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.

Baseball, as a sport, has always lent itself to stories. In any given season, there are hundreds of them—from no-hitters to clubhouse quitters, bench-clearing brawls to disputed home run balls. There are redemption stories, suspension stories, crime dramas, and, once—we still can’t believe this actually happened—a female college student dressed as a foam sausage getting bat-thwacked by crazy Pirates infielder Randall Simon. (The latter could also fall under crime drama—Simon was charged with battery.)

One other plotline you can always count on is the emergence of star rookies. Last year it was Japan’s Daisuke Matsuzaka debuting, uh, quietly, in the AL, while the NL’s smooth-swinging Ryan Braun waged one of the best rookie batting campaigns in diamond history. In 2006, it was Hanley Ramirez and Justin Verlander; in 2005, Ryan Howard and Huston Street.

This year’s rookie crop is no less newsworthy, and it’s been interesting to track the trajectories of their respective eBay-sales seasons. When the year began, Rays third baseman Evan Longoria was a name bandied about by all baseball pundits (and not just based on that name­—there’s no relation). Today, hot off his first All-Star selection, Longoria’s July total listings have already doubled what we saw in May. He’s also a pretty safe bet for Rookie of the Year, and, maybe someday, an MVP or two.

In the NL, meanwhile, the hype surrounding Reds prospect Jay Bruce was enough that, despite spending most of May playing for AAA Louisville, his eBay listings for that month surpassed 2,500. After being called up, however, and the rip-roaring two weeks that ensued, his June numbers rocketed past 8,000. Bruce’s on-field play has since cooled off, but his July listings (3,000+) are still more than double the combined totals of presumptive NL ROY frontrunners Geovany Soto and Edinson Volquez.

As for the rest, there’s only one rook outselling both Bruce and Longoria, and that’s fire-ballin’, fist-pumpin’, Nebraska-reppin’ Joba Chamberlain. But he’s a Yankee. Not fair.

As the candidates scavenge America for votes this summer, each creates a new market for button-makers and book dealers — but that doesn’t mean the profits are balanced, or even close at all. At the time of writing, McCain-related items had sold 513 times in the last 30 days, for an average price of $8.66; Obama-related sells totaled 10,808, at an average of $19.69 apiece. So who’s controlling the market? Well, for one, the folks making those “Change” tee-shirts.

Put that one up on your big board, Johnny!

Stay ahead yourself in the race to gain from the millions these two spend every day: visit Terapeak now to view the entire index, and click the “i” in the top-right-hand corner to grab your own embeddable widget.

Visit the eBay Workshop Board

Join Denise from Terapeak Marketplace Research to explore ways to use market research and find top dollar keywords. Your eBay listings have a 55 character store front, and that is your customer’s gateway to your items! Are you using the best keywords for your item, and are you maximizing your exposure? We’ll review a few simple methods to evaluate keywords using Terapeak research using some topical examples. The workshop will be open for the hour for any questions related to research and your eBay sales.

One of our favorite events here at the Terapeak office is eBay Live! It’s a unique opportunity for us to gather feedback from our current users, introduce new users to the concept of market research, and spend a few days with a great crowd of energetic and successful sellers.

After three days of speaking with the general public, I came away with a few observations:

1. Any economic downturn that the US may be experiencing is not affecting the profits of sellers who sell internationally. I spoke with a lot of people who said that they are netting even more than last year after opening up to international buyers and/or arbitraging goods on the international eBay platforms.
2. Lots of people know who we are, (Terapeak!) and use research to build their business. Numerous people simply stopped by the booth to let us know how much they use their Terapeak subscription. We all love to hear that!
3. debate of Buyer support vs. Seller support rages on. Sure, eBay is focusing on the buyer experience heavily right now (as mentioned in the keynote speech), but they are building help for the sellers as well – look at project Echo – a new feature in development for launch 2009 that will allow outside applications to be included within the eBay platform. The impetus of this is to help sellers, and it’s a project we’ve been very active in from the start, since our tools are seller tools!
4. Feedback is still an issue. Not a lot of sellers seemed thrilled at the new format, but are looking optimistically to eBay to make more improvements.
5. Chris Issak? Still very cool. And Sara and I were excited to see that he still has the same drummer he had on his TV show. Jugglers? Still not cool. Funny banter though, I will give them that J.

If you were at Live! this year, it was great to see you there, and I hope you had as much fun as the Terapeak team did. If you weren’t, we’ll see you in Florida in 2010.

Were you at eBay Live! ? There’s room in the comments below for your observations.

denise

This new accessibility for developers is similar to Facebook opening its platform for applications. The difference here is that eBay applications will focus on improving sales and service within the eBay community. The integration of Terapeak was straightforward, thanks to eBay’s dev friendly focus and Terapeak’s versatility. The entire project was completed within a very short timeframe.

The Terapeak project not only includes access to Terapeak research, but an integrated inventory tool, which allows sellers to evaluate their inventory and receive fresh pricing data as the market evolves. Set to launch in early 2009, eBayers will be able to access Terapeak and other services directly within the eBay platform!

Check out the TechCrunch mention!

Share data like…the average price for a locked iPhone was $493.53 at time of writing. The average unlocked iPhone is selling for considerably more – $603.05. This same time frame saw 354 unlocked iPhones sold in a single day, and only 139 locked ones. This reveals a significant market preference for the unlocked iPhones! In total, $60,075 worth of locked iPhones sold in a single day, while the vastly more popular unlocked iPhones scored $192,808 in sales (that’s more than three times of the locked revenue).

Fred Speckeen, CEO of parent company AERS Inc., says, “This widget is a lot of fun. It sits on top of a tremendous mine of ecommerce information. Our Fortune 500 clients benefit tremendously from our price, volume, buyer demographics and geographic analytics. Updated daily, our analytics show today what will be news for their competitors three months from now…”

As iPhone aficionados everywhere watched Steve Jobs’ much anticipated keynote speech at the June 9th Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, and the resulting release of the 3G iPhone, means the iPhone Index will be one to watch as the market changes.

Please visit www.terapeak.com/iphone to view the entire index, and grab your own embeddable widget to share from the top right hand corner of the index!

Topic: International Research to Maximize your Sales! Discover new markets and cash in on the new UK Listing Option!

Host: Terapeak

Date: Friday June 6

Time: 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PST

Visit the eBay Workshop Board

eBay’s recent addition of an option to include your listings on the UK site for pennies means that you can now advertise your sales to an entire new market! This month learn to make the most of your listings by using Terapeak’s UK research. Understand this new market quickly and easily using Terapeak’s market research. Join Denise from Terapeak to review how market research can take the guess work out of your auction listings and find new and unique UK niche markets!

This trend chart shows the last two years of activity in category #32735:

As you can see, listings and sales are both way up. Last week over 600 listings were posted in this category, generating $27K in sales.
That’s impressive activity for 40-50 year old collectibles. Notable listings this month:
IRON MAN & SUB-MARINER # 1 (1968) sold for $4650.00, making it the highest priced listing in this category in April.
The INVINCIBLE IRON MAN Complete Collection DVD ROM was the most frequently listed title in April. Digital formats for comic books are a growing industry.
Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, opens in theatres across North America on May 2nd, 2008.