Hi Adrian,

I hadn’t realized you had your own business and accompanying website. Nice plate and many other nice pieces on the site. And affordably priced. Nice job.

Todd

Posted by: Watership

Hi Adrian,

I hadn’t realized you had your own business and accompanying website. Nice plate and many other nice pieces on the site. And affordably priced. Nice job.

Todd

Hi Todd,

Thank you very much for kind words. Yes, I am semi-professional seller, I have a full time job, therefore this is more of a hobby that hopefully will grow in time. To be completely honest with you, it's more like a project for my later days - retirement-pension project 🙂 I have started around 19 years ago, back in Poland. When I was a student I started dealing antiques more regularly, every month for few years I was in Germany (Leipzig) both: buying and selling. Then I moved to UK and here, abut few years ago, I felt in love with Chinese and Japanese antiques - that's a fairly new ground for me and I absolutely love it - there is something special about it. The only comparable thrill I get with European art is something like 16th-17th C, very old and rare - Dutch Deltf, Italian Majolica, Renaissance paintings, things like that. But nothing can beat Chinese porcelain, it's magical to me.

I have to review the prices, with some of them I went far to high, but it's just a matter of having more time for this whole thing.

All the best,

Adrian

I like Delft and all Tinglazed wares,especially late 16th-17th c.

Adrian, may I ask if you find it cost-effective to have your own website?  Did you set it up or is it one of the "hosted" ones - not really sure that is the right term!  It looks very nice and I think the prices seem reasonable, too.

Is it hard to drive business to it, do you feel you sell as much as you might on ebay?

Hope it is ok to ask! ? 

Was thinking the same as Julie.

Professional and well laid out site with great pictures. Priced are reasonable IMO also!

What type of camera and lens do you use, if I may inquire?

Mark

Hello,

I will tell you all I know, don't hesitate to ask, I love to share and I find this community so friendly and helpful that I am seriously in debt with all of you, so if only I can be of any use to you, I will be more than happy to do so.

Julia: 
Initially I had done everything by myself. I studied IT long time ago (my God it was like 20 years ago!) and I am (was) quite keen to do so. So around 6 years ago the company I was working for went into administration and in a matter of a day everyone was redundant, so I had a bit of free time and I did it all myself, It took me 2 months to write everything, do the database, prepare the responsive layout for different screens, etc, I was doing it days and nights and it was working well. However there was a proper issue - I have asked myself a major question - why do I have to risk somebody's else privet details and take the full responsibility in case of a stolen data from my website? I have hosted the website and all the database on a proper server, paid for all security certificates but at the end I was a designer and it would be totally mine responsibility if a credit card details of one of my clients got stolen. That was too much for me to handle. I like to sleep well  🙂 so I flushed my own child, my creation in a hole, I killed it and I went for a paid platform that would have all of that prepared for me. My choice was Shopify, I did the move like 2.5 years ago if I remember well. At that time I thought it was a best option for me, I compared it with 2 other platforms, I have installed this as a trial and after doing some tests I went for it. I am sorry but today I don't remember the other platforms I have compared Shopify with, today there might be more solutions to chose from. I pay around 300$ per year and there are additional fees for Shopify's pays, but there are few other payment options including PayPal. Sometimes I got a client who wants to pay me directly on my bank account and I don;t mind that, as long as I receive the money I am fine with that. I don;t really know exactly how much they are charging now for every payment, it's quite standard fee for each transaction, rates are comparable for all of those types of transactions. Now I think I owe you some more explanations. This is more of a hobby to me, I have a full time job and this is a main problem - I can't develop this business properly. On a regular week my job is taking most of my time and energy, I come come late at night, around 10pm and because of that I don't spent enough of time to boost sells, promote myself, etc. Another thing is that I love to pack my car and drive somewhere to set up a stall and sell directly to the people and I do that usually in my free time. Normally I use all my holiday entitlement for antique fairs - again it's fun and I love it but that's eating my time that I could spent on my online shop. It's very difficult to marry all of that. Recently I started driving around the fairs with a large banner with a name of my website, or if I can't display that I put a business cards on the table - that works, I have noticed people are recognising me. What I am trying to say is like any other business an online shop requires constant attention and a lot of extra time. I do not sell a lot. There is no chance I could pay my bills from that! It will take a long time to get there. Now in terms of ebay: I find it better than ebay. For example, few months ago I made a good sell, one item went for £400, so that covered all the annual costs (I got that piece for pennies, so I made pure profit on it) for the shop and it left me with some extra money for paid ads on facebook or instagram. Don't underestimate social media - I got a lot of attention from my instagram. I am not a fan of ebay at all, I think they are charging too much and in a long run you are working for them and providing way too much for what they offer. Let's be honest - great results are rare, but the fees are crazy high. If you're not recognised seller on ebay with an established position, that's not a place to sell good stock. I am constantly thinking about this issue as there is so many factors that are determining different behaviours of bidders, so many different listing options, that it leaves you with quite few options and few tactics. I would like to hear what you have to say about ebay mechanisms and your experience. My opinion is this - you have to be well established as a seller, as I said, then you could gamble a bit (as we all know it's all about the bloody reserve - that's what generates costs!) otherwise the risk is high that you will be selling good stuff for very low end results. So in terms of ebay I think that it is a matter of your own opinion on splitting the profits with them. If you find it ok, then that's fine - this is the best platform out there, nothing else has such an audience - the whole world is browsing it, and you will not reach the smallest fracture of those potential buyers via different platform. Guys are uploading clips on YT and they show how much ebay takes from them every single month - that's way too much for me to accept that, despite the profits they can offer. it pays off only if people know you, then yes, sky is the limit and with the good winds you can sell for much more then you could get anywhere else. Otherwise you are forced to list as buy-it-now and that's it. This worked for me as well in the past, very good and rare objects were sold quite quickly over there, while in own store they could sit forever. All comes down to traffic and a network of customers. It's a long process... I think that a good tactics for ebay would be: get items that cost you nothing, you bought them super cheap and list it as an auction with no reserve - whatever it sells from, you're happy with - this way you get good feedback and you will find your way to make money there in the future - I think I will try to declutter soon so I might go for that but only with items that I don't find that valuable. Few years ago I decided I will build up myself a website and I went for it mostly as long-term plan for my future. So I am taking it slowly. I am absolutely convinced that with a bit more attention and time spent on my store it could generate much more than it is right now. Also fact is that the offer is very limited, it's a fracture of what I have and sometimes I think it will be impossible to put that all online 🙂 In general it's pure fun, but it requires a tons of free time if you do it on your own. Also I am sure that somebody else in my place with different personality and better ideas could spin it way better than me. I digest simple facts quite slowly and at the same time I am very eager to do something rather than think first, so I make a lot of mistakes and I waste a lot of time for bad ideas... Time is a main issue here. I can tell you that just taking good photos requires long hours. It took me years to learn how to photograph certain objects to capture their beauty and make sure they look as much natural as possible and I think I am still far from my desired level of their quality. If you ever consider doing this I strongly recommend to sit down first and have a proper brain storm on how to prepare your own studio for taking photographs - this requires space and a bit of equipment as well... That's a good moment to answer Mark's question.

Mark: Thank you very much, the layout I use was included in the package, shopify offers few free layouts and lots of paid ones, this one gives you some flexibility but at the same time it's clean and for antiques it's perfect, also it is basically identical to the layout I had previously that I have designed myself. Logo was done by me and I think it's simple and straightforward. 
Camera I use is a very modest Nikon D3100 that comes with a stock 18-55mm lense. So very basic gear but it still serves me well.  

If you want me to tell you anything else, I am more than happy to help.

Have a great weekend, happy holidays!

Adrian

Hi Adrian,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all that.  I have also looked into Shopify and was very tempted but like you, the busy outside world would mean I would probably run at a loss!  I sell on ebay but like everyone, worry about being taken for a ride by sellers, so I am basically selling very cheap items to build up feedback and now and again, I will put in a more valuable one to keep things ticking over.  I don't mind not getting top money, as long as it is a hassle-free profit.  I also use Etsy but that is so slow.

I have been wondering again about using Shopify or there was somewhere else that came up recently, but the name escapes me right now.  If I remember I will post it, I am sure it will come back to me - been a long hot day!

Thank you again for all the info, I think the website looks great and encourages me to be more adventurous!

Hope you have a great Easter, too!

My pleasure, Julia. I think I will do an experiment and I will list few items on ebay, however with fixed prices only as I don't want to gamble and I will see if that will bring any results. Will let you know about the outcome. 

Regards,
Adrian

Hey Adrian,

I love getting involved in startups.  I simply enjoy building a business and If I were to get involved with selling antiques or anything else, I would set it up the way you did with your online business. Screw Ebay, they're crooks. 

My photographer used this portable light box, that he bought on kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orangemonkie/foldio3-take-bigger-ideas . 

Ron