If you currently own an eBay storefront, and have ever considered selling your store, you will want to read this article.

Meet Doug.  Doug is one of those lucky individuals that managed to turn his passion into a business…a lucrative business.  In May of 2010, Doug started a fly [as in fly fishing] store on eBay to sell a variety of flies to fishers.  (Click here to view Greatflies eBay storefront)  Over those 8+ years (at the time of this writing), Doug has built a great business and reputation on eBay.  For any of you that shop online at places like eBay, you know that reputation is everything.  His sales have far exceeded anything that he had ever anticipated.  His business model is simple.  Sell quality flies at a good price, offer quantity discounts and give free shipping.  It has been a wildly successful business model for him.  An eBay success story, right?  Well, yes….but……

This is where the waters get murky, shall we say.  You see, Doug wants to retire (some day).  And he would like to spend more time with his family, and one of the passions of his life…fly fishing.  Some day he wants to sell his lucrative business to enjoy his retirement years.  Therein lies the problem.  With an eBay storefront, you can’t really sell an existing storefront because it is linked specifically to an individual and the reputation they have developed over time on eBay.  OK.  So what is the solution?  Does he just walk away from the business?  Does he keep the business in name only, and turn over the day-to-day operation to someone else?  That’s not really an elegant solution, nor would one want to turn their reputation over to someone else.  So what does he do?  You have to plan for the future, and things take time.  What strategy does he implement so that he can retire some day with an income from the business that he worked so hard to build?

While all of this sounds simple, there is actually quite a lot going on in the background, behind the scenes.  Doug has over 800 individual items that he sells and must track.  He must have all of those items manufactured, and he must not run out of stock.  Manufacturing all of these hand-tied flies takes time, so there is a lot of planning and a lot of people involved.  Then there is the storage of 800+ inventory items.  Then the fulfillment and shipping of a continuous flow of incoming orders.  eBay helps with a lot of the reporting, shipping and associated logistics.  Doug needed help in planning and implementing a solution to solve all of these issues, all the time when not missing a beat in taking care of his customers on eBay.

That’s where AKOR Services came into the picture.  We worked with Doug to develop a solution to all of these issues.

While an eBay store can’t be “sold”, if Doug owned his own website, he can sell that….some day…when he is ready.  The solution that was implemented was to build an eCommerce website, linked to his eBay store.  Both the eBay store and his website,  Northwest Flies / Greatflies.com, are physically linked to the same inventory.  He fulfills orders from both eBay and now his ecommerce website from the same inventory.  We built Doug’s new website for him, imported those 800+ items into his new ecommerce website, set up an inventory management system, and walked through the process of setting up hosting and domain names, automated shipping, payment processing and all the myriad of configurations that an online ecommerce system requires.

What Doug has now is his own website, which he can sell some day when he is ready.  But equally important is he has a complete system where he tracks inventory, sales, shipping and everything on his own website.  When he adds new items, he does it on his website and the website automatically updates eBay.  His in-stock inventory is the same on his website as it is on eBay.  Through an import process, we brought over all of his 800+ inventory items, along with all their pictures and descriptions, and Doug didn’t have to re-enter all of that information into his own website.

Do you have an eBay storefront?  Do you want to some day sell your business, or perhaps even just move away from eBay?  You can save the fees they charge.  Give us a call at AKOR Services.  We can make that happen for you.

Doug will tell you that he chose AKOR Services to help him with this process:  “I chose AKOR because of a prior working relationship with Allen.  I knew that he was a man of integrity with a high commitment to excellence.  I knew that he would be easy to work with and brought skills to the table that I did not possess myself.”

If 2019 is the year that you need help with your company website, marketing or business processes, give us a call at (503) 427-8553 or e-mail us at info@akorservices.com

Allen Beck

AKOR Services

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