Thursday, July 17, 2003
Long call with Bob today, who was in Maine visiting Sheila's first granddaughter over the last weekend. On the long drive back he says he spent a lot of time thinking about what it would be like if I did get laid off, and he was more excited about the prospect than ever. "We could do a thousand a week on ebay, easy," he said, and I could feel the wheels turning. "I could take the pictures, we have tons of junk that we don't even put out for sale, we have hundreds of out of print things that people would kill for. And the best part is..." He paused, and I waited for the final sales pitch. "...you wouldn't even have to leave your house most days. We could do it all virtually." I knew all this of course, but it was still so delicious to hear the possiblity of no commute to work spoken aloud.
If I had the time to put up 100 items a week, we could double our weekly sales at the store in no time. We could stop living from hand to mouth, fix the things in the building that needed to be fixed, and even pay me a little salary. We'd get rid of all the old crap that fills the second floor of the building (600-700 metal diecast cars alone) and have more space.
He started on about Sheila knowing when they dump stuff at Barnes and Noble for a dollar with her employee discount. If we picked up the better stuff and ebayed or half.com'ed it, our margins would be breathtaking compared to what we scrape by with at the store. I like this plan too, because it's sustainable; the sales stock would not be finite the way our storage inventory is.
Obviously it would still be a lot of work for me. A hundred items a week is a hell of a lot of ebaying. And that's just the writing and posting of the items; I'd also be proprietary about the shipping because I am a stickler for it and would end up spending hours in the PO every week. But I've worked hard before (though not now) and I can do it again. I would only need the time.
So just talking about the future made me feel overall better about everything. It was always my plan to work more with the store if the "worst" happened and I lost my job. But now that the possibility gets more, well, possible, I am sanguine about it, and not in the bloody sense.
If I had the time to put up 100 items a week, we could double our weekly sales at the store in no time. We could stop living from hand to mouth, fix the things in the building that needed to be fixed, and even pay me a little salary. We'd get rid of all the old crap that fills the second floor of the building (600-700 metal diecast cars alone) and have more space.
He started on about Sheila knowing when they dump stuff at Barnes and Noble for a dollar with her employee discount. If we picked up the better stuff and ebayed or half.com'ed it, our margins would be breathtaking compared to what we scrape by with at the store. I like this plan too, because it's sustainable; the sales stock would not be finite the way our storage inventory is.
Obviously it would still be a lot of work for me. A hundred items a week is a hell of a lot of ebaying. And that's just the writing and posting of the items; I'd also be proprietary about the shipping because I am a stickler for it and would end up spending hours in the PO every week. But I've worked hard before (though not now) and I can do it again. I would only need the time.
So just talking about the future made me feel overall better about everything. It was always my plan to work more with the store if the "worst" happened and I lost my job. But now that the possibility gets more, well, possible, I am sanguine about it, and not in the bloody sense.
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