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.