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Honestly, I hardly see the point of the “make an offer” feature. Chances are that people would be willing to pay more for an item than your BIN price is, so you’re really just giving items away for less than you could get ideally. I don’t feel like you’ll ever even have the chance to accept a best offer. All the pieces will be snapped up in a few seconds if you can just buy the thing outright rather than bidding.
I don’t know if you’re trying to maximize profit here, but just taking the Pegasus for example. I might have been willing to pay you $500 for that one that somebody just did a BIN on for $300. Is this what you were wanting to happen?
I’m not trying to sound like a scrooge, I’m just trying to understand exactly what it is you are aiming for here. :/
This!!!
I understand you wanting to open up special pieces for people who refuse to buy on eBay, but I also feel this may cut your own profits–unless you are working from an “average price” standpoint. You never know which item we will all fight over.
Also, I have a hard enough time getting to the store fast enough to get a limited production item, let alone a special item! I have a feeling I am going to miss out on a LOT of things I would have liked to buy/bid on. :bigsmile: Of course, I guess if there’s no gallery, I will never even know I missed them. Which is both good and bad.
So far I do not like this at all. I would like it better if it operated more like an auction…but I realize this is too time-intensive for you. Plus, it seems like the auctions all come down to “sniping” and this would be a nightmare!!!
Oh, I have an idea! List an item and say “taking offers starting at (your minimum) for (x amount of days)”. After that time period, if you don’t get an offer you like, put it up with a BIN price. I think most of us can accurately guage how much we would be willing to pay for a piece on a silent auction. Just brainstorming….
I actually like the idea of no notification as well bayoudragon. If there will ultimately be more items coming out at a time, the number of emails from store notifications could go up enough to hit the limit on what one can pay attention to without missing something coming into restock, or new items elsewhere in the store. It’s a fine line between feeling notified and overwhelmed. 😛 This also would help with not having too many people logging in all at once to check at the same time, potentially causing disruption of service to the site or a huge lag in site response time.
I do agree that a month seems a bit high, at least for now with fewer items showing up. Once there are more items, I could see a month making more sense.
I like the idea of a set amount being offered for a piece. If the piece doesn’t sell for that amount after a set amount of time, then it is opened up to offers. If no acceptable offers occur, off to ebay.
Would you want someone to be able to retract an offer if something even more marvelous and to their liking were to appear in the store? If so, how would it work?
@dragonmedley – Awwww, but spelling counts too! 🙂
Chances are that people would be willing to pay more for an item than your BIN price is, so you’re really just giving items away for less than you could get ideally. I don’t feel like you’ll ever even have the chance to accept a best offer. All the pieces will be snapped up in a few seconds if you can just buy the thing outright rather than bidding.
Setting up a BIN allows Windstone to get a price they are comfortable with and will make money with. At least in the case of the pegasi, out of all the 9 ebay pieces posted since late July (mothers, stallions, babies, and hatching) only one stallion has gone over $300 (sold for $330). So getting $300-$400 on a BIN on the site with no ebay fees is really great!
Yes, in some cases the BIN may end up being a little less than it would have sold for on ebay, but at an intial pass here, it looks like they really are getting more than they would have at auction.
Of course, we’ll have to see how it goes after the novelty wears off! 😉
Yes, in regards to the pegasus we are getting more for the ones we put in the store. Our intention is to put things in the store for what we think they are worth. In most cases this will probably be the same as what it would have sold for on ebay, or more. Even if it sells for the same as an ebay one, we will still make a profit because there are no ebay fees. To give you an idea, for every $14,000 we sell in ebay items, ebay charges us $1,400 in fees (so, roughly 10% of every ebay sale goes to ebay).
I would not want to ask over 400 for the special bay/buck pegs. We will also be putting other sculptures up, so I would like to keep prices somewhat relative to the size of the sculpt (to keep certain pieces from looking under or overpriced when being sold side-by-side with bigger or smaller sculpts).
At this time I dont think there is an automatic way to retract your offer. If you go to a peg you have made an offer for, there will be a link to view your past offers. You might be able to delete your offer from there. If not, you could email me or susie (ebay@windstoneeditions.com, susie@windstoneeditions.com) and ask to have your offer deleted.
Alright, so at this point it seems like a good way to go would be omit offers entirely when a piece is put in, then if it does not sell after a certain amount of time, take offers for a week or put it on ebay maybe?
Special Items is gone from the Store . Bug at the store . Computers can drive you nuts . I could never do any computer programing .
Alright, so at this point it seems like a good way to go would be omit offers entirely when a piece is put in, then if it does not sell after a certain amount of time, take offers for a week or put it on ebay maybe?
I would put it in the store, give it a month? 15 days? to give people time to gather funds and if it hasn’t sold after that time, then open it to offers for 10 days. If you can’t get the initial asking price on the website store, chances are you won’t get it on ebay either. And you’ll pay the ebay fee on top of that! 10%? Wow!!!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmthe picture link isn’t there, but if you go to the ‘browse by category’ it is still on the list and takes you to that page, but it is empty. I guess someone bought the buckskin peg finally.
Yes, in regards to the pegasus we are getting more for the ones we put in the store. Our intention is to put things in the store for what we think they are worth. In most cases this will probably be the same as what it would have sold for on ebay, or more. Even if it sells for the same as an ebay one, we will still make a profit because there are no ebay fees. To give you an idea, for every $14,000 we sell in ebay items, ebay charges us $1,400 in fees (so, roughly 10% of every ebay sale goes to ebay).
I would not want to ask over 400 for the special bay/buck pegs. We will also be putting other sculptures up, so I would like to keep prices somewhat relative to the size of the sculpt (to keep certain pieces from looking under or overpriced when being sold side-by-side with bigger or smaller sculpts).
At this time I dont think there is an automatic way to retract your offer. If you go to a peg you have made an offer for, there will be a link to view your past offers. You might be able to delete your offer from there. If not, you could email me or susie (ebay@windstoneeditions.com, susie@windstoneeditions.com) and ask to have your offer deleted.
Alright, so at this point it seems like a good way to go would be omit offers entirely when a piece is put in, then if it does not sell after a certain amount of time, take offers for a week or put it on ebay maybe?
That sounds about right. Again, I’m pretty darn confident that you’ll get whatever the asking price happens to be without even having to bother taking offers.
I like the “special” section, too.
The BIN process very quickly eliminates many people from having even the slightest chance of buying. Especially when two of the three pieces from last night disappeared almost as fast as they went up. If the thought behind the special section was to give people a chance at these pieces without going through ebay, then the setup should be modified to accommodate more members.
I like the suggestion that some members have made about having the item open for offers for a set time frame (a week, for example). This would give most of us the chance to at least look at the item and decide if we would like it (aka can afford it). This without the BIN price. If you don’t get the BIN price offered in a week, then sell to the highest offer that came in first.
Similar to the above, another idea – that may or may not fly – would be to take “bids” on a certain day only. This is a little bit like a live auction, in that the catalogue (in this case the photo of the item) with your minimum “bid” posted is available for viewing without any bids being taken for a week. Then, on a set day and for a set period of time (say, 2 hours), bids are taken. By knowing in advance when the item will end – just like on ebay – if you really want it and are in a different time zone, you can set your clock and at least submit within the time frame. Everyone puts in their “best” offer, which still remains private. The highest offer wins. In the case of a tie, whoever put in the highest offer first could get it, or it could be offered to the two people in a private bidding “war”.
I agree with many of the others who posted – a month is too long to leave it up. Based on last night, though, it is not likely to be an issue anyway.
Just my thoughts
Life is beautiful.
I like the “special” section, too.
The BIN process very quickly eliminates many people from having even the slightest chance of buying. Especially when two of the three pieces from last night disappeared almost as fast as they went up. If the thought behind the special section was to give people a chance at these pieces without going through ebay, then the setup should be modified to accommodate more members.
I like the suggestion that some members have made about having the item open for offers for a set time frame (a week, for example). This would give most of us the chance to at least look at the item and decide if we would like it (aka can afford it). This without the BIN price. If you don’t get the BIN price offered in a week, then sell to the highest offer that came in first.
Similar to the above, another idea – that may or may not fly – would be to take “bids” on a certain day only. This is a little bit like a live auction, in that the catalogue (in this case the photo of the item) with your minimum “bid” posted is available for viewing without any bids being taken for a week. Then, on a set day and for a set period of time (say, 2 hours), bids are taken. By knowing in advance when the item will end – just like on ebay – if you really want it and are in a different time zone, you can set your clock and at least submit within the time frame. Everyone puts in their “best” offer, which still remains private. The highest offer wins. In the case of a tie, whoever put in the highest offer first could get it, or it could be offered to the two people in a private bidding “war”.
I agree with many of the others who posted – a month is too long to leave it up. Based on last night, though, it is not likely to be an issue anyway.
Just my thoughts
I liked what you said, up til you got to the part of the private offer…which throws me. I would like to see what I’m up against. If I know someone already bid 240 on something, I wont bother with my measly 120. Then again, If I know I’m up against 240, I just might bid 250 if I want the piece enough, and now I know what I will have to budget.
Anyway, I tend to stay away from private secret bidding. Besides, why can’t the highest bid be seen? The bidder can be kept secret, but the highest price should be shown. Just my feelings on this.
as far as the general idea, I like the BIN, I’m generally not a bidder since I’m often snipped at the last second it seems like….
4 things I'm looking for:
1. Mother Meerkat
2. production color Sitting Young Oriental dragons to be made in more colors besides VF, Brimstone would be awesome!
3. Female Griffin – Siamese with White
4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male GriffinThe buckskin stayed up for a while.
Three more pegs are going in tonight hopefully. On these it will be a set price with no offer option.
The buckskin stayed up for a while.
Three more pegs are going in tonight hopefully. On these it will be a set price with no offer option.
Or maybe not. I will work it out with Pam, but the offer option shouldn’t affect anybody until the time frame to make offers has expired, at which time interested parties will have had a month to save, count up or earn some money and make up their minds as to whether or not they want to put in an offer. I don’t really see the problem with the offer option. You have a whole month to figure that out. Unless the piece sells. Those who want to make an offer don’t want it at asking price so I just don’t see the problem. Am I missing something?
This may be a little tough to get flying right but, again, it was not intended to be an auction. The offer idea is just to move anything that doesn’t sell in a reasonable time frame.
I just think it will be MUCH less confusing to not bother with offers unless the item fails to sell. If people should wait until the last minute to make offers, then we can just wait until the last minute to allow offers. If the offer form is up for a month, I foresee a month of questions like “did you get my offer” “will you accept my offer” “when will you accept my offer” “I want to change my offer” “I want to delete my offer” “what is the highest offer” “OMG the item says out of stock but the offer form is still there” etc etc.
Here are my thoughts/concerns on the 30 day offer period. 🙂
I know this goes for me, but I imagine it goes for some others too. I have a hard time waiting for a 9-day eBay auction to end. “Am I going to get it? Do I need to save my money? Can I buy this other thing I want? GAH!”
If I make my offer early on, I can guarantee I’ll have spent the money 30 days later when it might be accepted. 🙂
I could WAIT to make the offer, but the odds of me remembering the item is there 30 days later is pretty slim too.
One of the BIG things this new area has going for it, IMO, is the instant gratification factor. “I love this piece. I have the money. I can buy it now and not sit on pins and needles for the auction”.
If I have to make an offer, I want to know in a short amount of time if I am getting the piece. Really, a week is about ideal – any longer than that and either the money is spent OR I’ve lost interest. 🙂
So in conclusion, I am in support of offering it as a BIN only for the first however long and only accepting offers once you’ve decided you’re ready to review them right away and move the item along promptly. 🙂
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