Loobalee - Home of the 33 Cent Listing Fee
Loobalee as Growing Loobalee
Aug|24|2008
When we first envisioned Loobalee over 2 years ago, we set out to define a simple, flat-rate process for selling children’s clothing and merchandise on-line.
At the time, we could take our items to a brick and mortar consignment shop and experience flat rates, but we couldn’t do it on-line with enough effectiveness to expect our items to sell. We had to expend the time, effort, and money to attract buyers by designing unique listings. While many Moms were successful with this, many were not and many more didn’t have the time, knowledge or interest in playing this (potentially expensive) trial and error game.
On the other hand, the flat rates we can get at our local consignment shops are high, but the risk is low and the process is relatively simple. Usually we pay 40-60% commissions to the stores — either on the back-end, or by selling “low” on the front-end. If our item isn’t wanted or doesn’t sell, the only risk to us is the hassle of dropping off and picking up (which can actually be enough to avoid the whole process for many busy Moms).
While bins and bins of clothing continued to accumulate in basements, attics, garages, and spare closets, it seemed Moms were looking for a happy medium, wanting to sell on-line but with minimal up front risk and minimal hassle.
So at Loobalee, we based on our business model on low up front risk, competitive on-line commissions, and a process that is tailored specifically to the niche market of children’s clothing and merchandise.
Our listing fee is $0.33 cents. While we always had a low listing fee in mind, “33″ cents was obvious to us once we finalized on our name, “Loobalee”. In fact you will see many aspects of our model and process designed around the number “3″.
And, our listing fee is 100% flat-rate. There are no surprises, no add-on options, no extras. The features needed for an effective on-line listing in our market are inherent to our process and have been taken into account in the fee. This includes Read the rest of this entry »
Loobalee Inspiration: The Best of the Niche Auction Sites
Loobalee as Growing Loobalee
Apr|15|2008
The intimacy of the “old” eBay that I loved is resurfacing in the niche auction sites, and is a key concept for Loobalee.
Though much smaller, niche auction sites are enjoying a leg-up on the big guys, such as eBay. Specialty auction sites appeal mainly to people interested in the market they serve. At Loobalee, we including the best of what these sites have to offer.
Tight Community
Take JustBeads.com for example. Unless you have a serious interest in jewelry making, bead design, or bead collecting, you may have not even heard of this site. And, you are extremely unlikely to buy or sell on the site.l
JustBeads.com and other niche auction sites enjoy the intimacy of a target community where, for the most part, a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect exists.
Other niche auction sites include PenBid.com, the GolfClubExchange.com, and eRock.net. Each of these sites have high appeal to their target audience and each welcome newcomers eagerly into the community.
Likewise, newcomers are incented to provide excellent services and to be excellent customers in order to establish and maintain a positive profile among the members of these special interest groups.
Loobalee.com, by its very nature, will mainly attract a target audience of parents, relatives, and caregivers who have a high interest in designer children’s clothing and merchandise, thus we can foster a similar niche community environment.
Custom Site, Custom Processes, and Custom Content
Additionally, the niche auction sites are able to customize the procsses and content on their sites to suit the needs of their customer to a tee.
There are multiple auction sites popping up that cater to children’s clothing, but these sites are using the same standard auction processes that serve the large auction sites — nothing special here. They are trying to compete with the big guys on price (e.g. free listings and minimal back-end fees), but they haven’t customized any of processes that are generically designed to serve anything and everything from .99 cents to $100,000.
At Loobalee.com, we are fully customizing our site, our processes, and our content to meet the needs of our target audience and target market. We don’t need to be concerned with meeting the needs of a large, broad audience, such as eBay and the generic auction sites must manage.
We look forward to unveling our niche services and specialty marketplace soon!
– Suzanne Rielle, Co-Founder, Loobalee.com
Loobalee Inspiration: The Best of the Big Auction Sites
Loobalee as Growing Loobalee
Apr|12|2008
At Loobalee, we’re incorporating the best of the big Auction Sites (most notably the biggest – eBay) and leaving least desirable behind.
We are leveraging what has worked on the auction sites for our niche, children’s designer clothing and merchandise, and leaving behind the undesirable and mismatched.
In a nutshell, we’re using the best ingredients of the “old” eBay, but adding in a little spice of our own. We’ve also included a couple twists on the typical buying and selling processes, in order to customize them to the unique world of designer children’s merchandise.
Highlights include:
- The fostering of an intimate, friendly environment
- A simple selling process –- designed to stay simple
- The ability to Search and Watch for items without interruptive, non-matching results. We can assure you only the real results you are looking for will appear.
- A little competitive excitement –- but not via time-consuming auction-watching.
- Facilitating “buying and selling now” for competitive prices consistent with market demand
- A standardized shipping process and shipping rates — aiming to neutralize the overall confusion and the games played on the auction sites with shipping charges.
- Competitive and clear fees and rates — that don’t surprise the user and don’t subsidize other markets.
Read below for more of our story, and what inspired us to select these highlights to build into Loobalee.
What I Loved About The “Old” EBay:
I liked the intimacy of the environment.
Sellers were mainly collectors, those with special interests, or those who simply had somewhat valuable “stuff” to sell.
The concept of “Stores” didn’t exist. And, even when Stores started, they were mainly a way for an individual to organize their stuff.
Then…things changed, eBay became a way for people to earn a living, vs. a way to exchange goods among individuals.
I liked the simplicity.
It used to be easy and worry free to sell on eBay — before the concept of a Power Seller. Once Power Selling became mainstream, the feedback system took on a whole new level of intensity — a game of stress that I don’t care to deal with anymore.
These days, I have to want something badly to buy it on eBay. The risks of getting involved in a bad transaction are too high. The focus is on protecting feedback not on servicing the customer.
I used to like to “Watch” for items to be listed.
Now that eBay is so competitive, I don’t like to have automatic feeds to my mailbox. I don’t even enjoy searching anymore.
Sellers are taking advantage of key word usage in their titles to get noticed in the search engines, but at the same time, misleading potential buyers. I understand why Sellers feel they need to do this in such a competitive environment, but it only serves to decrease my satisfaction with eBay overall.
I used to enjoy Bidding on items.
Now, it’s rather boring, time consuming, and risky. There are rarely enough bids to make things exciting, especially in children’s clothing, making it difficult to pay attention up until the last minute to ensure I have the opportunity to win.
What’s worse, is that the playing field is so leveled, that rarely do I feel excited about winning and rarely do I feel I got a good deal.
With no excitement to carry my attention, I’m not inclined to invest the time. And, it’s risky, I have to read the details of every single auction, evaluate the seller, ask questions, etc. This is not how I want to spend my time — just to win a pair of pants!
I used to like the occasional “Buy it Now” item — because if I jumped on it quickly, it was usually a steal.
Now, the site is flooded with Buy It Now items, and it’s confusing to compare offers. Every one plays a different balancing act and game between their Item Price and their Shipping Price.
I used to not be concerned about Shipping – but now it is like playing roulette game.
eBay used to have primarily honest Sellers who were straightforward and fair with their shipping.
Now, to cover increased fees and risks, Sellers pad their shipping rates and falsely advertise their shipping methods. Not to mention that the Shipping providers have a more complicated system than eBay!.
I’m amused to find that even people who work for USPS don’t know their own policies and procedures (because there are too many to remember!)
I used to not mind the Fees.
Now, I can’t even keep up with what they are! So, I am losing trust in my understanding of the process.
Plus, there are hidden fees with using additional services, such as Paypal. It is very easy, especially for novice users to misinterpret the fees and make less than expected (or even unintentionally, lose money).
I don’t mind paying fees, as long as they are competitive and I have a clear understanding of what they are.
In Closing… Stay Tuned!
This post provides a comparison of Loobalee to the general, large auction sites, such as eBay. We also examined the up and coming niche auction sites for inspiration.
Stay tuned for “What is Loobalee? Part 3″ for more.
— Suzanne Rielle, Co-Founder, Loobalee.com
Next Generation On-line Marketplaces Must Target the Audience
Loobalee as Growing Loobalee
Feb|25|2008
It is difficult to imagine any other single, on-line marketplace becoming a serious contender for eBay. At Powersellersunite.com, the listings for 20 active auction sites are tracked hourly. Earlier today, eBay had 13,406,204 active listings. The collective total across the 19 other sites together was only 7,689,423 listings. However, not included in the list are niche market sites, and other sites with different listing models, such as Amazon.com and Craigslist.com — all taking additional significant marketshare and making it a complex task to assess the overall situation.
Even with the variety of options available, many Sellers are unable to leave eBay due to the sheer volume of Buyers (millions) who visit eBay every day. But, who are these Buyers? What are a million Buyers worth if only a very small percentage is a match for the Sellers? Growing volumes of “general” Buyers does not necessarily mean increase sales.
For the new marketplaces, the trick will be uniting the common interests of the Buyers and the Sellers, thereby increasing sell-thru rates. Niche market sites (such as PenBid.com, WineBid.com, JustBeads.com, and GolfClubExchange.com) and Yahoo Group memberships are indicative of this trend.
The winners won’t try to emulate eBay and attract millions of general Buyers. The winners will attract the right Buyers.
At Loobalee.com, we are offering an on-line marketplace to serve the niche designer children’s apparel and merchandise market. For example, our Sellers will sell children’s clothing and our Buyers will be looking for children’s clothing. It’s a perfect match. No other Sellers will be served, and therefore non-target Buyers will not care to visit.
Loobalee’ target market is primarily Mom’s — who enjoy sharing with and helping each other. The significance of a large volume store, or of attracting extreme volumes of visitors is not applicable here. We are about Community, about shared passions and interests, and about fair merchandise exchange within our target market.
We are taking the best of the auction sites, the best of the classified ad sites, the best of brick and mortar consignment shops, and the best of group membership sites and bundling them into a service that is uniquely suited to fit the designer children’s clothing and merchandise re-sale market.
If you have growing children, and you want to dress them in quality designer clothing at a fraction of retail costs, then Loobalee is a perfect fit for you. YOU are our target market.
– Suzanne Rielle, Co-Founder, Loobalee.com
Hello World! For starters….I Want to Have Coffee with Howard Schultz
Loobalee as Growing Loobalee
Feb|5|2008
Hello! This is my first post. So what do Loobalee and Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks, have in common? Not much, except that my passion for Loobalee is similar to my passion for Starbucks coffee. That and the fact that my vision of the Loobalee marketplace for gently used, designer children’s clothing came to be over something like 7,500+ cups of Starbucks coffee (approximated since 1992).
Today I heard at my local Starbucks that there is a company-wide contest among its stores to sell the most coffee this week. The winning store gets a visit from and taste-testing with Howard Schultz. Since I was the first customer at “my” Starbucks when they opened, I have been invited by the friendly manager there to participate as an honored guest (of course they have to win first). While the employees are each incented with the prospects of winning an Apple iPod Touch. I hope they succeed because I personally would love to just chat and sip coffee with Howard.
Not only do I love Starbucks coffee, but I love their stores. They provide me a comfortable and uplifting place to do my work and socialize, and serve as a source of daily delight and ongoing inspiration. I would absolutely revel in the opportunity to join Howard Schultz with a tall, bold, black coffee (my usual drink), and obtain his advice on how to build a successful, fresh, creative company - one that has the power to move the soul of the world!
So, off to buy some pounds of Starbucks coffee (to help “my” store win!). I’m on my way! And, with the close of this post, so is Loobalee! Stay tuned. We have lots in store - an exciting new approach to buying and re-selling gently used children’s merchandise.
Join me for a cup of coffee now and then while you check out our Daily Jubilee, other fun stuff, and our ongoing construction updates.
– Posted by: Suzanne Rielle, Co-Founder Loobalee.com
