Finding an angle is a chalange on Ebay!, but keeping it?

Hi My name is John and I am new to Salehoo, but have been doing eaby for 1 year now. I have been selling ties and was doing Ok and was prepared to take it to the next level, Until manufactures from china wanted to sell direct through ebay and selling ties for $2. I am confident I can find a way to make money on ebay, but after my last experience I It seems as though as soon as I find an angle there will be people in line to out angle me. Am I on to something, or just paranoid? Or will it be a constant game of who is going to out angle who?

I think you have it pretty well worked out John. Business online moves at a very rapid rate, and there are an increasing amount of players on the field of online sales.


Finding your angle is difficult enough most of the time, but damn hard to keep it unique as others try to replicate a winning process.

You may not have the price advantage that you did before with your ties, but you do have the advantage of location.

I may well be proved wrong on this one because I have no stats to back me up, but I believe that most on sites such as ebay would prefer to buy from a local provider, or even one from the west.

Most have the perception that if it is coming from China then it is cheap and nasty, of course not always the case at all. I would be turning my marketing angle slightly to reflect the fact that I'm a trusted local seller, not selling from China whether you are buying from there or not.

Of course I am assuming here that you were buying in bulk, and not drop shipping...lol

It's horrible, but factually true, a negative pitch to highlight the fear of the unknown with a customer can generate a sale just as quick as a positive reinforcement, maybe even quicker in some cases.

Maybe even look for another supplier with different fashions to test another tie market.

You never know, maybe there is still a way of hanging on to your market, and of course if price is the issue then you could look at liquidation stock to get an edge.

Thanks fudjj. Yes my quality is better, even though it is china product, it is product designed for US Retail. Unlike most of the ties made from China on ebay which is designed for ebay only, I know I sampled a few!

Even with this marketing stradigy I am afraid it will only increase my already slim closing ratio by a few percent.

I think going into a bigger ticket item may be more profitable, like watches. What do you think? I will post a question on selling watches.

I would only be guessing with no hard data to back me up, but watches on ebay seems to be a very saturated market. Your tie market sounds to me to be more of a niche based market, especially with the design specifics you mentioned.

I think what you will find with moving into bigger ticket items, is that won't translate into bigger margin for you, in fact depending on the saturation point, it could be much less.

Certainly sounds that your tie market was very specific market, and that's the really hard thing to find on ebay these days.

This one is going to take some serious research I think, but then again that's what it's all about.

Good luck with it.