Crazystu will soon offer Auctions as part of our expanding service portfolio. Online auctions are an exciting way to buy products as the average end price is often cheaper than the retail product price.
As some of you may know, Crazystu have had a presense on Ebay for quite some time. Bidding and selling through ebay creates problems for both consumers and sellers like CrzyStu alike. Firstly, Ebay is an expensive way to buy and sell. Why? Because Ebay Double and Tripple charges the seller for each auction.
How? Ebay charge a fee for listing the product (which may or may not sell) then they charge again for selling the product which is charged as a percentage based on a sliding scale depending on the final product value. Ebay then charge the seller again when a buyer uses Paypal to complete a transaction.
Here's an example of a Camping fridge and the fees for selling on Ebay.
Product sold for $1499 + Shipping $29* = $1528. *(Actual shipping cost was $16.28 - listed in Ebay as $29)
Ebay Listing fee $3.50
Subtile fee $0.49
Gallery Insertion fee $0.58
Final value fee $32.28
Total Ebay Fees $36.86
Optional +Paypal $26.74
Total Ebay +Paypal Fees $63.58
Uhhh? $63.58?? Who pays for that? The buyer? Yes. The seller? Yes. You may not see the fees, but the seller does and usually builds it into their starting price and shipping price. Unlike most, in Crazystu's case, we wear a very large proportion of this. If it were Crazystu selling the product mentioned above at an ACTUAL shipping cost of $16.58 from Australia Post we would have paid a total of 81% (around $51) of the fees associated (excluding actual shipping cost). The customer paid the additional 19% or $12.58 (again excluding actual shipping cost).
Its not hard to see how bidding with Ebay is a bad idea IF it can be avoided. As Crazystu always strive to be the cheapest on everything we do, that $50 hurts. It drastically affects our ability to discount products sold on ebay AND our own website.
From a sellers point of view, these fees are most often incorporated into over zealous shipping and handling fees which much of the time as our research shows, negate the "cheaper" price they originally purchased the product for. They seller is then lulled into buying a product through Ebay at a more expensively price than what they could if the product was purchased through a website such as Crazystu.com.au.
We at Crazystu also purchase products through ebay from time to time. So why do we use ebay as a consumer? Because Ebay enables us to find a variety of products from a single search engine. Saying that, if I knew where to find the kind of products we purchase through ebay elsewhere, I would. Hands down every time. Trouble is that ebay makes selling products easy, anyone can do it without needing to know the ins and outs of complicated e-commerce systems and their infrastructure. Much of the product we buy through ebay "is" available online, however the people who sell it, usually don't know how to sell it online. Our packaging supplier is a good example. We used to purchase some of these products from ebay. We searched Google for around 30mins before giving up, turning to ebay and finding exactly what we were after within about 2mins. It was not until one of our colleagues drove past a packaging supplier and stopped to check it out that we stopped using ebay. We ended up getting a better product, locally at a cheaper price. That supplier gave us his website address of which we looked at back in the office. Low and behold, the products we were after were online, however his e-commerce system firstly did not work, secondly had no prices as it was too difficult for him to maintain them and lastly his website wasn't indexed well with search engines.
So why are we doing Auctions now? Everyone knows what Crazystu are good at. Just take a look at our front page. Discount electronics. We want to scale back ebay and use its for what its good at. Advertising.
If we Auction products, we want to do it through our own website because :
1)Its cheaper for YOU!
2)Its cheaper for us!
3)Because if it's cheaper for us, its even cheaper for YOU.
4)You get EXACTLY the same buyer protection as you would with ebay: 100% buyer protection if payed with Paypal and the ability to leave feedback for your purchase, be it GOOD or BAD.
5)We HATE Ebay!
People, its simple. Bid on Crazystu.com.au. Its cheaper for us and cheaper for you.
