02
03
The Recycle-ista...Adventures in Vintage: Keeping the ReSelling Biz Going While Out on the Hunt for Vintage
04
05
15
16
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
31
32
33
Okay. I used to do this all the time and it was a no-brainer. I even moved cross country (twice) and kept the stores open...even though my inventory was packed up and making its own way across this fair land. Two weeks. In DECEMBER! I just made a vacation notice and emailed all my buyers and explained. I think everyone except one person was fine with it. They needed whatever it was quickly. So we cancelled. No biggie.
Then Ebay started with their *ahem* interesting Defect system and I got nervous. Too many cancelled transactions is not a good thing. It never was of course, but now there's penalties. So on our last trip in April, we closed down all our shops, Ebay and Etsy, until right before we were ready to come home.
I was set to do the same thing earlier this month but decided to be brave. Lack of funds can make you do amazing things! lol
So here's what we did. Etsy
~I went into my Shop Announcement and added a note...something like "*****VACATION NOTICE**** We are currently out of town until the 13th. Please feel free to browse and make purchases. We will ship your items promptly on the 14th. Thank you!!"
~While I was changing the Shop Announcement, I scrolled down a bit and found the box for "Message to Buyers" and added the same message there. So each buyer got a direct message when they paid about their order. I could have changed handling time, but I didn't.
I did this for all 5 shops.
Ebay
I went into Manage my Store and turned the Vacation Settings on. Changed the little message to show what date we would be home. But I did NOT hide my listings. [Edit:] Then I went into Bulk Edit and changed my handling time to 10 days.
Amazon
Ooops. I forgot about Amazon and sure enough I had a sale while I was gone. I emailed the buyer to say the shipment would be a few days late and never heard anything. I shipped the night I got home and I hope all was well. Once I got the sale notification, I went into Amazon on my phone and just deactivated the few listings I had.
So for all my shops, once I had a sale. I made sure to email or convo the person that night. Or at least by the next day. Everyone (who replied) was super nice and said to have a nice vacation.
I'm glad I went ahead and left the shops open. We had a few nice sales in both Etsy and Ebay and it was nice to have some income coming in while we were on the road.
I also listed a few things we found along the way. And ran a sale right before we came home. I was trying to keep activity going in my shops. It worked so-so.
Let me share with you one thing I learned about my Sell on Etsy app that I didn't know before. This is helpful if you have more than one shop on Etsy.
You see where it says "Your Accounts" in blue? When you click on it....ALL your shops show up..the ones you've signed into before on the app.
And you can switch back and forth between your shops!!
Talk about a game changer!! I had been signing in and out of accounts on the road...such a pain!! I totally wish there was a way to do this on my desktop!!
Anywho. I'm slow like that. I like my gadgets..but I tend not to explore to see what they really can do. I'd like to think this is a feature that's only available for iPhone and that's why I didn't notice it before..lol.
Okay! That was our experience. It worked for us. Of course there are vacations where its nice to shut it all off and tune out for awhile. I think that's important too. How do you handle vacations??
