Also, be aware that now is the time to list your spring and summer items.  Buyers are always one season ahead, so when it is winter they are looking for spring items (if you think like a shopper, then this is not a foreign concept to you).  The nice thing about this buying cycle is that if you always keep it in mind when shopping, you can find some fantastic clearance sales for the opposite season’s items.  For example, if it is winter when you shop, you most likely will start to see many clearance winter items towards the end of that season. Why? It is simple, as mentioned, everyone at that time is preparing for their spring and summer wardrobe and retailers also need to make room for their new clothing lines.

Lastly, if you have inventory that has not sold for more than a year you might want to put these unsold items together and set up your own garage sale to get rid of them.  However, what happens if you live in an apartment or condo and don’t have access to a “garage?”  One alternative is to post your items on the popular community website Craigslist – the fact that you can post your children’s clothes fee-free makes it all the more ideal.  For example, I orginally sold my kid’s large, bulky toys on Craigslist to avoid the packing and shipping nightmare (not to mention the exhorbanant fees).  Stay tuned for more tips on leveraging Craigslist’s selling benefits!

New Clothes – Pros

• No Stains or Rips - You will save a lot of time and headache avoiding the need to pre-treat and wash stains or fix rips, tears and missing buttons.
• Happy Customers – Generally, you will have happy customers because they are getting a new product.
• Newer Styles – Offer the latest trends by selling new clothes that might still be found in stores and be in high demand.
• Easy Listing Setup - When setting up the eBay listing, you can sell similar items in one listing by having multiple quantities and one photo (easy to replicate the listing too).

New Clothes – Cons

• Lower Profit Margin - Usually your costs are higher to obtain these new items and this will bring down your profit margin.
• Low / No Availability – If you are trying to sell the hottest trend, sometimes it is harder to get your hands on the item in retail stores because they are sold out.
• Ebay Over-saturation – Sometimes you’ll go out and find a great deal on a clearance item and buy a few of the items to sell in your store, however remember that if you can buy it so can your competitors.  I can’t tell you how many times I made this mistake, until I started searching in eBay BEFORE I bought the item, to see how many were already listed for sale.

Old Clothes – Pros

• Higher Profit Margin - Usually your costs are lower to obtain these items and the amount of profit you can make can be 2x,3x or maybe even 4x what you paid for it!
• Plenty of Availability – Every child needs to wear clothes and at some point a new item will turn into an old item.  In this case, a lot of parents just want to make space for their child’s new clothes and are willing to sell the older items at a very low price.
• Lower Investment - You can start out with a lot of old clothes inventory without having to plunk down a lot of money, keeping your upfront costs at a minimum.

Old Clothes – Cons

• Stains or Rips - Believe me when I tell you, this is probably the most time consuming and frustrating aspects of selling old clothes.  Having to pre-treat and wash stains or fix rips, tears and missing buttons will have you seriously considering shifting to solely selling new clothes.
• Unhappy Customers – Sometimes, no matter how closely I scrutinize a particular item, occasionally a stain will go unnoticed and it gets shipped.  When this happens you then have to spend more time doing “damage control” to ensure you end up with a happy customer and not a disgruntled one (which could impact your reputation and feedback).
• Older Styles – For all those customers out there looking for the latest style,they will bypass your item because it is old.

In my store, I sell discounted new and used kids clothing brands ranging from mid-range to high-end or what some may call boutique.  For example, I typically sell brands like Old Navy, Gap, Hanna Andersson, Oilily, Janie and Jack, Cakewalk, Petit Bateau, Catimini, Mulberribush, Zutano, Le Top, Polo Ralph Lauren, Mini Boden, Abercrombie Kids, Talbot Kids, Laura Ashley, Flapdoodles, Naartjie and Gymboree.

Over the many years, I have learned a lot about what works well and what does not when it comes to selling on eBay.  For example, I learned that there are specific times of the year where I will sell a lot and other times when sales will be significantly lower.  I have definitely had to figure out what was the best way of doing something, through trial and error.

Hopefully, you find my blog to be useful and helpful in avoiding some of the costly mistakes I have made.   Please feel free to comment on my blogs, as I add them. If there are questions or topics you would like answered, I will do my best to respond to them.

Stay tuned … I’ll be posting a new topic soon!

Sincere Regards, Mary Jane