Universal Competition

Now that the universe is just a click away for...well...everyone in the universe, buying and selling has changed. Big time. Your whole thought process in the secondhand merchandise game is that your customer base is actually the whole world. It sounds perfect, but the down side is that the whole world is also your competition. Customers know that the merchandise should be priced somewhere near what it sells for on Ebay. When a potential consignor comes in the shop with a photo or an item, telling us they bought it for $xxx in the year 19xx, (yes, the x's are deliberate), they get "the talk" from us. We inform them that the item had a much higher value 5, 10, 15 years ago. The best gauge is the completed listings on ebay. Not the listings on ebay, but the completed listings. You have to look online because that's what customers are doing. Your prices have to be competitive with what's going on Internet-wise. It's a strange turn-of-events. In the old days, all you cared about was what corner you were on, whether your brick-and-mortar was visible, and if there were any competing stores within miles. Now the adversary is in everyone's living room (or home office). Soooo, it's a two-edged sword. It suppresses prices, to some degree...but you also have a much wider customer base. In all, it makes it a lot more fun!