pocketmint

Shopping debacle; Craigslist rescue

Last September, I proudly blogged about my bargain-hunting skills in purchasing two sets of dinnerware online.

The Corelle worked brilliantly for everyday dishes, so much so that I went back and bought 4 more each of the plates and bowls, even though the price by that time was slightly higher. They’re lightweight, virtually indestructible, and stack efficiently in the cabinet, freeing up more much-needed space.

The Pfaltzgraff I bought was a disaster. They just didn’t look anything like I expected based on the online photos. The color actually clashed with our dining table. In short, I hated them. They were worse for my purposes than the gift set of stoneware we already had.

Jak and I repacked the four large boxes and hauled them off to the post office, only to discover that return shipping would run over a hundred dollars. I estimated I might get $20 back of my original $134. Ouch!

So, never mind that — I was certain I could resell them for more than $20! We lugged (okay, mostly Jak lugged) the boxes back home and into our garage. Where they sat for several months …

Last weekend I finally got around to creating a Craigslist ad. I spent around an hour and a half on it, including price research and calculations, copywriting, and combining/resizing product photos to fit Craigslist requirements.

I gave as much detail about the dishes as possible, including an explanation of how I’d screwed up by buying them sight unseen in the first place. The one thing I didn’t reveal in the ad was that I’d only paid $134 (including tax and shipping) for the set originally. Instead listed the original retail price ($540) and best currently available online price ($400) for the entire 41 pieces, and set an asking price of $200.

The Seattle area Craigslist gets over 1000 posts per day in the ‘for sale – household’ category alone. I figured I had little chance of interesting an impulse buyer; no one who wasn’t specifically searching for dinnerware would ever see the ad. So I was prepared to repost for weeks or even months, until the right person saw my offer.

I got lucky, and 24 hours after I’d posted the ad we had reduced our garage clutter by four large boxes and increased our cash by two hundred dollars.

So I actually netted a $66 profit on the ill-considered purchase; even considering the hours lost at the post office and creating the ad, we did okay. I do not recommend that anyone go specifically looking for clearance items that they can resell locally as a money-earning proposition. The risks of not finding a buyer at the price you need are too high.

But as disaster-recovery goes, it wasn’t bad at all. I’ve definitely learned to consider weight and return shipping cost when ordering items online. Fortunately my bargain-hunting and ad-writing skills helped compensate for my online-shopping audacity!

Chuffed with my recent success, I’ve compiled some suggestions for creating successful online ads in places like Craigslist and Ebay.

Nine Tips for Creating Online Classifieds

• Time your ad for seasonal demand. If you aren’t forced to sell something immediately, consider whether demand might be higher in a different month. For example, we have a child’s desk that both our kids have outgrown. Rather than posting in June, I’m going to wait until mid-August, when people are starting to prepare for the new school year. Clothing types are obviously seasonal, and certain items (like toys) may sell better in the month or so before Christmas.
• Always include photos. For brand new items, manufacturer photos are fine. For used items, always take your own — using a generic photo of a new item to sell a used item is misleading and may backfire. If there are any blemishes on the item, take a close-up photo — don’t hide it!
• Edit and resize your own photos. On Craigslist, any photo larger than 300px on a side will be reduced on upload to 300px. If you can use a photo editor like Photoshop, it’s best to resize the photos beforehand, so that you can control the sharpness and detail quality of the end result.
• Give as many details as possible. Dimensions are often important, whether you’re talking about the diameter of a plate or the width of a couch. Fiber content, construction, history of use … one of the best things about online classifieds is the lack of space limits!
• Explain why you’re selling the item. If you don’t include this information, many people will worry there’s some flaw in the product that will make them regret the purchase later. Knowing the reason someone is selling makes people more comfortable with buying it.
• Mention any defects. If the item has a chip, scratch, stain, rip, or hole, do not omit this information. You want a buyer who genuinely wants the item you have, flaws and all. Implying a nonexistent perfection will waste your time and antagonize potential buyers when they discover the truth.
• Illustrate the relative value of your asking price. Always include the retail price and/or price paid in your ad. If shipping is significant, as with furniture or (ahem) heavy stoneware, factor that in as well. Make the case that your asking price is a good deal compared to what’s available elsewhere.
• Include all relevant search words. Use both ‘dishes’ and ‘dinnerware’ in your text, or ’sofa’ and ‘couch’. Focus on nouns first, but don’t forget adjectives — when a search for ‘chair’ returns a thousand results, buyers will start adding parameters like ‘blue’ or ‘oak’ or ‘queen anne’.
• Format your ad for easy scanning. Don’t be afraid of white space. If bold text is available, use it (sparingly!). Bulleted lists are great for item details; if true lists aren’t available, fake them with line breaks, spaces, and asterisks. Limit use of all-caps to one word, such as ‘NEW’ — long strings of capital letters are harder to read.

(Photo by acloudman.)

Shopping for happiness

With the entire country in dire financial turmoil this week, I’ve been fighting my own great depression with the quintessential American pastime: shopping!

Well, sort of. I didn’t go on any kind of wild spree, nor was I shopping just for shopping’s sake; we’ve had a few months to grow our home-improvement fund since our last big remodeling outlay, and so I made a list of the next steps I want to take. It’s a longish list that includes some cleaning and organizing, some remodeling and landscaping, and some things to purchase or replace. Most of the shopping (like pricing attic insulation, or careful selection of litter box scoops) makes for less-than-fascinating blog fodder, but I’ll share a couple of exceptions.

Last Saturday I made a trip down to what might be Seattle’s best little shopping secret: the Pacific Coast Feather outlet store. You almost have to hear about it through word of mouth, as it’s not even mentioned on Pacific Coast’s own web site, much less advertised anywhere else. It’s a factory outlet in the original sense of the term: there’s just one, right next to the factory, and it holds mostly overstocks and discontinued items, occasionally seconds. (You may not know — I didn’t for a long time — but most ‘outlet stores’ in malls carry predominantly items specially made for those outlets, of cheaper materials and manufacture than regular merchandise from the same company.)

The PCF outlet is a bare-bones shopping experience, just a warehouse with some industrial tables, bins, and shelving piled with feathery bedding. Available stock varies: sheet and pillowcase options can be sparse; you’ll have the best luck with pillows and comforters. I expected to get a basic white down comforter but was happy to find a chambray stripe instead. I also picked up two of my favorite pillows, the ones with a feather core surrounded with down on all sides. Then I had to resist the urge to add a feather bed to my haul. Bargains can be a slippery slope! But I’m consciously keeping a tight rein on unplanned purchases.

Next up was replacing our dishes. We have some plastic Ikea kid dishes, some Ikea stoneware that Jak picked out before we were living together, and a twelve-place stoneware set that his mom gave us a few years ago. I’ve lived with them so far for reasons of frugality, but the frustrations include:

• the table settings don’t fit our lifestyle: we have way too many large plates and never enough bowls;
• the large plates of the better set are ginormous (12.5″ diameter) and don’t fit in standard cabinets or the dishwasher …
• … nor do they help with portion control!
• various pieces of both are scratched, chipped, or broken and missing altogether;
• the better set doesn’t include any serving pieces, and is impossible to match;
• and while I can imagine many less attractive options, these aren’t my preferred style.

I’ve never really shopped for good dishes before, so I was appalled to discover that ordinary stoneware typically runs $10 to $12 per bowl or plate! We’re not talking fine china here, yeesh. I wasn’t ready to drop $400 on new dishes, so I kept looking for a cheaper option.

Outlet store? I remembered there was a Mikasa at a nearby outlet mall (for loose values of ‘nearby’ — actually about 30 miles away). But when I looked it up, I discovered that Mikasa had closed all its retail stores and gone web-only. Thank goodness I didn’t just drive out there.

I’ll spare you the rest of the dead ends and just skip to the finale: I did eventually find two real bargains that fit our needs. For cheap daily dishes I ended up in Corelle’s online clearance section, where I bought 8 bowls ($1.19) and 8 ‘luncheon’ plates ($1.49). Corelle isn’t my idea of ’stylish’ but it’s nicer than plastic, lightweight, easy to clean, and virtually indestructible — a good choice for the kids and our informal lunches and snacks.

I had nearly despaired of getting a nice dinnerware set I both liked and could afford before I finally found the clearance section at Pfaltzgraff. They have a surprisingly large selection of discontinued patterns, both sets and open stock, for as little as $2 and $3 apiece.

I found a style from last year that Jak and I both liked, and selected ten each of the bowls, small plates, and dinner plates, plus six mugs, two serving bowls, one serving tray, and a coordinating decorative bowl and urn. (We can only seat eight, but I got extra plates and bowls in case of future breakage; with a discontinued pattern I assume replacements will be hard to come by.) Total price: $126. Then, icing on the cake: my usual online coupon search got me an extra $25 off; after tax and shipping (dishes are heavy!) the grand total was $134.

I confess that the decorative bowl and urn were impulse purchases not on the original shopping list, but I judged them to be well worth the extra $16 or so. We sorely need some decoration around our house; I’ve just been too focused on the functional basics to go looking for any.

And while yes, I know that shopping is not a cure for depression — either mine or the economy’s — sometimes new things do make me happy, especially when they directly improve my daily environment. I love snuggling up in bed with the new comforter and fluffy pillows. I expect the Pfaltzgraff, when it arrives, to make cooking and serving dinner more enjoyable and cleaning up afterward less of a frustration. Heck, I’m even a little bit pleased to have a better litter scoop!

I’m glad (and a little amazed) that we have enough money right now that we can selectively upgrade for attractiveness and better functionality. It’s a nice feeling.

(Photo by pillowhead designs.)