There have been three major developments to my project on revamping my eBay store. The one I am most excited about is that my Xbox sold within several hours of the initial listing for the price that I was asking for. I received twelve offers from buyers before the item was purchased. For the majority of online deals that I have made throughout my life there has been some sort of bargaining or adjustments made on my end in order to finalize the deal. Generally, when an item sells this fast with this many offers in a short period of time it signifies that item was sold for below market price. This makes me question whether I did enough market research on my Xbox and the accessories included before deciding on what price to ask for. Looking back, I primarily based my asking price on what I had paid for the item which was slightly lower than what I was asking for, and I even raised the price from what eBay suggested I list it at. I foolishly did not check the listing in the hours following its initial post. If I had done this and seen all the offers, it may have resulted in me raising the price. This is definitely a change I am going to make going forward: keeping up with the immediate response that the listing receives.
The other development is that I received a partnership offer from another eBay store located in China. I followed up with them over email, and essentially they have a large inventory of replica sports apparel that they want me to list on my eBay store. Perhaps I will be drop-shipping on eBay after all. I believe they saw my eBay store and its success as a way in to the American customer base. I need to do more research on this partnership and the items they have to offer to better understand how it would work, but I am certainly intrigued by their offer. Considering this partnership development as its own new project within my entire eBay project, this embodies the communication stage of the design process. I didn’t expect a new project to emerge out of my initial design-project strives. This provides a good example of an idea discussed by Aspelund on how changes are always made along to the design process. It manifests the importance of getting an idea going, without spending too much time overthinking the design to get it perfect, because it will be changed at some point along the design process as you move from step to step.
The immediate success that I have received from my eBay project is a major confidence and motivation boost. It has made me reminisce about my sneaker-selling past and how good it feels to make a deal and turn a profit. With a sale under my belt, a little more capital to invest, and a new partnership opportunity in the works I am motivated to keep this project going and I am already thinking about things to sell next and who else to reach out to.
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