(continued
from previous page)Afraid to eBay? Hire an online
auction service -- Page 2By Jay
MacDonald • Bankrate.com
If your item doesn't sell, it is returned to you,
no charge. If you don't pick it up within 15 days, it is donated
to charity.
QuikDrop limits its service to items that ship within
the UPS 150-pound limit. That said, they do make exceptions. They
recently sold a 200-pound polished African rock. They also sold
Arnold Schwarzenegger's original Hummer for $70,000 as a drive-away
proposition to a West Coast buyer. But in general, bulky items such as
sofas, TVs, washers or dryers don't make for viable consignments.
Reynolds estimates a franchise should be able to sell
600 to 800 items a month, or roughly 20 to 30 per day, with ease.
"Right now, retailing is basically a one-way
proposition where products come from a manufacturer and go to an
end-user," says Reynolds. "This is the first retail idea
that brings items the other way. I think you're going to see eBay
drop-off stores on every corner."
The eBay trading post
Brian Spindel has less lofty goals for the eBay drop-offs at PostNet,
who along with AuctionDrop has embarked in a pilot program as an
official eBay Trading Post. The CFO who co-founded the 850-store
franchise in 1993 is shooting to see one to two items per day through
each of the 12 pilot drop-off stores by the end of the first quarter.
The reason? PostNet relies on its list of business
services, from copying and computer rental to passport photos, shipping,
signs and banners, to keep the lights on.
"The good news is, we don't have to sell 40 items
a day to make a business out of it. If we do two or three items
a day at each of our locations, we would be very pleased,"
Spindel says.
PostNet partnered with MyEZsale in a 1999 pilot program
at its stores in Phoenix and Denver.
"Even back then, when eBay wasn't nearly as popular
as it is now, we got some good traction with customers," he
says. "They liked the fact that they could come into the store
and drop an item off and receive a check 30 days later."
Unlike AuctionDrop, which sends its consigned items
to a central location for listing onto eBay, PostNet's franchises
photograph and hold the item, but forward the description electronically
to PostNet headquarters in Henderson, Nev. From there, its eBay
experts create and launch listings once a day and handle all customer
service during the auction.
Spindel thinks the eBay Trading Post designation,
which allows PostNet to trade under a single seller account, will
give it a boost on the street.
"I think ultimately once this program grows,
it will mean something to the consumer, too, that the item was taken
in by a third party, that what you're looking at is actually the
item you will end up getting, and that it's in secured, safe storage
and will be packed and shipped professionally. All of those things,
long term, will end up meaning something to the consumer."
PostNet already has plans to expand its eBay Trading
Post service beyond its pilot stores in California, Nevada, Arizona
and Georgia. AuctionDrop, based in San Carlos, Calif., with five
stores in northern California, plans to expand into the New York
tri-state area.
The fundraiser factor
Ina Steiner, editor and publisher of the online auction newsletter
AuctionBytes, says it is too soon to tell if either drop-off model
will catch fire with a populace that is far more focused on acquiring
new stuff than disposing of used.
"It really gets down to the right kind of inventory.
You really want to shoot for items that are in the hundreds of dollars.
It really is a time-consuming business," she says.
"The advantage to the storefront is they are
there, they're convenient if they're located next to a bank or a
business where people might be coming anyway. The question is, if
one suddenly popped up in my hometown, would there be enough people
interested to drop things off there? I don't know. I think it helps
that eBay has become more mainstream so people are more familiar
with the whole concept, but we're not convinced that the whole storefront
model will work."
What could lend the burgeoning drop-off industry a
helping hand is its natural fit with community fundraising of all
sorts. Bake sales, car washes and door-to-door candy sales could
become passé if schools, churches and charities seek the
greater returns that their donated items might bring when auctioned
online, says Reynolds.
"A giant part of our business is charity fundraising,
where people bring in an item to raise money for a school or something
of that nature. We get a lot more money for stuff on eBay than most
people. If you're an amateur, you're not going to get near what
you're going to get if you're experienced in doing this."
Jay MacDonald is a contributing
editor based in Mississippi.
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