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Before we get started with the material, a quick note on what Terapeak is, and how these workshops work!
Terapeak is a web-based market research tool and we are an eBay Certified Provider. Our subscription service provides access to 90 days of closed eBay listings, and two years of category trends. Terapeak can help you evaluate your items, determine how and when to sell them, and even guide you to new niche markets and hot sellers.
Any of the screenshots in this workshop are taken directly from Terapeak. You can visit at any time and try the free tool (which provides reports on a 14 day data set for free) at http://www.terapeak.com.
I’m going to post some information now, please read along and at the end we’ll open the floor for questions. I’m here until noon PST to respond to anything you’re curious about regarding market research and the material we look at today.
Today we’re here to look at how to determine up and coming hot products. An item’s seasonality can make the difference between the end sale price just barely covering your expenses or making a huge profit with a bout of competitive bids. A savvy seller will weigh seasonal demand into their marketing mix and leverage timing to their gain. The more people shopping for your item at a given time of year, the more bids and purchases your products will garner! Terapeak’s two years of category trending mean that you can forecast customer demand and when to build up your inventory without taking a risk!
In this workshop we’ll discuss:
• What seasonality is, and how it may or may not affect your item’s final value • How to research seasonality, and interpret the numbers • Building your seasonal inventory to take advantage of the top dollar season • Supplementing your sales with other seasonal items – have a top seller year round!
A lot of products have certain times of year where they are in more demand than other times.
Specific things, like snowboards for example, are in high demand in the winter time, and don’t sell that much during the summer. New models of snowboards are released in the Fall/Winter period and that is when the season generally starts. Knowing this, you can infer that selling a snowboard on eBay in July is going to see fewer competitive bids than in October. The final price you see for your snowboard may not be as high as it would be if you auctioned your item at the start of the season, when there is more market demand.
Other items are in demand year round (like iPods) and their prices tend not to fluctuate.
These are fairly obvious examples, but what if you sell something like baby clothes or craft supplies? Is there a specific seasonality there? And what if you know your item is seasonal (like women’s swimsuits) but you feel like you’re not getting top dollar for your item or the demand just doesn’t seem like it’s as high as you would expect?
The following is a two year category trend from Terapeak. This search for women’s swimwear reports on the past two years of sales:
You can see by the top graph of total bids, that the highest bid rates (the most bids per listing) were accrued mid June, 2007 and 2008! The second graph reports on the sold listings, and the curve echoes that of the bid chart – top sales are seen in mid June, both years.
What this tells us is, though swimwear is traditionally a summer item, we do not necessarily want to carry it all summer. After mid-June, the demand (bid rate) and the amount of listings goes down quite a lot. As we are plotting the course of our inventory, we would want to insure we have the majority of our items listed for that peak mid-June sales window, and that we sold out the remainder of our stock before the season hits an average price too low for our listings. We see that the market begins to move up right after Christmas – when considering the inventory build, you may want to factor this in – sales start after Christmas and peak mid-June.
There are a lot of items that are hot at Christmas time on eBay. During the last weeks before Christmas, items are selling like wildfire. Most retailers stock up and get their sales out there weeks before in December to ensure big sales – but is your item picking up demand during the Christmas season?
And what if you sell infant boys’ clothing? My first instinct personally is that Christmas will be a huge time of year, as everyone buys up gifts for the little ones on their lists, right? Let’s do a quick category trend to double check my assumption:
We can see in the report that Christmas time is exactly the wrong time to list items! The bid rate and total sales over the past two years have been the lowest right at the Christmas season! September and mid-March are actually the big months!
A baby clothes seller would want to make sure that they have maximum inventory available for those big months, and not rely heavily on the Christmas season. Certainly there are more examples of seasonality being contrary to what you would assume, so it’s worth the extra time to check out the past two years of sales on eBay.
If you are a seasonal goods retailer, part of your sales strategy will incorporate when to maximize your item listings and when to clear your inventory before the demand dies down. There will be a time when sales will peak, and bids will push the final value to the highest level, and you want to target your listings to these times. Additionally, you’ll want to rid any existing inventory or hold inventory back till next year, before the market flat lines again till the following season.
If you are a seller with a one-off item, you’ll want to evaluate the time of year when your item has the most value, and sell it at that time (if it’s possible for you to hold the item for awhile of course!).
A great strategy for sellers who move items that are seasonal is to add other items that are hot sellers in other seasons. By doing some simple surfing in the two year category trending, you can view the seasonality of entire categories, and discover some new ones to enter.
You might want to start by using the Category Hot List – to see what categories are currently on the rise. The Hot List reports on how steeply demand is increasing, by looking at bid rate and number of listings. It also reports on the success rate (AKA sell through rate), which is the percentage of goods listed over those that have sold (i.e. if you list 10 items and sell 7, you have a success rate of 70%).
Here is an interesting example I found on the first page of the report, and it is a really good illustration of how we can use a long term trend:
If we follow the curve (which is for the sport>outdoor sports>archery>bows>compound category) we notice that the market peaks in September, and that the total sales in this category has gone up nicely year over year. By the looks of the curve as it travels toward this September, profits will be up this year as well, making September a good time to sell your compound archery bows!
Looking at the fine print we can see that the total sales for the week of Sept 16 in 2006 were $219k, while the year following went up to $286k!
It’s true; the Christmas rush is a huge opportunity online. Exponentially more and more people are shopping over the internet and using eBay to purchase in the month of December.
A quick scan of the last two years of sales activity will tell you when your items will fetch the most bids. Different types of items peak at different times in the Christmas/holiday season, so (especially) if you have limited supply, you’ll want to maximize the profit potential of your item. Here’s another example:
This is a report for the Apple iPod category. For holiday sales we can see that the market begins to rise at the start of November (the 11 and 10th, respectively). As someone selling iPods, you would want to make sure well in advance that you will have maximum stock listed to sell as of Nov 11 this year, to cash in on the upswing of sales. If you have limited supply, you may want to hold it until later in December (total sales here peak Dec 15 and 16th) and clear all inventory before those days. The week following Dec 15 the sales die down.
And I know it seems far away, but it’s the time to start thinking about your Christmas inventory! Ordering stock and determining hot items now will ensure that you are ready for the busy season! We’ll talk more about getting ready and finding hot products for the holidays next month!
This gives you a picture about how seasonality can help your sales!
It’s all a matter of determining when consumer demand is, and launching your items when the shoppers are hungriest for them!
Let’s open the room for questions and comments – we’re here until noon (PST) to answer any questions on market research! If you’re too shy to speak up here on the forum, please feel free to contact our support department at support@terapeak.com and someone from there will get back to you with answers!
Sorry to make you wait! Takes awhile to post this info! Hopefully there is a bit of info regarding Christmas sales here. My advice would be to do your research early and determine the points of the season you want to list your products. Some are selling earlier in the season, some are last minute! Research can help you determine that quickly.
If it's going to sell, why not? If you are in a specific category with your current store, you may want to open another for seasonal goods so you could brand it differently, but if you've got something that is going to sell and make you money, I say yes! Sell it!
you may have return sellers visiting that may like to by your unrelated items too, you may have the opportunity to market to them!
As an addendum to that - the beauty of using market research is that you can enter a new item without the risk or need to run test auctions, etc. You can review past sales to determine value, sell-through rate, etc.
All right you lurkers - pull up a chair, grab your favorite mid-day beverage and join electricalsurplus.net in asking us questions about today's topic.
Okay, I tried to leave enough time between the last post and my response to allow others to 'speak up'*hint**hint*...
I've completed my Christmas shopping and yes, I am preparing for holiday sales - I'm out of space and I need to create a bit more room to store the things I've successfully bid on.
If I don't sell something, I'm going to have to stash stuff and then two things usually happen: 1) I have forgotten what I bought and 2) Where I hid it, which creates a whole new buying cycle.
Then after I find what I had forgotten what I bought, this 'forgetfullness' creates a new selling cycle. *giggle*
are there any programs that you don't have to pay monthly for? i'm new and starting and don't have to much money to use up? but would like to see the seasonal and hot items as you guys are talking about. s
Thank you so much for choosing to spend time with us today!
Please take advantage of our special two week trial to Terapeak – you will receive 14 days of free access to Terapeak before any billing takes place. Follow the link below:
Thank you electricalsurplus.net and saturnchik from keeping us from talking to ourselves the entire hour. Your participation is greatly appreciated!!!!
This concludes the "Use Research to Find Hot Seasonal Products" workshop. Be sure to check the Workshop Calendar for upcoming workshops.
Thanks for stopping by and we hope to see you again!!!!
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