Advice on opening Bricklink store.

[j.hermit]

Howdy.  I've finally decided to give Bricklink a try;  I've been kicking the idea around for months now.  The Ebay part-out store has been operating for almost a year now and has treated me well-  I'm a TRS with 1500 transactions, and I'm currently running about $3-4K in sales a month.  I'm fine with selling minifigs on Ebay, but I've never been a big fan of the "sets w/o minifigs" method for sets.  As the store's gotten bigger, there are always more sets sitting around for longer, and the ones that do sell will often go for less than I feel they're worth.  Especially being an old-school builder, it makes me grind my teeth every time I sell the entire set portion for less than one of the set's individual minifigs.

 

If I liquidate (brickuidate?) my current "no figs" inventory and start mining the mighty Clearance Mountain, I estimate I could have a starting inventory of between 50-100k parts.  Approaching Bricklink is daunting enough, and with that much possible inventory, I have no idea about the best way to price it or get everything uploaded.

 

If anyone has any advice to give (either general or specific), or if you know of any good sources of information, feel free to let me know.  Also (and I hate to admit this), I haven't bought anything from BrickLink yet- I build plenty, but I'm usually making stuff for the kids out of their Lego.  I want to be familiar with their order process before I start worrying about a store, so mention your store if you reply and maybe i'll place an order.

 

 

[mykingdomforabrick]

Go download brickstock and use it to upload your inventory.

Brickstock will let you add your inventory and download the average prices per item, then manipulate them en masse as you want to (increase/decrease,etc)

 

Running a BL store is about 500% more work then I anticipated.  Mostly the drudgery of sorting, labeling, etc.

If you've already run an ebay parts store with bricks that won't be new to you.

 

On the upside the BL buyers have to be the nicest clients I've ever run across.  

[justafrog]

I use the part set function on Bricklink - you can do the same if you've kept the sets intact, just remember to manually remove the minifigs and any of their accessories that you will not be uploading from the editing page that will pop up for you in the part set process.

 

Making a few small orders first is a good plan - it'll get you familiar with the process as you mentioned, and it'll get you a few feedback points to start with, which will make some buyers more comfortable with you.

 

Before you upload anything, make sure you have your filing system set up and the parts you're about to upload already filed. Nothing is worse than getting orders for parts sitting in a jumble on your "to be filed" table.

 

With your eBay selling experience, learning Bricklink will be simple enough - a few differences, a few things that work better and a few things you won't like as well. The forums there are shark-infested, but simple start up questions generally won't get you bitten (or you can always ask here in safer waters).

[chinothegeeko]

Here is the part out set link

 

 http://www.bricklink.com/invSet.asp

 

I'd advise if you have say 10 sets of one item to do them all together. It helps sorting that much faster.  Check out some of bricks on the dollar videos too. They can be helpful at times. 

 

[Thumper]

When parting sets on Bricklink (BL) make sure you count each & every part (don't assume your set will always match the inventory), many of the catalogue inventories are incorrect, frequently change, are country specific and part substitutions from TLG are getting much more common as are missing parts from MISB sets. 

 

Be aware BL clients are not your average play-builders, many are hardened collectors and very high level build-for-display enthusiasts thus they are much much more finicky about part quality, even new parts that show common manufacturer scratched are often rejected by buyers.

 

Buy first, you need at least 20 orders/feedback to really be trusted - simply buying several $1 orders (and from at least a couple international vendors) shows just as well as several $50 orders.

 

Stay out of the forms on BL!  Can't stress this enough!  Don't even read them, they will do nothing but discourage you from what is a great community. right now BL is being so corrupted by soured individuals it's no longer the happy community it once was before the hacking incident & sale to a commercial enterprise a couple years ago.   it's still a great platform - just don't fall into the forum snake pit - apparently less than 20% of members really go in there anyway.

 

Count your order multiple times, print out the order form & check off each piece as you pull the order, mark a check a second time as you pack the order - things can go bad if you miss a single seemingly unnecessary part or pull the wrong colour if you have the wrong type of buyer.

 

You need all positive feedback!  Neutrals are Negatives - your Percentage rating on the top of every page of your store is a total of Positives - negatives - neutrals (and it displays your count of orders that you made & didn't receive feedback for against your total orders as well).  you will always need to take the higher road & be willing to bend to keep the customers happy even though you may know you are right - it's just a cost of doing business there.  it's still fun & 95% of orders will be easy & work out well - there's 4% more you may have to curtail your own "knows" just to bring to a happy-for-the-buyer conclusion & there are 1% that are just cut-your-losses 'cause you're in no way going to win.

 

Take a look at the bigger stores terms, they know what they are doing & have found all the disclaimers they need over years of selling.  & remember many of the terms are not based in the real world - things like "I'm not responsible once the package is mailed" doesn't fly - yes you are until the buyer has the item & is happy they can still hit you anyway. "Every order is a binding Contract" no it's not! not in any form of imagination - any buyer can back out for any reason they want - Buyers have all the power, they will always get their full monies back or damage you in revenge - you just have to roll with it, you'll always make up the difference in future sales - just "let it go" when you need to.

 

Always under grade your parts & over deliver - BL buyers are refined (picky) & they will let you know one way or another... even the least notable thing should be mentioned in the description.

 

Pack well, spend a little extra time in presentation - it makes a world of difference... 

   - always send something with the order number on it, packing slip etc.  most Bricklinker's order multiple orders from many vendors at a time - don't let yours get mistaken for a bad one from someone else.

   - Never pack new & used together - buyers hate that!

   - you already sorted your inventory, pack things separately so the buyer doesn't need to - but don't over do it that offends some.

  

Bricklink is still a viable selling platform & is relatively inexpensive to do so - it's allot of work and allot of time so ya have to be in it for the fun of it as much or more than for the $$$

 

 

[minicoopers11]

Yeah, can't agree enough about the BL forums. At the very least, if you must read the forums, don't let the minority of sour apples ruin it for you. Some very bitter people are on there that are still mentally dealing with the Jezeks selling to the Korean company.

[Thumper]

Oh, one thing on pricing, don't use the current inventory average when you auto price your inventory - the price guide is tampered with by a few individuals & is totally out of wack with reality -  $10,000 for a single 1x plate really???   always use the average sales price & adjust from there to get an actual view of real transactions.

[j.hermit]

Wow, thanks for the response.  A lot of your advice was related to things I was already considering, so I'm a bit more confident now that I'm going about this the right way.  I know that it's gonna be a ludicrous amount of work, but I enjoy it, and as long I have a plan in place and I can baby step my way through everything, I can distract myself from the fact that I have 100 sets that need to be broken down and catalogued ASAP.