A Terapeak interview with Trevor Ginn of Hello Baby (http://stores.ebay.co.uk/hellobabydirect)

How long have you been selling on eBay?

I’ve been selling on eBay as Hellobabydirect for about 18 months.  Before that I was working for Auctioning4u who were the UK’s largest eBay trading assistants.  All in all I’ve been selling on eBay as a business for about 4 years.

What got you started there?

At Auctioning4u I provided consulting services to businesses to help them use eBay as a sales channel.  With online sales experiencing strong growth most of my clients were doing pretty well, much better than me it seemed.  I was itching to give it a go as I was sure I could build a successful online retailing business.  I choose baby products as my research showed that the industry had healthy margins and was not as competitive as areas like electronics.  I also wanted to be in an industry which I knew something about (my first daughter had just been born), was largely non seasonable and mostly recession proof.

What sort of things do you like to sell?

We sell a wide range of baby and nursery items. Items range from small toys nursery and baby safety items like safety catches to larger, more expensive items like prams and cots.  We sell a lot of our items internationally, especially to Europe as the strong Euro makes our products good value for our friends in the Eurozone.  We sell on eBay, Amazon and our own website www.hellobabydirect.co.uk

How do you use Terapeak to help build your business?

We use Terapeak to research products and also to investigate the tactics and best selling product of our competitors.  eBay data, provided by Terapeak, is the only source I know of actual sales data about online sales.  Other, very expensive, reports from companies like Mintel make broad statements about market sectors, but this is not much use when a merchant is looking to make purchasing decision at the brand or product level.

When we are analyzing new products we will use a product search on that particular brand to establish what items are selling well and then drill down to individual products to establish average selling prices.  We then put the sales data into a spreadsheet which allows us to calculate the profit we can make from selling the item by taking into account cost like sales tax, PayPal and eBay fees.  This process saves us from buying product for which the market is very competitive and there are poor margins.

We also make extensive use of the seller report.  This allows us to see the products which our competitors are selling successfully and how their business is performing.

Terapeak Tips from Matt – What else Hello Baby can do to build their business using research?

Trevor mentioned that a good portion of his business is targeted at international marketplaces.  A lack of availability for products in certain regions can create excellent opportunities to sell your goods for a higher price.  Terapeak’s International Report compares statistics for 6 eBay marketplaces around the world including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Australia.  The International report provides charts detailing buyer and seller location and helps identify which eBay site represents the highest potential margin.    I would recommend Trevor try using the International report for some of his products and see if he can expand his offerings into more eBay sites around the world.

If you’d like to be featured in a “How do they do it?” please contact us at pr@terapeak.com.

Quit Smoking? Save money? Spend more time with family?

The above are all popular amongst resolution-makers, no doubt, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many more that aren’t fitness- or weight-loss-related. You can chalk that up to whatever you want — the way we gorge ourselves over the holidays, the perception of a new year and a fresh mindset — but the fact remains: fitness sells in January. (Seriously, go to your local gym this week and ask what their sign-ups have been like.)

That phenomenon translates to eBay, too. While we’ve spent much of the past couple months showing you category trends that rise and fall with the holiday months of November and December, check out some of these two-year total sales trends in eBay’s Weight Management category.

For example, the Weight Loss Patches subcategory:

And here’s one for Scales:

And finally, here’s Program Materials, Accessories:

Now, you may not be able to tell from these blurry screen-caps, but all three of those trend lines correlate pretty tidily with the first week of January!

As for those other resolutions, a quick search for “quit smoking” in Terapeak’s Category section tells us there’s an eBay sub-category under Health & Fitness titled Smoking Cessation, with further sub-cats like Patches, Gum/Lozenges, and Alternate Therapies. Here’s a total sold listings trend for the latter:

So there’s that, too!

Good luck everyone with your own!

Yay!

Terapeak is preparing to launch a new application via eBay Selling Manager that allows users to research antiques and collectibles data mined from eBay, other online marketplaces, and real-life auction houses. Some of the data is more than a decade old, so you can research almost anything!

If you’re interested in accessing this application for free, and are willing to provide a bit of feedback once you’ve played around with it, please email us at pr@terapeak.com and we’ll add you to our beta list. Remember, you’ve got to be an eBay Selling Manager subscriber to access the application.

We hope to hear from you!

Just because eBayers aren’t bidding on turkeys and spaghetti squash doesn’t mean there aren’t Thanksgiving-themed products to sell. A quick Terapeak category search for “Thanksgiving” turns up several relevant results, including the following (365-day Total Sales trends shown below each):

#912: Collectibles > Holiday & Seasonal > Thanksgiving > Current (1991-Now)

• Example products: Festive toys, decorations, knick-knacks

#29478: Collectibles > Postcards > Holidays > Thanksgiving

• Example products: Collectible postcards, vintage artwork

#34010: Crafts > Scrapbooking & Paper Crafts > Embellishments > Stickers > Holidays & Occasions

• Example products: Stickers, gift tags, scrapbook materials

As you can see by the one-year trends pictured, each of these three categories gets quite hot in November, selling multiple thousands of dollars worth of goods every day. And by searching any category using Terapeak, you can click the “Top Titles” tab to get a clearer idea of what types of items these categories entail.

With still 10 days before turkey time, there’s likely to be further growth in all of the above categories, plus many others on eBay. So keep an eye out, and never forget: the holidays on eBay should not be taken lightly!

Over the course of close to 30 minutes, Denise discussed everything from seasonality to holiday sales to Terapeak’s brand new free keyword tool.  If you’d like to listen in, the podcast is available for streaming here.

Good work, Denise and Marlene!

Also, apologies for blog slowness lately — we’ve been super busy getting some exciting new stuff ready!

Cheers!

A little background first: the group of sellers was selected randomly, and features sellers specializing in collectibles, home safety products, antiques and more. Eight performance indicators were tracked for three months for each seller. Statistics related to each indicator were compared on a pre- and post-Terapeak basis, and were then used to determine a percentage of growth or decline.

Some sellers showed improvement in nearly every business facet, while the improvement of others focused on specific statistics. And when averaged across the entire group, every indicator showed at least some improvement.

Here’s a breakdown of the group averages and best results:

As you can see, those are some pretty impressive numbers!

One of the most entertaining parts of the study was researching each seller’s highest priced times. Among the most curious results: a vintage men’s watch worth over $2000, model train accessories, Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, X-Men comics, jewelry, radio equipment, and collectible coins.

All of the participating sellers were a pleasure to interact with, and all were generous with praise for Terapeak’s research tools. Here are a few anecdotes they shared:

[Terapeak] has enabled us to identify a range of products that our competitors are selling that we previously weren’t! And, just as importantly, has helped us to decide which products our competitors have not been able to sell, and [which] we shouldn’t be stocking either! – economiccomics

That’s where Terapeak comes in handy for me. I call my husband (who is more than happy to stay at home while I foray to yard sales and auction previews), tell him to get on Terapeak and check out items while I’m still at a sale. In many cases, that’s been very helpful in determining what or what not to buy. – 6regentspark

I must say that [Terapeak] has changed how I do business and it has also allowed me to look into other markets that I might not have perhaps looked at before. - global-gadgets

We love the Terapeak service. – shiponsiteyng

I cannot say enough [about Terapeak]. Our customers now know that when we say we “Terapeak-ed it” that it’s good info. It makes our life so much easier when we can show people the true ebay value of their items. – quick2sellpgh

Cheers!

We hope you check it out!