?), understand where the seller is coming from in their response. Sometimes you might get lucky! I have on occasion struck deals with customers, especially those whose were incredibly friendly and felt that they were kind to me so I felt is was a great thing to reciprocate. Doing so has brought me repeat customers, some that have turned into friends!
What I’m trying to get across here is this...when you support a small business, and I hope that you do, please, PLEASE consider all that goes into it. Many times it’s one person operations like myself doing everything from one room. Plus, when the pandemic hit, it killed a lot of our business as well. On the flip, many small businesses were born from the pandemic and how great that is! People finally doing what they always wanted to and now can!
Either way it MUST be understood that in our case, EVERY. PENNY. COUNTS! And if a seller like myself has had a brutal year with lack of sales and can’t afford to be flexible on some things, well, it’s nothing personal, it’s business and we shareare just trying to keep our business going.
So now here is to 2020 coming to an end and a new year ahead filled with new possibilities! Keep supporting small businesses and if you run one, May 2021 bring you nothing but success!!!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND A NEW YEAR TO ALL!
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If would like to take a look at my shops, social p, sites and more, all of my links can be found in one happy place: http://linktr.ee/StuffWeFind (clickable link below)
Thank you for reading and hope you’ll follow me here on publish0x. :)
