Live and Learn

In April of 2007 I opened a store on eBay. It cost me $15 per month to operate, plus listing fees per bear and final value fees on each sale. I thought I’d give it a go, as I was retired and had started to work at my teddy bear business full-time and I wanted to give the Internet a try.

I did very well. Considering. At least I was happy and the sales seemed to counteract the listing fees. I made money and I made lots of eBay friends and had lots of fun.

In March of 2008 I closed my eBay store. Sales were slipping and I was having a hard time keeping my shop up due to family issues. eBay was also changing their fee structure and feedback structure,and there was a lot of eBay grumbling taking place at that time.

A couple of months ago I decided to try the eBay store again, as my family issues have settled down and I’m trying to increase my teddy bear sales. I don’t like to label experiences as “failures” but I decided after two months of money going out steadily and sales being very minimal, it wasn’t worth it to keep the shop. I decided simply to list bears for auction and the occasional Buy-It-Now listing.

I don’t need to make a value judgment on this experience. I could voice my opinion on why sales are down, what seems to be happening on eBay but that isn’t the purpose of this blog entry.

I really just want to let people know what happened, because I was so excited a couple of months ago to start the store again …. And then why the store just seemed to “disappear.”

Sorry, no pictures this time. I don’t know how to photo a sad face with an eBay logo across the front of it…. sigh

On the big and bright side, I will, of course, continue to list new teddies on Bearpile, Etsy, and my website and we'll go from there.

Many teddy hugs to everybody, Vicki and the bears (we’re eating lots of cookies these days)