416 : Suzanne Wouk – Sellhound helps make Recommerce scaleable

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I’m still in awe regarding the possibilities with this product. I used to think 25-50 listings a day would be good. However to think you could scale to 200 listings an hour blows me away. Imagine the possibilities this can bring to your world. If you are an Amazon seller and have been looking to get rid of returns/restricted products, etc.. then this might be the tool for you. Great discussion from an experienced seller.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Suzanne:                             [00:00]                     Right? Um, we are automating the virtual assistant, uh, system.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:07]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:21]                     Thank you already for a great episode. A, I want to jump in. It’s funny. Two things. One, this episode is so relevant because we sell shoes and clothing. And when you understand what we talked about in the episode deal, you’ll see why this is so important to us. Um, we’re going to try it. Um, we edit on two new employees this year. Uh, my son, uh, Nick and then his friend Jake both graduated from college, a good college degrees and a lot of enthusiasm. We added back to our business. Um, and I was just telling somebody earlier today, we had it back, uh, ran away to our business in a pretty strong scaled way, much more measured approach. Actually, you know, got a lot of help from a lot of people and way more measured. And the success has been phenomenal. And one thing that’s really helped us is, um, some of the groups that we’re in.

Stephen:                             [01:08]                     And so you’ve heard me mention, uh, amazing freedoms, um, million dollar, uh, arbitrage group. They’ve been sponsors my show for a long time and, uh, we’re members of it and I can’t tell what this time on cause I, I don’t think I can give it away, but I was gonna read a couple of things. Um, from big lots, believe it or not, Kmart, Kohl’s, entertainment, earth, we all know them, right? Um, good one to get on gated Boscov’s. So guess what, this list goes to 30 people in this particular list. It shows you the date to buy it, uh, or the date that it’s of the list. Net profit, return of investment store named the store links. Amazon links description gives you the rank. Let me just read a couple of these ranks. Um, and they’re all in the top of the list. Uh, here’s the highest rank, 250, 3000.

Stephen:                             [01:57]                     Now in certain things, you know, they’re seasonal, that would be a really good rank depending on what category of sell for toys, 250 grand, a 250 K and toys is a good rank. Um, and the lowest rank on this particular list is 70,000. Um, all good stuff. And what I like is you see historical rank, you see the purchase price, you see the profit, they give you the hasten. Again, you know, they’re up there, 30 people that would get this same list that day as we did, but not everybody’s going to buy everything, right? And so there’s going to be limits and stuff, but here’s the best part. It’s going to teach you what to buy. So if the black ones selling well, well then, you know, the white one who always, that’s the rule of shoes, right? Black and white. Um, when you learn what to buy, uh, this stuff just takes you down a rabbit holes, right?

Stephen:                             [02:47]                     Rabbit trails, and you just start finding these other things like, well, wait, if the black one was sell, why wouldn’t the white one? Why wouldn’t the red one? That’s what you’re going to get. And so, um, the group, they’re just phenomenal people. And the teaching that goes on in that group, I, I just see people inspire people every single day. And you’ve learned something. I learned something every single [inaudible] a long time. I have no clue. These new sellers, they’ve catch on way faster than as old dudes. Um, and it’s pretty cool. And so you could go get 14 days free if you use my link. And yes, they pay me. So not going to hide that. Um, mazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage momentum, little dash arbitrage. Go take a look at some of the testimonials on my page. Um, see how gay did pay off 85,000 mortgage in one year, one year.

Stephen:                             [03:37]                     Um, you need to make $500 a month. That’s a little bit farfetched to think that you can pay off a mortgage in one year. We’ll go look at the testimonial, look at some of the testimonials from the members of the group. They’re in there and go see for yourself. Try it for 14 days, no risk. You don’t like it, you leave. But in 14 days you make your first purchase. And more importantly, you learn something again. Don’t just buy it, understand it. That’s what’s going to advance your business. A messaged me, I’m in that group. So, uh, anytime you just reach out to me again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I’m very proud that a ton of people have bought through my links and have stayed in the group. I get messages all the time like, thank you for introducing me to this group of people. Um, it’s very humbling for me if you do join send Gaye or myself a note, um, because it just, it, it’s very rewarding for me that you feel like you’re getting help. Um, it really does. And if I can help you in any way, of course, always reach out to me. Um, and again, this stuff is relevant for this episode. I think it’s really, really neat and I think you’re going to get something from it.

Speaker 4:                           [04:43]                     Welcome back to the eCommerce momentum podcast. This is episode 416. Susan Loke. Um, this is second time I’ve had Suzanne on. So go back to episode three 56 and guest Suzanne’s story and you’ll hear about her urban picker knowledge and she clearly knows what she’s talking about. But what’s so cool is her companies, uh, so hound cell hound.com has launched, uh, last time I talked to her, they were in beta phase and they were doing different things, but they’re launched and collectively they’re up over, you’re going to blow. This number is gonna blow you away. 40,000 listings at this point. Just imagine what that sounds like. We have a big EPA store and we’ve got a lot of listings. But to be 40,000 in, you clearly know something at the 40,000 listing that you didn’t know in the first listing. And so what I appreciate is that they’re willing to say, Hey, we’re learning.

Speaker 4:                           [05:34]                     We learn every time we do something. Most places I, well I did it right and users aren’t doing it. No. They’re saying, Hey, we’re learning things and guess what? We’re sharpening our pencil. We’re getting better at. And I see such an application right now for new sellers. If you’re new selling on Amazon and you’re like, okay, I want to do this cause I love it and I don’t have to handle inventory. I don’t have to end all shipping. But what do I do with this stuff coming back? Well, I could send it auction. Okay, good luck with that. You’re going to get 10 cents on the dollar. You could donate it and that’s, that’s valuable. And maybe that’s the way you want to go. Or maybe there is a secondary market, maybe you can sell it and they could get easier. Um, let’s get you an employee that doesn’t call off sick.

Speaker 4:                           [06:11]                     And that’s what cell hound does and it’s in the, uh, you know, the fashion and you know, shoes and clothing categories, but this is where they start and they’re going to grow. So get in early and learn. And when you hear how inexpensive she tells you at the end, um, and you can get a special offer that I don’t benefit from, but you can get a special offer at the end. We’ll, they’ll give you something. I think it’s really worth listening to. Very, very smart person, very smart company. And again, they’re sharpening, they’re getting better. That’s what you want. Somebody who’s willing to say, I can do better. And they do it. Love it. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s

Speaker 5:                           [06:47]                     guest, a repeat guest, somebody who’s come back who has grown up, gotten out of the beta stage of their business and is, it’s, it’s exciting to know that this is going to be the employee that shows up for work every single day and doesn’t call off Suzanne Wolk from sell hound.com and you’re live, you’re not in beta anymore, Suzanne,

Suzanne:                             [07:10]                     correct? Correct. Thank you for having us again. And we’re live. Our app launched mid July. Um, we’ve created approximately altogether approximately 40,000 listings already for each day.

Speaker 5:                           [07:25]                     That’s crazy. I mean, just think about that. I just want people to hear that a second. Since, uh, through the beta phase and all that stuff, you’ve created 40,000 listings. Let me ask this stupid question. You’re going to be like, dusty, of course. Uh, the first few you must have stumbled through how, how simple was it now looking at what you’ve guys have created now versus what you probably stumbled your way through in the beginning?

Suzanne:                             [07:51]                     Yeah, so we’re, we’re constantly growing and learning. And one of the things that is really important for us is the quality of the listings. And as we get more and more listings we’re getting, we’re learning and getting, Oh there’s a new, you know, vintage this that we need to learn about. So we’re constantly, um, upgrading our trainings for our virtual assistants and for our system and getting smarter.

Speaker 5:                           [08:21]                     Well, one of the things that in our pre call we talked about that blows my mind is that not only are you creating listings, you’re creating better listings. Let’s talk about that cause I think that’s really important, right? So I think we should talk a little bit

Suzanne:                             [08:37]                     second. What, what are we doing? Oh, okay. Um, you know, with the cell hound app, all you have to do as a seller is snap a few pictures of the item that you’re selling. We kind of take you by the hand and tell you, you know, take a of the front of the back. We, the most important thing are the pictures you can take up to 12 pictures because eBay allows 12 pictures. We encourage you to take, you know, blemishes or whatever it is that you need for that listing. But that’s all you have to do is just snap those pictures. Uh, you don’t have to type a word, although

Speaker 5:                           [09:14]                     don’t I have to fill out the spreadsheet and give you all the sizes, the information? I mean, all that should be right. I’ve got to do all that.

Suzanne:                             [09:22]                     No, no, no. You don’t have to do a thing. I mean, you should snap a picture of the size, but again, that is something that you have to do anyway for your 100% for eBay. The buyer wants to see the tag, the, the, you know, the item, um, all the blemishes, everything. All you have to do is snap pictures. That’s it. Then you’re done. Well, you don’t have to type a word if you want to. We give you a place to add in things that you can add, but that’s optional. Uh, the only other thing we do ask is it new or used? So you snap minimum three pictures. Uh, we encourage more, but minimum three pictures. Is it new or used? That’s it. Next. That’s okay. That’s all you have to do as a seller. What we do from the pictures, we identify the item, we do the research, we find the value.

Suzanne:                             [10:19]                     We create a highly optimized listing for eBay, which includes the title, the description, the price suggestion. We find the average price using our, um, we have a fetch engine on our website. We can talk about that later. And, uh, even shipping recommendations and all the required items, specifics and as many of the other items, specifics that we can do. So we fill in everything. We sent it back to you, the seller as a draft. You get through the app, you get to review it, you can change anything if you want to. Most of our sellers don’t. And then when you click post it posts directly onto your, um, eBay account. It’s your feedback, it’s your item. We are automating the virtual assistant, uh, system. So, um, if, if I can talk a little bit about that.

Speaker 5:                           [11:17]                     Well, I, I do, I, I wanna I want to pause you for a second here because I want people to think about this, right? So if you’re hiring VA’s, like we had a VA, I think you and I talked about this in the past. We had a VA, they would list about 300 listings a week. They’re actually two of them. And so we would take the picture and we would fill out this form, right? We had to fill out this form. We would take a picture of the form, we’d send it to the VA, they would then create the listings in a third party software and then they wouldn’t post them. We then had to go in and review them and then look it up and then fix the, the different terminal. Uh, the, the difficult language barriers to, you know, the words that we use versus other countries. And then we would manually go through each one of those. And we opposed and we were doing it pretty scaled. However they turned over and then I had to train them and then it never got the same, you know what I mean? So, so when would the VA, I want people to understand is that the VA has worked for you, your team of VA’s, you’re responsible for all that stuff that I just described. Correct? Correct. I just want people for fairness to understand that that’s a really important,

Suzanne:                             [12:21]                     a lot of people talk about you. Oh well, you know, with my VA it costs me this compared to what we cost and what people don’t, I think often think about is the time it takes a to find that VA then to you know, interview them and hire them, then train them. And if you get somebody from a different country, then you have a language issue and then they, they turn over. Like you said, there you go. All that training that you did, now you have to do that over again and it’s managing people and that takes a lot of time and effort and energy. Um, and that’s what we do for you basically.

Speaker 5:                           [13:02]                     Well, I would think, I would think that, you know, you described it, I think most people heard that, that in the beginning, more than likely in the beginning, I’d probably want to review every recommendation you guys do and then you earn my trust. And then boom, as you say, most people don’t even modify anything anymore that, that, that’s earned. Nobody’s just did that, that, that you had to earn that.

Suzanne:                             [13:22]                     We had to earn that. And uh, one of the services that we offer is, you know, that we, we create the optimized listings, we follow eBay’s and Google’s SEO recommendations. You know, we’re on top of it. We, um, so those are the things that you don’t have to think about,

Speaker 5:                           [13:45]                     which we can’t downplay. Cause that’s a big deal when your listings and we heard, we just saw a whole bunch of this, um, when your listings aren’t working because Google changed something, you, you know, and I’m an old seller. You, you, I’m an old man and an old seller. You’re an old seller. But it’s true. There were fields that we used to use that are no longer relevant. They changed them. They moved their database, they realign things and it didn’t always work perfectly. So maintaining that and knowing that you have to keep up on it and you’re saying, Hey Steve, you don’t have to keep up on it anymore. We’re going to keep up on it for you. That’s awesome.

Suzanne:                             [14:20]                     That’s what we do. And again, we’re constantly following also the listings that we, that we post. We follow what people change and, and we’re constantly getting better and smarter and, um, and we have an incredible, so customer service, if there’s any issues, we’re on top of it. So again, um, our service, uh, has been really popular. We’re growing, we’re getting a lot of people who want to use us. Um, we’re also, uh, since we’ve already created over 40,000 listings, we have data that shows that our items sell about 33 times faster or, um, three times more and faster than it would if a regular seller created their listing. Um, it’s called velocity. Right? They use

Speaker 5:                           [15:17]                     since though, yeah, no, it makes sense to me that you’re able to do that. Because again, as you say, you’re following every single time. Every time they make a change, you’re making a change, you’re making an adjustment and you’re staying with it. Nobody’s doing that.

Suzanne:                             [15:31]                     But, but you know what, I, I realize why is it so what’s the problem? You know, because a lot of sellers create listings and they’re constantly doing it and they’re posting things. And I realized, and I’ve been doing it for, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been selling on eBay since it was called auction, web, pre IPO. So I, I know this business, this is my passion. I still go to the thrift store. Unfortunately there’s Goodwill next door to my office. So it’s my place where I have to go. Um, it takes me away. Uh, some very passionate about this. Um, so what I realized is we are regular people selling things from our closets, from our garages, from the thrift stores. We’re not experts. So if we’re sell selling something from our closet, I’m not a fashion designer. I might know that it’s pink, that the brand is a certain brand that the size, I can see that, right?

Suzanne:                             [16:27]                     I’m holding the, the blouse, but I might not know that the style of blouse is called a peplum because I’m not, you know, I don’t know these things. I don’t know about everything in the world. I don’t know everything about Teddy bears or about mugs or about shoes, about purses. So, uh, I’m not, so therefore as a seller, I might not put that very important keyword peplum for a peplum top because the buyer usually knows what they’re looking for. And when she puts in up, I’m looking for a peplum top. That item is not going to show up if you didn’t know that. So, you know, like the neck line and the back or what is the sleeve called? All those things we, uh, we add that irregular seller might not know. And it takes a while to find all that information. If you really did the work and try to search and try to find the exact item, you know, it takes a lot of time.

Speaker 5:                           [17:33]                     So you think that’s the barrier that you’re seeing? Is that what you’re hearing from people that that because it does, I mean, I would just put it in a corner and say, I don’t know what that means. Boom. I didn’t even know what that term you just used meant. So it would literally go in the corner or it would just say woman’s shirt pink. Right, right. It doesn’t sell. I wonder why. What did I do wrong, Suzanne?

Suzanne:                             [17:52]                     Exactly. And the other thing is that, you know, here I want to use an example. Um, you know, of course we try to use as many characters as possible in the title. We had a seller who, uh, we were at eBay open over the summer and an eBay opened. They kind of give you a report card. They check your, if you want to write, you go and they eBay there, they check your store and they give you a report card and they show you how you can improve your selling. Right. One of our sellers, she just started selling on eBay maybe like, um, six months before, three months before then she found sell hound because she was one of our early beta testers. And um, she did that report card. She’s a new seller, right? She did that report card and they were blown away. They go and Oh my God, you’re a new seller. You’re off the charts in terms of the number. She was like nine point something, you know, they, they graded different things, how do you do it? And basically that was because she used cell hound. And uh, if you and I have that report card and it shows, you know, uses 70, uh, 76 characters in the average, 76 characters in the title, it fills in all the item specifics, prices raw, you know, the prices correctly, those kinds of things. Um, so that was a great, uh, kudos to us,

Speaker 5:                           [19:16]                     which was, well, it’s got a reaffirm, you know, what you’re doing and you guys are doing to me, I think one of the cool things, you didn’t know everything. And so you’re getting better because you keep fine tuning it. How, how much does that make the, uh, the programmers crazy? I mean, it must make them insane cause you know, they, they wrote it right in their minds and then you’re going back saying, Hey, you know, Steve, that’s great, but you know, we’re seeing this too. Could you make this a joke? How does that conversation go?

Suzanne:                             [19:45]                     Yeah, I mean, that’s part of what we’re doing. We’re start up right. And we have engineers who are working for us and everybody is invested in making the product better and better and better. You know, we, um, so yeah, everybody wants to do that. So that’s not a problem. Everybody wants the product to work better. And in fact, we have a product meeting today and we have a whole bunch of, uh, uh, features that a lot of our sellers are asking for. So we’re actually, what we’re doing today is going over that list and making a priority and trying to figure out which one is the most important. How do we get that done in this piece done and that piece done. You know, we’re, we are listening to our sellers, we want this to work. Uh, obviously we want this to work in best possible way, uh, for all of us.

Speaker 5:                           [20:37]                     Right? Yeah. Well, I just think it makes perfect sense what you’re saying. You know what, I’m sitting here thinking about the best application today for this, right? It is, it’s somebody who’s new to selling, who wants to add another channel. Right. To me, like one of the bigger challenges I see, it’s Q4, right? Everybody’s so busy. Every, you know, everything’s going on. They can’t take on another project. Suzanne, everything’s crazy. And those of us who sell more on Amazon, now we have a huge eBay store and you and I’ve had this discussion, but we also have a much bigger Amazon store and we sell shoes or one of the big categories that we sell. And so one of the big challenges are we get back between 12 and 15% of our shoes, right? It’s a normal, that’s the return, right? People buy an eight, they buy an eight and a half, they send one back.

Speaker 5:                           [21:21]                     You know it’s coming back, right? The challenge for us is it comes back and it’s now got a scuff Mark on the side. I can’t sell it as new, right? And in the past we would just send that back an Amazon, but now we can’t. So I put it on eBay. What happens though, this time of year, and this happens to everybody listening to this is going to say, they’re all nod their head. They’re saying, yeah, that’s me. You put it in there, I’m going to get to it, Suzanne. It’s going to be, that’s my corner. I’m going to get to, it’s worth a lot of money. It’s going to be great. And if we and I, in our terms, I don’t know if you guys use this term, we use them, we call them death piles, and they just sit there and I’m going to get to it.

Speaker 5:                           [21:53]                     And then what happens is it’s next year’s pile and then January comes in return you Arie as we call it, where the returns even get heavier and you know, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I want to walk through how I would normally handle that. Okay. This is our normal process. We have employees so we can handle a little bit better than most, but literally we’d get that pair of shoes back, right? We, uh, in that case we actually have to go to our ups store to pick them up. We bring them back to our warehouse, they sit in that pile. Eventually we get to it and say, okay, let’s get them. They can’t go back on Amazon. We pull them out of the box, we take a picture. Now, two of the boys that work for me, they like to create a spreadsheet and I don’t like it cause I’m an old school.

Speaker 5:                           [22:30]                     I make it, you know, not the way I do it. But they would, they do a, they research it how much it’s gonna sell for approximately. They would then, you know, take all the pictures of course of whatever scuff was on there. They would then search for other listings that were similarly sold and I bet you this is familiar to you. They would find one and they would say, okay, that looks like, and that’s sold at that price. That’s going to be the price I’m setting in it. They would copy that guy’s listings or a girl’s listing, bring it in, good or bad cause it’s sold, and then they would eventually try to link all that together and hopefully get it listed and then hit live. Now I don’t review it cause I, they know enough about pricing, but if it was the extra step when they were newer, I would literally say, okay, let me know when you’re done and I’m going to come and look at it.

Speaker 5:                           [23:12]                     Then I would have to go out and research it to double check it to make sure they didn’t miss something and then look through their listing and then eventually it gets posted live. That’s probably what most people would come to you and say the way they do things, correct? Correct. Okay. That is the barrier to entry that what I just described to you could take, you know, if they could get 15 to 20 listings in a day, I would be pleased. I’m not exaggerating. I mean I would literally sit there and say, okay, that’s pretty stinking good. Walk me through again, what that pair of shoes coming

Suzanne:                             [23:46]                     back to Suzanne’s warehouse, what would that step be? Um, basically you would open this cell hound app, you would snap minimum three pictures, but you can, we also guide you if there are blemishes and a few other, um, pictures, which is advisable. You would say you would click a button that says new or used and in this case, right, it would be used, right. And then you click and then you click send. That’s it. So, I mean, are you giggling at me doing 15 or 20? I mean, what’s the most listings? I know this, I’m sitting there like what an idiot. I mean, I’m not exaggerating. I mean, I’m thinking 15 or 20 listings in a day is a pretty good day. I mean that’s, you know, so if you, you know, if you have the same item and you’re set up, you know, you can just move another item, then they’d do another item and do another item.

Suzanne:                             [24:43]                     You can do 30 listings an hour using cell hound using cell home. Yes. It’s only doing snapping pictures. How much time does it take to snap the pictures? Right? So you’re saying I could do in an eight hour day modestly 200 listings. Yes. So one day a week I want to write and I want to be clear, you know, if you’re have a mannequin and you have to dress the mannequin and undress the mannequin and move it and the lighting, I mean that can take time. But if you’re doing that anyway your time, but if you have the S you know, uh, uh, sneakers for example, then you have the pile of sneakers, you bring the sneakers in, you know, your Lightbox or where to, however you take the pictures, you snap those three to eight pictures and then you click send and then that’s it.

Suzanne:                             [25:32]                     And then you bring another picture and then you do another sneaker and then another sneaker and another sneaker. And that can take, you know, two minutes. Right. Can I [inaudible] let me get back to that example. Those of us who are scaled have inventory to manage. And so those who was ever, if you’ve ever gone through the last inventory, this is something you want to fix early on in your eBay career. Come up with a good inventory system. I assign inventory locations in those comments that I send you. Is that where I can put in something to say use inventory up. Beautiful. And so that takes care of that issue too. You can put that, it will actually, one of the updates that we’re doing and a lot of the sellers asked us for that is the skew, right? We don’t have that right this minute, but it will, you know, very soon we’re going to have that. We’re already working on that. But a lot of our sellers are putting that in the, um, the little information which will show up in the description. Um, which is fine. It doesn’t matter if it, you know, Ben 22 or shell do, right. Yeah. Okay. All right. So what I want people to think about, okay, how much would you pay for that service? You know, so for us, we have to pay,

Speaker 5:                           [26:44]                     you know, and I guess I’m not speaking in turn, we paid $10 an hour for an area. Our employees, we don’t do independent contractors, none of that nonsense. They are too aggressive in our state. So we pay a, and this is a high school kid and he’ll come in and take pictures and do that listing for us. And you know, think about it, if you got, you know, 10 or 15 listings from that, you know, in a week, you know, when you start to think about the cost of something like that, I mean, when you come, when people come in and have you had people tell you what they were spending versus what they’re spending now, their cost. I mean, are most people smart enough to do the cost per listing that they used to do? Are they honest enough to tell you what they were spending?

Suzanne:                             [27:21]                     Um, you know, it’s interesting because we’re getting there. I, I’ve learned that there’s two kinds of power sellers. There’s the power sellers that have maybe 500 items right on, on eBay and they’re considered a power seller. And then they’re the ones that have thousands of them. There are, may I call them the mega power sellers. Um, it’s the mega power sellers that are telling us that, Oh my God, you know, they, they, it costs them because they’re hiring, they understand the economics of hiring people and firing people of trying to train people. And the idea that we, uh, that they don’t have to do any of that with our service is very exciting to them. The power sellers are, you know, are saying things like, well, I have a virtual assistant and I’m paying them $2 or a dollar or a per listing or something like that. Um, and, but they don’t often think about the time it takes, again, with hiring and firing and training and, and how much time you have to take afterwards looking at the item and making sure that it’s done right.

Speaker 5:                           [28:35]                     I think, I think the big difference today’s eBay is the market is the market, right? It used to be, you know, you’d find these anomalies. There’s so many listings on eBay. Almost everything I’m adding I do, we do some unique items, but generally most of the stuff that I’m adding right now, we’re adding movie posters. A good one, for example, I bought these so many years ago, I mean hundreds of this guy, this guy worked in a movie theater in the eighties and nineties seventies eighties and nineties that’s right there. And they were the ones with the two sided that they put in the light boxes in the front and then the big vinyl banners, right? So we have hundreds of those lists. So we’re listing those. Um, they’re unique because the movie is unique, but guess what? People have sold movie posters before. So to find the market today is very easy, right? Completed listings, blah, blah, blah. What you guys do a little bit different than, well, not a little bit different, is you’re not looking just at eBay to determine that price. Correct. Your fetch tool allows pricing from other places. Also correct. And is that included in your listing?

Suzanne:                             [29:36]                     Okay. Correct. So what I want to, so a I want to stress, and I don’t know if we did that cause we were mentioning posters, is that our app currently does fashion. So fashion includes all soft goods, right? Uh, all soft clothing but also shoes, accessories, shoes, purses, hats, ties, uh, those kinds of things. So I just want to make that clear. We are planning on adding more categories, but right now we do fashion. Okay. Um, the second piece, what was the question?

Speaker 4:                           [30:10]                     Well, no, my statement was is that that the market is the market. That’s what’s so different about eBay is to identify what the price should be. I don’t have to be, I don’t have to go to MIT and calculate this crazy cause the market price is already decided for you and you guys are looking at that market.

Suzanne:                             [30:29]                     So, right. So I wanna uh, also tell your viewers about our fetched engine. We call it our fetch engine. We’re cell hound, right? We call it the fetch engine. If you go to sell hound.com, it’s also free. If you download the app, the fetch engine piece is free and it’s actually the world’s first search comparison for secondhand items. And what that means is on one screen, so if, let’s say you search for our Harley Davidson leather jacket, let’s say you want to figure out what, what is the price you will get served back five to 10 different marketplaces that sell that item, including the average price crimes and the average sold price. If we can get that, not all marketplaces, you know, reveal the sold prices. If we get it, we, we show it as well. You can also dig deeper and you could, uh, sort by high the low or low to the high, you can add more keywords to get more granular.

Suzanne:                             [31:35]                     But what a lot of people are using the search, uh, the fetch engine is when they’re sourcing things in thrift stores, for example, it’s, it’s a better way of understanding what the price of the item is. The other cool thing about it is that it will tell you that I own a certain marketplace. Your item might sell for more money than let’s say eBay or um, you know, I might sell for more on Poshmark. So it kind of educates you. Where would be the best place to sell that item? Which, you know, eventually we plan to um, connect to other marketplaces. eBay is our first marketplace, so eventually we plan to connect to multiple marketplaces. And then when you post using cell hound on multiple marketplaces, you will have also your own personal dashboard where then you could check and see where your items are posted and when the item sells will take it down from the marketplaces where it doesn’t sell.

Suzanne:                             [32:42]                     So that’s again is our future. We’re working on that. It’s not out. You know, I just want to make it clear cause I talk about that sometimes when people download the app and they were saying, well where are the other marketplaces? We’re working on that. But the idea of what we’re doing is the big idea, the big vision, the exciting piece is that we’re doing an aggregator for re commerce for people who sell secondhand. What does that mean? We’re like the Trivago or kayak. But for resellers, so a place where you can go and you can list on multiple marketplaces without leaving the platform. You can find prices for multiple marketplaces without leaving the platform. A place where you could have your own dashboard. That’s our, that’s what we’re working towards. So right now we have a few of those pieces built, like the fetch engine that you can see on the website.

Suzanne:                             [33:36]                     And we also have a marketplace directory where we have close to 200 secondhand marketplaces where regular people like you and I can sell something where people don’t even know that these marketplaces exist. Right? Yeah. Close to 200. Yeah. Um, so you can, you know, and we sorted it by what kind of marketplace? So there’s local, like Craigslist, there’s peer-to-peer, like eBay, there’s consignment, like the real, real, there’s by outright like threat up. So we, we sorta, you can sort it according to what kind of marketplace and we, and what a category of items they sell. You know, eBay sells everything, but a goat sells shoes only, right? So they’re different marketplaces that sell different things. That’s our marketplace directory. Our fetched engine is connected right now to about five to 10 marketplace, mainly peer-to-peer marketplaces currently. Again, this is the beginning of the, you know, of what we’re building, um, which also includes our posting app. So we want to make it easy for anybody to sell anything anywhere just by snapping a few pictures. That’s our goal.

Speaker 4:                           [34:51]                     You used a phrase, I want to make sure I heard that right. Re commerce. Is that the phrase you use? I’ve never heard that. And it, like the clouds opened up. When do you set it? I’m like, Oh my God, what a great way to describe it. You’re taking something that was sold or [inaudible] you’re re commercing you’re making, you’re bringing it back. You’re getting value from it. We are,

Suzanne:                             [35:10]                     you know, and, and we liked, you know, for the seller, the seller gets, you know, for the seller, the seller, we all know this business, right? We’ve been, you know, [inaudible]. Yeah, I’ve been, I called myself an urban picker, right? I love going to the thrift store. I love the whole second hand kind of thing. What we don’t realize, what I talk to sellers. Um, I give kudos to us, to us urban pickers because really what we’re doing is we are, you know, recycling, we’re saving things that would normally end up in the landfill and just by not even realizing necessarily some of us might realize we’re doing it, but, um, you know, we’re kind of, um, uh, agents of the earth really. Cause even things that are donated to thrift stores often end up in landfill. You know, Goodwill, I love Goodwill. I have a Goodwill down my, uh, down my street, like I said, but they actually, a lot of the things that are donated end up in the landfill because, and I don’t blame them. It’s us. We’re consumer society. They’re getting too much stuff. Right? Um, so again, as agents of, um, sustainability of keeping the earth better, right? We are actually saving a lot of this stuff by reintroducing it into, um, back into the, the commerce.

Speaker 4:                           [36:49]                     So by bringing it back, you’re, you’re re, I mean, that’s where the phrase dough, I love it. I just, I’ve never heard that phrase re commerce. It’s, it’s just a clear, easy way to get it. And uh, it really, it struck me because I talked to hundreds of people as a first time I’ve ever heard it used. And with the, like I said, the clouds opened up because it’s like, Oh my God, you’re re commerce re commerce.

Suzanne:                             [37:12]                     I wanted to say that the, all of commerce, a lot of brands are now paying attention to second hand. It’s I and I think it’s driven by millennials who also care. No. And shockingly, for example, Macy’s and JC Penney’s are looking to start sell selling used items in their stores.

Speaker 4:                           [37:41]                     Hmm. You know, it makes a lot of sense why they would, I mean, I can’t imagine their cost is the same, right? Like the, their, their cost of goods has to be enormously cheaper. And because they can get trade ins, I mean it just opens up the market. Imagine if you, if you take your jeans back, right, you’re a woman or a guy whose gut keeps getting a little bit bigger and so he brings his genes in and they give them a credit towards the next pair. That’s brand loyalty, but there’s a marketplace for those. And why would they? Hmm. Some smart ones already doing, I want to put a shout out

Suzanne:                             [38:15]                     for a company called Yertle. They start, I don’t know if you remember them, they started years ago as a trading platform, but they made a pivot. And what they do is they actually help brands like Eileen Fisher, Patagonia, REI, to buy back their products. So what role does is, um, helps these brands buy back their products. So if you have an Eileen Fisher garment, for example, torn up, it doesn’t matter what condition. Eileen Fisher will give you a, you know, a, a coupon, um, some credit towards something new for that item. What your tool does is then they carefully refurbish that item and then they sell it on Eileen Fisher’s website. So it’s actually, we’ll have, I think it’s a different website. I think it’s called Eileen Fisher. Renew.

Speaker 4:                           [39:15]                     Yeah. Right. I’m looking at it right now. Yup. Eileen Fisher renew

Suzanne:                             [39:18]                     and you can, and I bought from them. Um, it’s fantastic. And it keeps, like you said, brand loyalty. It keeps Eileen Fisher also. It keeps them, you know, they, they have the quality control that way as opposed to if you’re selling an Eileen Fisher garment on eBay, they have no more control over the quality of that item.

Speaker 4:                           [39:41]                     And they don’t have to worry about counterfeits. Let me do it. To me, that’s a huge opportunity right there for those brands. They can eliminate co counterfeits and say, Hey, if you buy it REI, I mean, let’s face it, REI use gear. You buy it from REI and, Oh, I love it. Oh my God, people are so smart.

Suzanne:                             [39:58]                     Yes. Movement. It’s a huge movement and we are right in the center of that.

Speaker 4:                           [40:03]                     Yeah. You’re no slouch. You’re in, you’re not in the center. You’re kind of in the beginning of it as this is starting to build out. Um, you guys had the V you had the vision to see it and you were solving your problems. You know, I didn’t mention it. I would normally mention it. Uh, when I do my, uh, my intro for this, um, episode three 56 is your backstory. It is so worth hearing because somebody is going to be listening. He’s like, like this lady knows what she’s talking about. Reselling. Well, yeah, she was a seller. Um, and she’s been a seller for a long period of time. Yeah. And so, so it’s worth going back and understanding that you’re solving your own problems and that’s when all the successes have happened.

Suzanne:                             [40:41]                     Isles, that’s the reason I’m even doing this. And I feel like the joke is on me, right. Almost something I tell my friends because I hate creating listings. So I now I’m creating [inaudible]

Speaker 4:                           [40:53]                     you’re creating listings. But again, I want people to get this jumped in. I think it’s really important for somebody who’s selling, you know, to think about this. This is an opportunity for you to add a marketplace today. It’s just eBay. Okay. So you’re selling back back to my shoe sellers. Um, instead of letting them sit there and that cash is just sitting there, pay a few bucks and we’re talking a few dollars to get a qualified listing. One that according to you, is selling at three times the rate of existing. Because again, you’re optimizing it. You’re not saying, Hey, I’ll get that other thing and I’ll go back and put it in and you’re not doing that. You guys are putting it in right from day one the right way consistently, no matter what. That, that alone is, is phenomenal. And the fact that you can get a couple hundred listings a week put up pretty easy in one day. If you’re really humming, like you said, you’d work out a system. This is the way you can expand. Have you, have you, uh, I mean your mega users, when you think of your, you know, the mega users of your system, do you have any idea how big somebody has gotten by using your system?

Suzanne:                             [42:01]                     I do know that there are people who wrote to us, not as the mega users, but the, um, the mega user is actually one of the, um, sellers that I talked to. You know, he explained to me that his bottleneck, I mean, he has like six employees I think. And um, he showed me only one of his stores. I that, you know, he, there’s about 16,000 items of 20 to $30, uh, clothing. And I think he does a storage units. I’m not quite sure where he gets the stuff, but that’s just one of out of five stores that he has. He said the bottleneck, the biggest bottleneck that he has are the uh, creating, uh, the titles. And that just takes too much time. And he has people who separately he has like a, um, he has, um, uh, a factory assembly line type of thing. So somebody takes the pictures and then somebody does the title and somebody checks the item first to make sure that it doesn’t have holes, you know, the quality. And then they do measurements and then they do, did you know, there’s this whole kind of a system, but he says the bottleneck is creating those titles that are optimized.

Speaker 4:                           [43:09]                     And so he’s able to scale that up. Oh yeah. You know, I just sit there and I think about our own business and um, cause you know, again, we have not brag and 5,000, 689 live listings as of this morning I saw. And so, and that’s just skews so of them. Some of them, you know, are a lot. It’s, it’s enormous, you know, and our goal is to add, you know, and we want to double, right? But there’s only four of us. And you could say, Oh, well that’s four people. But we got, we have a big warehouse, we have customers in our warehouse, we have a big Amazon business, we have a bunch of podcasts, and we do other podcasts for other people that nobody knows. I mean, is this all those different things? So it’s easy to say we want to do that. And it’s like, well, I can add another person.

Speaker 4:                           [43:51]                     And it’s like, I don’t want to add another person because guess what? They want to take sick time. They want to call off. They got challenges in their lives just like I do. So how do I not say, of course you got to go take care of your sick kid. I mean, of course. Right? And so those things affect our continuity. And it’s, these are excuses I’m giving you, but it’s the truth. It’s the barrier for us to grow. And so what you’re describing is something that I’m going to be talking with my team again tomorrow to say, Hey, why don’t we scale especially our shoes and our return things because there’s a pair of shoes that are sitting in my thing and I’m going to remind him of this tomorrow that had been there and we got him back on Friday. They still aren’t listed and today, uh, you know, days later and irritates me and it’s like I wanted him done, but you know, they’d been busy. So a simple little thing like this could be the answer, um, that a lot of people, so you, you are planning to add other categories as you can, right. So clothing and shoes with the

Suzanne:                             [44:45]                     right now, which is actually 50% of all secondhand trading is in the fashion category. That’s right. Well I’m the second biggest, I think it’s a books and media and then electronics. Okay. Then I’ll look it up. Okay. All right. Well I am blown away about how much cell hound costs.

Speaker 4:                           [45:04]                     Well, I know it’s, it’s gotta be $300 a listing. Am I close? You know what I mean? What I think people would sit back and say that you guys work on a percentage, right? So the common things that I even probably said to you early on, like, Oh, you must take a percentage because you know, um, uh, or, or, uh, it’s gotta be so much an hour, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s not right. I mean, it’s, it’s really not. We’re talking under $10,

Suzanne:                             [45:31]                     right? So what, right now we have a, um, an intro, you know, an introductory offer of listings. Uh, you pay per listing. It’s between a dollar 44 to $2 per listing, depending on what package you get. We often have also other bigger packages occasionally that we sell for even cheaper. Uh, so yeah, so I mean,

Speaker 4:                           [45:59]                     but wait, if I’m, if I’m listening to a pair of shoes for $10, or I’m listening to a pair of shoes for $100, there’s no difference in costs. Nope. So who could sit back and say that they can get their listings up for $2? So back to my scenario of getting 20 listings done in a day. I’m thrilled. Right? You’re saying worst case, Steve, that’s 40 bucks.

Suzanne:                             [46:18]                     So here’s the thing, we did a little calculation, actually I think last time when we talked you and I, you, you, uh, you brought that to light for me in terms of the calculation. Uh, so we did a calculation. Let’s say you’re selling $20 items, not, you’re not a big right, $20 items, not a big thing. Right? Um, and again, I don’t have those numbers in front of me, so, but it came out something like it. Let’s say you can do four or five items an hour on your own, right? Um, and so that’s about a hundred or $120. And then you take away the profit, you know, the percentage for eBay, which is about 12% or whatever. Uh, so you, let’s say you make about a hundred dollars or maybe $90 or that you, the, the pro, I call it the profit potential, cause not everything sells, right? So the profit potential is about $90 for that hours. Work with cell hound. If you do the system right and you can create let’s say 30 listings, you’re doing all these shoes, like I said earlier, that profit potential after taking a, you know, a way the eBay, uh, that you have to pay eBay

Speaker 4:                           [47:30]                     and sell hound is about four to $500 for the profit potential for that hour and any factor. But let me factor it more because what you’re telling me is that you’re selling three times the amount. So the yield, like we didn’t, we didn’t factor in, you know, only 50%, you know, sell through rate in 60 days or whatever your sell through rate is. If you can improve that and you can turn that that much faster, that’s way funky your math than I can do. But that’s significant. I mean, it is. I mean, it really is significant. I’m sitting here like a little school girl, uh, uh, you know, uh, because I’m excited because this is the big barrier to entry in everybody’s business. And Steve lives this, I’m not judging anyone because we live this every day. You could see if you’ve come to my warehouse and many people have, we do have some challenges and we’re going to get to it.

Speaker 4:                           [48:24]                     We’re going to get to it. We moved our warehouse. It’s the biggest nightmare in the world. And so we’re going to get to it. We’re going to get to it, Suzanne. And guess what? We still haven’t gotten to it. So I can relate. That’s why I get excited about this. And I’m still saying this for a whole bunch of new sellers that listen to this podcast who are selling on Amazon. This is the answer to those death piles, those returns that you’re so concerned about, the stuff that didn’t sell. Start with all the shoes and clothing that you’re doing. This is the way to learn. And even just, this is tuition for learning how to create better listings. If all of a sudden you know your listings that you have and then you start using sell hound and these listings sell better, you should pay attention.

Speaker 4:                           [49:01]                     There’s something to learn in that, right? That’s, that’s a, that’s another opportunity. Very exciting. Okay, so I asked Suzanne for a gift. Uh, to give to my listeners, uh, I, I do not get paid for this. So I want to be clear about this. And they give away. You’re right now you’re, you’ve, you gave away three free listings, correct. Downloads. The app automatically gets three free listings to try it. So please download it and try it for three. Okay. And so that’s free. But if you reach out to them somehow some way, and mentioned my podcast that you heard it on commerce, momentum, you heard my name, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. They will double that to six free listings. And my answer to you is we will add another three free listings. So you’ll get three listings and you have to, they have to do this manually.

Speaker 4:                           [49:45]                     So this is kind of a big deal, but here’s the deal because what I’m asking for is for you to try put all six listings up and see what happens. And if they sell, you got to sit back and say, Hmm, worst case today, now the pricing probably will change and maybe it’ll go up, I don’t know. But I always like to lock in early. Is at $2 was this word. So $12 for those six listings, the $12 you would have paid Suzanne versus those sales that were sitting in the corner that you’re going to get to. I’m going to get to him, Steve, I promise. Um, that’s what I want you to evaluate and I’m very excited about this because this is the time of year when you’re going to have the biggest sales in your business. But guess what? Return new areas coming as we all know, right?

Speaker 4:                           [50:23]                     Your biggest returns. Um, you know, I said we sell a lot more shoes, but guess what? We get a lot more returns. It’s all equal. And so this is a big opportunity for people and I’m very excited about this. I’m very excited that you’re live. You got through the beta phase, which a lot of companies don’t make it, Suzanne, a lot of companies and you’re out there and you’re actually selling 40,000 listings later. You’re getting this thing down. I love it. Okay. All right. So if somebody has a questions, a best way to get in touch with you or your team for more information.

Suzanne:                             [50:53]                     So, uh, yeah, we have a Facebook page. Uh, you can write to info@cellhound.com as well. Um, and also an Instagram and a Twitter. So look for our app and we’re very responsive. We answer everything. Uh, we want to hear from sellers. We want this to be, see, you know, yeah, we might make mistakes or, you know, we want to learn, we want to get better and better. We want this to be a no brainer for everybody. So please let us know if there’s an issue or you have ideas or feature ideas. Um, so that’s where we [inaudible].

Speaker 4:                           [51:30]                     Yeah. You know, the other thing that I heard you say early on if people were paying attention is that, you know, you’re getting ready to go into some creative meeting where you’re talking about ways to expand and improve and take action on things that people have that your sellers have brought up to you. You’re actually listening to the people, wait, hello. Nobody. You’re not supposed to listen. That’s awesome. Well, it’s very exciting. I’m very excited for you is well deserved and man, I, you know, I think we’re going to be talking after this call because Steve needs some help. I think there’s some opportunity here. Steve, I really appreciate, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much. Take care.

Speaker 5:                           [52:08]                     How cool. She uh, she’s so cool. He’d go back and listen to the other one. That urban pickers thing is just so cool because again, she’s been in the trenches. Solve your own problems and guess what other people are going to say, I have the same problem. Dan Miller told me that once, he’s like Steve, when two people or three people come up to me and mentioned the same problem, he says, I see a business opportunity there. That’s his mindset. That’s why he’s been so successful. Well, guess what she’s saying? This figured out the same thing. She’s had the same problem and so she decided a way to fix it and built a big team who’s having incredible success and they’re alive and again, go get your six listings. Just take six. I’m going to do it with six pairs of shoes. Okay? And know that it would cost you 12 bucks given today’s prices.

Speaker 5:                           [52:48]                     Who knows what it would be? I’m just giving you a worst case. Today’s prices, that’s what they would have charged you to list those six pairs. See how quickly they sell with optimize listings, and then sit back and say, that was probably the best 12 bucks whereby maybe it doesn’t work. And you could sit by and say, Hey, it wasn’t worth it. Or you can sit back and say, this was the best $12 I ever spent, because guess what? It allowed me to keep focused on these other things that I want to focus on. That’s what you want, right? That’s what you’re looking for. So give it a shot, a soho.com again, just mentioned the podcast some way, my name, whatever, and they’ll double your free listings for you to try and I just, I’m excited. I will do it. I promise you I will do it and I’ll report back.

Cool voice guy:                  [53:26]                     E-commerce, momentum.com e-commerce momentum.com take care. Thanks for listening to the e-commerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found@incomersmomentum.com under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on iTunes.

 

Stephen-Peterson

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