This week we launch an exciting new feature on SaleHoo’s blog, called the ‘SaleHoo Monday Market of the Week’. Every Monday we will create a blog post that will give you different ideas for markets to investigate further and possibly get into. To make it really easy on you, I’ll even list some suppliers below that you can check out if you want to give this market a try.
So while I searched for a product to feature in our very first Market of the Week I recalled one product request from a member here at SaleHoo on dinner rings (or sometimes called cocktail rings) and so decided to look into it a little deeper, meaning extra research!
Are you familiar with dinner rings? No, they are not the bells we ring when dinner is ready, rather they are the trendy accessory worn by many women these days and even back in the early 20's and 40's. These are big and bold eye-catching costume jewellery pieces that instantly add flair to any style of outfit!
To begin my research I pulled up SaleHoo’s Research Lab, which you get free as a SaleHoo member. SaleHoo’s Research Lab pulls data from eBay and really helps you determine how much demand and competition there is for a particular product.
So what did I find out?
When I entered ‘dinner ring’ into the research labs software I found that at the time of writing there were 934 active auctions with 51 requests for ‘dinner ring’ on eBay.com (see image below).
I also decided to check out cocktail ring and saw that there were a larger number of sellers listing their items using 'cocktail ring' as their main product keyword with 36,190 active auctions. However the demand for cocktail ring was relatively low with only 37 requests.
I will explain these terms in more detail below, but what this brief analysis already shows us is that there are a lot more auctions on eBay.com based on cocktails rings than dinner rings when in fact more buyers on eBay are searching for dinner rings than cocktail rings.
With less auctions and more demand, the dinner ring is my product (keyword) of choice and needs further investigation!
DEMAND
Demand is the desire or willingness to buy a particular commodity at a given point in time, in other words, this is the number of customers requesting or searching to buy a certain product.
Note: The only problem with high demand is that it usually means high competition you need to balance demand with competition which I will cover in the next section
Using the SaleHoo Research Lab software again I pull up the information relating to Demand on eBay for dinner rings.
Currently the Research Lab checks through four eBay sites – US, UK, Canada and Australia. As you can see in the screen shot above, dinner rings are relatively sought after. On eBay.com (US site) there are at least 51 requests for dinner rings, 30 requests in the UK and 64 in Australia, with these numbers alone you already have an indicator that dinner rings have a promising market especially in Australia.
The overall demand rating is computed based on the ratio between the wanted requests and the current number of listings. So using this factor you can see that dinner rings are highly sought after in the UK and Australian eBay sites, followed by eBay US and least on eBay.ca.
COMPETITION
Technically competition is the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favourable terms. Online you will measure competition as the number of sellers selling the same or similar products. The lower your competition the better your chances of landing a sale; however when there is too much competition as mentioned before the market will no longer be viable.
Now back to our trusty SaleHoo Research Labs tool let’s check how many sellers are selling dinner rings on eBay. If you look at the screen shot below, you’ll notice that on all four eBay sites the competition is set at “very low” which means not too many sellers are selling this product.
There are 934 listings on eBay US, 331 in the UK, 777 in Canada and 338 on eBay Australia – These are the current auctions or the total number of listings for dinner rings on each eBay site.
When you put together the data you got in the Research Lab’s Demand and Competition sections you’ll see a clearer picture of whether dinner rings are an ideal product or not. For example, in eBay Australia there are only 388 listings with at least 64 requests - which means the market is not at all saturated and there is plenty of room for you to make sales.
Just to be sure I got my data right, I did a quick completed listings search on eBay for dinner rings and on the first page of at least 100 listings over 50% were sold - Making dinner rings a relatively good niche.
Taking your research to the next level
Another way to do some further research is to find out how many people are searching on Google for the product you are thinking of selling. This can be really helpful if you have your own online store and want to know what keywords you should rank highly for in the search engines.
The tool I use exclusively for this is Traffic Travis free SEO software.
A quick keyword research using the Traffic Travis’ Research Tool shows that the keyword ‘dinner rings’ has a Global Count of 210 searches and a US Count of 170.
What does this mean?
In a month there are at least 210 searches for dinner rings worldwide and 170 searches for the same term in the US alone.
Since dinner rings are also referred to as cocktail rings, for comparative purposes we have included ‘cocktail rings’ in our keyword search.
The results are completely different!
The numbers are far higher with more search results both globally and locally (US). This probably explains why there are so many more auctions on eBay for cocktail rings than dinner rings as sellers think people search the same on Google as they do on eBay, which is not always the case!
I hope you have learned how essential market and product research are to finding a good product before you consider selling online.
Wholesale Dinner Ring Suppliers
Dinner ring supplier #1
They are the world’s largest online liquidator of fine jewelry closeouts. They offer a vast selection of real jewelry for up to 90% below wholesale. They supply small to medium size retailers, jewelry stores and retailers, discount stores, boutiques, eBay sellers, online discount retailers, swap meet dealers, online auction sellers, flee market vendors, and a lot more. They accept credit cards - Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, as well as PayPal, bank wire transfers, money orders or cashier’s checks. Large volume orders are available.
View their SaleHoo listing (requires a SaleHoo account)
Dinner ring supplier #2
They are an importer and manufacturer of 925 sterling silver jewelry. They require a minimum of US$100/order. They accept credit cards, money orders, and wire money transfers. Volume discounts are available. Sales tax applies on all orders shipped within the state of New Jersey unless a business resale certificate and tax ID number are provided.
View their SaleHoo listing (requires a SaleHoo account)
Dinner ring supplier #3
They are your low-cost source for wholesale handbags, wholesale sunglasses, purses, jewelry, fashion accessories, and more. They accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. They can ship to most countries worldwide.
View their SaleHoo listing (requires a SaleHoo account)
To access our list of ‘Dinner Ring’ suppliers as well take advantage of SaleHoo’s brand new Research Lab software mentioned above then sign up as a SaleHoo member now.
See you again next Monday!
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, all above products were researched using methods recommend by SaleHoo and found to be potentially profitable for sellers. All sellers are encouraged to conduct their own market and product research.
I can't wait to see what you come up with next week :)