RKZENITH
10-05-2014, 12:37 PM
I'm nearing the end of my third year in business. I originally wanted to open a real storefront but couldn't because rent was insane. By insane I mean six times my mortgage (on the low end) for one third of the space. With that not an option, I set up an eBay account, went to a local flea market on weekends, and registered booths at a few in-state conventions. eBay and conventions are growing, flea market is just an outlet to dump stuff that wasn't moving. After three years, I've finally started to sell a decent percentage of inventory purchased but overall I basically break even.
When I look at my expenses, rent is still what's killing me.
One of the conventions just raised their rates by 25% with no value added. They've been boosting their table count by letting in non-related booths (like roofing or bathtubs at a comic book show) and I strongly suspect they've been lying about table count anyway. It's a 3-day show and Friday is a sick joke with nothing but tumbleweeds roaming the floor. But you have to be there or you can't set up on Saturday so I have to take a day off from my real job to twiddle my thumbs. This <removed> even charges for chairs now, forcing me to waste truck space on bringing my own. I need to go to make my revenue numbers for the year but I resent that I'm doing all of the work and the convention is taking all of the money.
Another convention that I used to really like just expanded to multiple days and in doing so inflicted lodging costs on anybody more than about an hour away. Sales improved enough to absorb the additional costs but again I feel like I'm doing all of the work and somebody else is taking all of the money. I resent it less in this case because I think it's more likely circumstance and not willful exploitation. I seriously cannot conceive how anybody makes money at a convention with a 4-digit, let alone 5-digit, booth fee though.
Then I go online and it's the same story. I bailed on Amazon because I was sick of paying 20% commission and getting raped on severely underestimated shipping. eBay is becoming no better. They take 15% of every sale now (shipping included), every sale takes multiple relists (due to no bids or bailing bidders), and on the horizon are insane policies like 90/180-day rentals. eBay micromanages like crazy and takes all of the money while I do all of the work and take all of the risk.
Frankly, the only people providing a useful service for a reasonable fee are outfits like Square with their card reader (and I expect that to change with PIN and chip). Everybody else just seems to lay around with their hand out. And they demand so much that it's difficult to do much of anything in a traditional pricing/margin structure. I went into retail as a shortcut into funding a manufactured product (because a dozen middlemen there each want half of the product's value) but it's turning out to be no shortcut at all. Lately I've been feeling fed up with the idea of "working for myself" being little different than working for somebody else.
Do better businesses get their products for free or do others struggle against the insatiable demands of rentiers?
When I look at my expenses, rent is still what's killing me.
One of the conventions just raised their rates by 25% with no value added. They've been boosting their table count by letting in non-related booths (like roofing or bathtubs at a comic book show) and I strongly suspect they've been lying about table count anyway. It's a 3-day show and Friday is a sick joke with nothing but tumbleweeds roaming the floor. But you have to be there or you can't set up on Saturday so I have to take a day off from my real job to twiddle my thumbs. This <removed> even charges for chairs now, forcing me to waste truck space on bringing my own. I need to go to make my revenue numbers for the year but I resent that I'm doing all of the work and the convention is taking all of the money.
Another convention that I used to really like just expanded to multiple days and in doing so inflicted lodging costs on anybody more than about an hour away. Sales improved enough to absorb the additional costs but again I feel like I'm doing all of the work and somebody else is taking all of the money. I resent it less in this case because I think it's more likely circumstance and not willful exploitation. I seriously cannot conceive how anybody makes money at a convention with a 4-digit, let alone 5-digit, booth fee though.
Then I go online and it's the same story. I bailed on Amazon because I was sick of paying 20% commission and getting raped on severely underestimated shipping. eBay is becoming no better. They take 15% of every sale now (shipping included), every sale takes multiple relists (due to no bids or bailing bidders), and on the horizon are insane policies like 90/180-day rentals. eBay micromanages like crazy and takes all of the money while I do all of the work and take all of the risk.
Frankly, the only people providing a useful service for a reasonable fee are outfits like Square with their card reader (and I expect that to change with PIN and chip). Everybody else just seems to lay around with their hand out. And they demand so much that it's difficult to do much of anything in a traditional pricing/margin structure. I went into retail as a shortcut into funding a manufactured product (because a dozen middlemen there each want half of the product's value) but it's turning out to be no shortcut at all. Lately I've been feeling fed up with the idea of "working for myself" being little different than working for somebody else.
Do better businesses get their products for free or do others struggle against the insatiable demands of rentiers?