Owners cite wrong demographic in Hollister to support a drop-off
store
What started out as an enthusiastic effort to launch an eBay
drop-off store in Hollister deteriorated when customers began to
treat it more like a pawn shop, the former business owners
said.
Preston Kincaid and his wife said the business began attracting
the wrong demographics
– people wanting to sell half-missing Monopoly games and broken
toys.
Owners cite wrong demographic in Hollister to support a drop-off store
What started out as an enthusiastic effort to launch an eBay drop-off store in Hollister deteriorated when customers began to treat it more like a pawn shop, the former business owners said.
Preston Kincaid and his wife said the business began attracting the wrong demographics – people wanting to sell half-missing Monopoly games and broken toys.
“We started the business because we were working with art galleries and we thought it would be a good extension,” Kincaid said. “We’re still doing consignment, but as a retail shop we had a bad business model.”
eBay stores have been more successful in larger cities with different demographics. Kincaid suggested that the ideal customers are gone during the day, so they couldn’t make the business work. He still believes that Hollister has the demographics to make a store like his work, but the business model was skewed.
“As a whole, the eBay drop shop was a part of Kincaid Direct, which still exists, we just dropped the retail aspect. It really turned into a safety issue. My wife was in the shop, by herself and she didn’t feel safe,” Kincaid said.
Had the business been successful, Kincaid and his wife had planned to hold workshops on how people can shop at garage sales and turn their purchases into larger profits on eBay.
Perhaps the store was ahead of its time, or maybe people just didn’t like the idea of giving someone else a portion of their profit from whatever they were selling on the online marketplace.
The concept of an eBay store in Hollister is a great idea, said Bill Mifsud, the owner of Bill’s Bullpen in Hollister, a neighboring business that buys, sells and trades sports cards memorabilia and comics.
Ashley Johnson of Hollister, who buys and sells items on eBay frequently, is one of the clients who missed the boat. She said she knew there was a store downtown, but by the time she got around to looking into it the store had closed its doors.
Hollister eBay user Chris Finesse buys and sells comics. He never considered taking his items to an eBay store for someone else to sell, since selling online is so simple, he said.
eBay was started in the home of Pierre Omidyar in 1995 as a sort of online garage sale. Currently the online auction site has 135 million members and new members are added every day.
Items on eBay are listed by categories and anyone with an eBay account can bid on items of his choice. Items include cars, real estate, collectables, concert tickets, CDs, video games. Things such as Elvis Presley’s ashtray or rare baseball trading cards can go for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even obscure items like a grilled cheese sandwich imparted with the supposed image of the Virgin Mary can fetch a pretty penny.
For some local businesses, such as Bill’s Bullpen eBay is a great service.
“It’s great. It’s exploded the market to millions,” Bullpen owner Bill Mifsud said. “It creates cash flow for the store, expands the market and generates cash flow, but I’m not making a lot off of it. People on there are always looking for deals.”
Mifsud said that there are some hassles, but the service is great. Where he might have been stuck with an over-abundance of Tony Gwynn baseball cards – a player for the San Diego Padres – whereas he wasn’t able to get rid of them in this area in San Diego he has no problem selling them.
“When you’re selling on a site like that you get people from Michigan, San Diego, all checking out your stuff. The stuff gets sold so it’s not just sitting around and collecting dust,” Mifsud said.
