Liz and Doug talk to Kat and Emma, Co-Founders of Haulsale, a trending new marketplace to buy and sell inventory in bulk. Learn about Haulsale’s beginnings, the launch of the company and where it is headed with this in-depth discussion you won’t want to miss.
The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for the seller community across all platforms and hub for information on growing your business. Find out more at thesellercommunitypodcast.com, leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email us at podcast@listperfectly.com.
List Perfectly is the ecommerce resource for selling across multiple e-commerce platforms including eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, Mercari, Kidizen, Grailed, Depop, Tradesy, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram and Shopify.
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Episode Links
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Transcript
Liz:
Welcome to The Seller Community Podcast. This is season two, episode 13, I’m Liz…
Doug:
And I’m Doug. So, what is up with you this week Liz?
Liz:
Not much Doug, just everyday life,
Doug:
Every day, you’re hustling…
Liz:
Every day, I’m hustling…
Doug:
Well, as you know, we’re working on a lot of stuff. We had our…not to date the episode, but we had our livecast this week. That was fun. The first couple we did recaps, but this, it just gets to where we are answering questions and talking live. And that’s fine. That’s fun. Get a lot of the same people in, and we had some new people this week. You and Clara did your weekly live. You talked about List Perfectly pricing plans: Simple, Business, and Pro, and why they are the way they are and all the different things you get with them.
Liz:
And also, Doug, that has turned into a lot of questions. We spent a lot of time on Q and A with that, which has been really cool to be able to engage with the community.
Doug:
And that’s good. And there were actually a couple episode suggestions that came up out of that. People wanna hear more about hashtags and keywords. People want to hear more about…I dunno if I’m qualified, I’ll have to Google it. No, I know about NFTs and fractionalization.
Liz:
Fractionalization.
Doug:
Fractionalization? I was like, what is that? I was told there was no math in this gig. So, there’s that. And you know, some eBay Vault stuff, somebody asked if we were gonna talk about that, we will get to that. But I love, like you said, that people are being, “oh, Liz and Doug, you guys gonna talk about this, Liz and Doug, you guys gonna talk about this?” Maybe we will.
Liz:
And I had a member reach out to me and send me a message about a Facebook post saying, “Hey for you and Doug, for the podcast idea, I love this.”
Doug:
The request for content it’s great. Live sailing, live selling live sailing is a different thing.
Liz:
Live sales…
Doug:
Live sales. There we go.
Liz:
I have sales.
Doug:
Speaking of live sales. I am fascinated that wholesaling is wholesaling. Cuz, I think saling not selling. I think it should be wholeselling.
Liz:
Wholeselling. What if you only wanna half sell.
Doug:
We’re not aquatic. We’re not out on a boat.
Liz:
I know haulSALING. Hall. S A L E. W H O L E S AL E.
Doug:
I see. Yes, but you know when you are sailing, sometimes you have to haul your sail in.
Liz:
Speaking of hauling a sale, we have an exciting episode.
Doug:
We do! What a lead in.
Liz:
It’s almost like you set that up, Doug.
Doug:
No, I thought about it a little bit. Believe it or not.
Liz:
So yes, this week we have an amazing episode to bring to listeners. We got the opportunity to talk to Kat and Emma, co-founders of Haulsale.
Doug:
And they’re a hot topic right now.
Liz:
Yes, they are.
Doug:
They were fun to talk to and it was great to learn more about Haulsale. And I know Liz that you are, what would it be? A beta tester, early seller…
Liz:
Early access seller.
Doug:
Wouldn’t you be a sailor?
Liz:
Ahoy.
Doug:
Get it?
Liz:
Ahoy yes. Wait, arrrrr…
Doug:
She’s Liz-O the sailor…sales. I don’t know.
Liz:
I don’t know either. No, but I am a wholesale seller.
Doug:
It’s going well for you. Right. And we know some other sellers on there. Theresa Cox, theposhkings and some others. Not to reveal too much cuz I always, I try not to…
Liz:
Doug, watch it.
Doug:
But it’s a good story. They’ve done their research. They identified some gaps, and they are providing a service that fills those gaps for certain types of sellers or sailors.
Liz:
Doug, what do you say we just go ahead, get started, get this interview out to our listeners because otherwise I’m gonna just wanna keep talking about it? What we already talked about, that they’re gonna talk about that they’re gonna hear and I don’t wanna get tongue-tied and get sailor, sail, sale mixed up one more time.
Doug:
I think I said it correctly, most of the time, which is a surprise, but…
Liz:
We did a great job.
Doug:
Thank you. All right. So, let’s listen in on Emma, Kat, Liz and me talking about wholesale…
Liz:
With Haulsale.
Doug:
Haulsale. I knew it!
Liz:
Today we talk to Emma and Kat, co-founders of Haulsale. There has been quite a buzz in the seller community about Haulsale and I’m so excited to welcome Emma and Kat to the show today. Welcome!
Emma:
Thank you, Liz.
Kat:
Thank you.
Emma:
We’re very, very happy to be here.
Doug:
Thanks for coming on and nice to meet you both and very excited to learn more about Haulsale. And I know Liz knows all about it. So, let’s start with what is Haulsale?
Emma:
Liz knows all about it. Cause she’s been one of our first sellers actually, which is very exciting, but Haulesale is a reseller to reseller marketplace where specifically you can sell inventory in bulk. So, we wanna be the place where resellers can move inventory in between themselves, where they can buy, where they can sell lots of things at once.
Liz:
And it has been amazing. Actually., I don’t know everything because just in the short amount of time, it’s evolved so much, and I love this. I love being part of the growth of Haulesale and being in the community. You know, I, I do hear a lot of questions and if you don’t mind, I’d like to bring them to the airwaves and cover some of those frequently asked questions from both buyers and sellers, if that’s okay.
Emma:
Absolutely.
Liz:
Who can sell and buy on wholesale?
Kat:
At the moment, we’re still in early access. So, we have opened it to a relatively small number of people who want to support us at these early stages, as we figure out what features are even necessary and how all of the user flows, work and everything. But in theory, once we get those features in place, it will be open to basically anyone to buy and to sell. But the focus is very much on the reseller community and making tools that are useful for them to buy and sell in bulk as Emma mentioned.
Emma:
We noticed in the existing sort of auction and wholesaling market out there in terms of what you can do online, it’s really not accessible to the average person to become a seller on those sites. Oftentimes you need to be an auction house, or you need to be a major box store if you want to liquidate your inventory online through or any type of formal wholesaling channel. And our mission is to make it so that anybody, any person, any individual or small business, independent business owner, even just a person who’s looking at downsizing can list their stuff and get it gone in one go. So, we really saw a big gap in terms of where the average person could sell their stuff at once.
Doug:
So, what kind of stuff can be sold on Haulsale?
Emma:
Anything that’s not illegal! <Laughs> We really want to make this a place where both hard and soft goods are represented. We’ve seen a ton of interest from clothing sellers and soft goods sellers. And, and we’ve seen a lot of that inventory, but we also know that there’s a major opportunity for hard goods sellers or really people who dabble in any type of inventory. We can accommodate that on Haulsale. So, there’s quite a lot of things on the market that address clothing and, and we really see the opportunity being something where hard good sellers can sell in between each other the same way that the institutions exist just for clothing. And so, we’re definitely putting in features that accommodate sort of heavier big bulkier stuff, including an emphasis on local pickup and also, we are incorporating bulk and freight shipping.
Doug:
Awesome.
Liz:
That is great. And I, that was one of the questions that I had initially asked, like what can be sold? What’s the ideal? And I love that it’s not closed in, the opportunities are kind of endless if you’re a reseller looking to sell to another reseller or a buyer looking for a wide variety of items in bulk. And you kind of touched on local pickup because that was one of the questions that I had. Well, what about these bigger items? So how does shipping and pickup work on the Haulsale site?
Emma:
We are still refining this. I should say that this is one of the features that we are kind of working on, building out with our early access group. But our premise is that we are going to allow it at the seller’s discretion, whether or not they wanna make something available for shipping, but we are kind of encouraging people that by default, they should allow for their items to be available for pickup as well as shipping. And what we’re doing is we’re actually developing kind of our own internal, like pickup scheduling tool. One of the pain points that we saw around other marketplaces, where you might be doing local exchanges, particularly like Facebook Marketplace, is the level of spam and flakiness and the intense amounts of communication that have to go into just coordinating a simple pickup. So, what we are doing is basically building a system where at checkout, if your buyer wants pickup, they indicate a few windows of time in which they can come get it as part of your confirmation. As the seller, you get to see those availabilities, pick your preferred window, and then the appointment is set.
Emma:
So, we wanna sort of minimize that communication, take away that opportunity for sort of spam and frustration and back and forth. And we really feel like we are able to build like tools that are custom, and that help facilitate that local pickup. We’ve been amazed that we’ve seen people all over the country join the site just in our early access phase. So there really is an incredible spread across the country of where resellers who are buying are located. And so, we’re able to sort of as we gear up our marketing efforts, we really want to be focusing on targeting people geographically. So, here’s what’s new in your area. You’ve indicated an interest in hardware and you are in Montana every time, something new in hardware and Montana comes up in your area, you’ll be alerted. So, we do wanna emphasize local pickup because of cost saving efficiency but we also are totally prepared to integrate shipping as well.
Kat:
Part of the reason that this was important for us from the beginning is to set the precedent for allowing local pickups is because we want to eventually open the platform to non-sellers to be able to sell off collections. So, if I have no idea how shipping works, but I have this closet full of beautiful shoes that I need to get rid of, we need to make it so that it’s very, very easy for me to get those great goods into the hands of sellers.
Liz:
I love that. So, you know, estate clear outs, like I can imagine this is your top, right? And I can also imagine this as I don’t personally sell insights that have local pickup, because I don’t wanna deal with, I’m gonna be here. I’m gonna be there. I’m gonna be here. Like the constant back and forth? So, I do avoid that, but I see how that built-in scheduler would be pretty amazing. And it’s kind of open up to if I wanna sell bigger items or larger lots that I’m discouraged from shipping because of prices or freight that I can just offer that.
Emma:
Yeah. Kat touched on it a little and we sort of alluded to it. But you know, when you were asking, who can sell on Haulsale and right now, of course it’s limited to our early access, and we really are emphasizing and focusing on reseller to reseller sales. We do have an idea that eventually we want to open this up as a place like you say, Liz, for basically self-serve estate liquidation. That’s another place where in the market we’ve seen that, like, there are these huge inefficiencies in terms of like the technology and the websites that do exist for people to liquidate like a house full of stuff, a room full of stuff. And right now, like they’re really beholden to selling everything to estate liquidators. And that’s another middleman. That’s an estate agent. If they can even get an appointment with a reliable estate agent in their area, that’s another middle man.
Emma:
We think that the same tools that we’re using right now that allow sellers to sell in bulk to one another, those tools really are also applicable to just, you know, someone who’s, you know, downsizing their home or moving a parent into like a care facility and has a whole house full worth to go. We want them to be able to have a place where they can self-service, be connected directly with a reseller in their area who’s able to take on their entire, basically home worth of stuff. So that’s really one of the end goals. That’s sort of the long term, big picture that we wanna move towards.
Doug:
With something like this, with anything like this, everybody wants to know what’s it gonna cost me.
Emma:
You got it. Yeah. So, we have a 15% platform fee for both buyers and sellers, plus a 2.9% payment processing fee. So, it works out to about 18 on both ends. And basically, what that means is that there’s a buyer’s premium and that there’s a seller’s fee. They’re both equal. At this point in time at that rate of 15plus 2.9%. And basically, what we are doing with those funds is we want this to be a managed marketplace, more so than existing places like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. You know, we’ve really seen that there are issues of spam, issues of quality. There are issues of, there’s not really a designated managed marketplace that’s tailored to resellers, that’s operating at scale. You know, there are kind of independent people who might be facilitating connections between resellers right now by themselves, but we wanna be able to sort of manage that connection between buyer and seller as much as we can.
Emma:
And those funds go into the manpower that goes into screening, lots, approving lots. We offer appraisal services. So basically, we want sellers to get a fair price and because we’re manually screening everything for acceptability that comes onto the platform, we’re able to give advice. You are able to give recommendations on where people should be setting their pricing. We are able to facilitate those pickups through our scheduling and we also have that integrated shipping that’s on the way. So, we really want this to be a pretty involved human centered marketplace. This is not gonna be an algorithmically managed platform, at least not in its earliest days. And we definitely want there to be a human touch for every customer that comes through whether they’re buying or selling.
Liz:
One thing that you said that I did wanna point out for anybody listening that has never purchased wholesale or through distributors, is that yes, the buyer’s premium is fairly normal in this market, correct? It’s not like buying on eBay or Poshmark. This is, and correct me if I’m wrong, cuz I don’t know the correct terminology, but wholesale or bulk or when you buy pallets from big companies, that’s normal.
Emma:
You know, we did a ton of research going into this, on the sort of auction industry, the wholesale industry as it exists now. And we found that, you know, obviously we came to these numbers by calculating our own costs of operation and we realized that it really was in line with the industry averages we see It’s kind of like eBay is the auction site exception in terms of requiring buyer’s premiums in general, you’re looking at something anywhere from like 15 to sometimes with the payment processing, it can get up to like 23, 25% on some like one off auction sites, which I have personally been victim to. I think I’m bidding on something for one price and then I’m like, oh, muffins. <Laughs>
Emma:
You know, so we wanted to keep we sort of worked up from our operational standpoint and then we realized, yeah, okay. We see where people are getting these numbers and our expenses are kind of in line with those other sort of bulk wholesaling or auction based websites. We wanna sort of keep it equitable between the buyer and seller at this point because we feel like the managed service benefits both parties equally in terms of the efficiency of being able to liquidate and then the efficiency of buying your goods in bulk.
Liz:
And I appreciate that you’re upfront and honest about that. Every time I’ve seen that question being asked, you’re like, “well of course, yeah. Here’s, here’s just how we did it.” And you know, and it is lower than some and you’re right. I’ve seen that the first time I got on a site to look at wholesaling and I was like, “oh…” but that’s industry standard and it is what it is. And we talked about auction sites, which leads me into something that I wanna know. So, is Haulsale auctions only?
Emma:
Great question. Right now, auction is the emphasis, but everyone has the choice to put a buy it now price if they want. So, we really decided to go the auction based route cause we wanted them like I said, we offer this kind of guidance for sellers if they want, but we do want sort of market forces to be able to correct any miscalculations, either on our part or on the seller’s part. So ideally by building in that auction feature, we can make sure that sellers are getting the fairest possible price for their goods. But at the same time, we know that like for some people, efficiency is everything and time is everything. And so, we did allow for that buy it now feature as well, so options, but we made sure that you have the choice as a seller to, to add a buy it now.
Liz:
I’ve sold three lots, and all have sold at auction. And I’ve been really happy with that too. It’s been a long time since I’ve done auctions and it was kind of fun, like following the excitement, like, oh, I gotta sign in and see if I got a bid, you know, I forgot what that felt like as a seller.
Emma:
Yeah. And in your experience so far, Liz, you’ve been seeing it where I’m basically manually emailing people. <Laughs> And in the future, we’re definitely gonna have much more like automatic updates. So, you will get a ping of like, “Hey, you know, the auction just closed and here’s what you earned.” If you’re a buyer, “Oh, you’ve been out bid,” you can get a little ping by text or by email. So, there will be a little bit more excitement baked into that. I personally, I love an auction. Like I yeah, enjoy it. I’ve been known to like to spend, we live in Montreal and there are a number of really nice auctions, like estate liquidation sites in town. And they all seem to end on Wednesday. And so, me and my friends will just kind of like have a glass of wine and sit around, it’s kind of dangerous, but we, that Wednesday night is like…we love auction night.
Emma:
So that’s part of where our interest in this came from is we have some experience buying in that regard and there is some excitement around it. And so, we hope that that will, for the people that appeal to it, will be kind of fun and that people will feel like they’re getting a great deal if they can kind of get in at the right level on an auction. But then also it will have that sort of market correcting force for sellers. Also, if people really just want a quick sale, they have that option to buy it now. So, we hope that we could kind of accommodate something for everybody, even if they may be auction hesitant, which I know some people are.
Doug:
You’ve both touched on this a bit. So, you’ve obviously done your research. You saw a lot of needs that needed to be fulfilled with something like what you’re doing, but let’s start Kat. So, what was the, like the spark that made you want to create Haulsale?
Kat:
So, before we did Haulsale were actually trying a slightly different idea and it was born of my need to sell all of my stuff. So, for the last, oh, I don’t know, five, six years I’ve been buying all of my clothes second hand because you don’t get to try it on. You accumulate a lot of misses. I can’t sell online. I can’t do it. I hate it so much and so I have this pile of beautiful clothes and I have no idea what to do with it. Posting on Facebook marketplace for me, that felt very creepy. I don’t want people to have my personal information. I don’t want people coming to my house. I don’t even wanna go out of my way to meet in a public location, you know because there’s just so many no-shows and then you get some weird messages and then eBay, I couldn’t even figure it out. Where do you click? What do you do? And then once you finally get there, if it’s a new account, just no one is ever going to see it. And I know the value of my stuff, and I don’t wanna undersell if I’m already doing all of this work. So, for me, the system as just an average seller was completely broken. So, I thought, okay, well, what do I do with this? And so, the first thought that we had, the first model tried, I would take pictures of all of my clothes and then I would pass it on to this service that would post across the internet for us actually using List Perfectly right and make the sale and help me with fulfillment. So, I just had to take the photo and then set it and forget it. What we quickly realized is there, there’s a huge demand for it.
Kat:
It’s just operationally. If I, as a seller, make that sale and then I’m not around to actually deliver my clothes and it’s sold on eBay and it takes longer than the two day window that was promised, we’re gonna get a mark against us on the account. So, you just, you can’t scale this business possibly. So, for me, it was like, how can I still do all of that? But it kind of works operationally. And, you know, Emma, who is a seller was like, well you just, you just give it to the sellers. You don’t need to dropship it. You can just sell it immediately as a wholesale product.
Emma:
Kat kind of came at this from the perspective of, I have this stuff, I need to get rid of it, but she also, it’s true. She’s been a very diligent second hand shopper for years. I’ve known this. She does have an incredible wardrobe. Truly. It’s ridiculous. But it’s all from Poshmark . yeah, she’s a great, great Poshmark shopper. So, she knew of the secondhand market, and she knew what was possible. And she also knew she wanted to contribute to it, but she recognized what, so many people quickly do that. Selling is not for them. And then I, on the other hand have been like, you know, thrifting since I could walk. And I, while I never, and I shared this with Liz, you know, my experience in selling was always kind of casual. I was doing it for myself. I was kind of doing the same “Oh, I found something good. And I couldn’t leave it and I’m selling.” You know, but it wasn’t my livelihood. It was more just like a passion fun thing. And then when Kat kind of approached me with this, like, you know, why can’t I get rid of my stuff the way I want to, we sort of settled on this idea of maybe what we can do is a selling service, and we can become a service that sells.
Emma:
And so, in that process, I was like, so let me set my game up, let me really learn what it takes to do this professionally. And that was when I really started getting involved in the reseller community and which is incredible because people are so generous with their information and their time and the amount of like education that happens in the various Facebook groups that we, that I joined, where I first met you know, people like Liz and people like Theresa. And basically, everybody in the sort of community that we’ve built up so far, I just couldn’t believe how much information was out there and how many people exist who are so good at it. And like, and I was learning, I’m not good at this. <Laughs>
Emma:
It could take me a really long time to get good at this. And it does, you know, it’s years of experience that make people, the professional sellers that they are although some people do seem to have a real knack for it and hit it pretty fast. But you know, it varies. And I was getting the sense that there are people out here who can do it much better than I, and then also, like Kat mentioned, we were realizing that this sort of weird drop shipping service model that we had created, it really doesn’t work at scale because you open yourself up to so many vulnerabilities for failures of shipment, fraud complaints. And, we really, really gave it a shot and demand wasn’t the issue. It was the ability to fulfill. And so, we were looking around, I was looking around at how many sellers are here and how many of our sellers are so talented.
Emma:
And we really were like, what we need to do is find a way to get people more directly in touch with resellers who want their stuff. And that was sort of how Haulsale was born. And then in the process of speaking to more people in the community about it, we started to learn about this reseller to reseller bulk market that already existed of people you know, whether it was through mystery boxes or through various kind of like independent Shopify stores, people were already trading bulk inventory in between each other. A lot of times through Facebook groups, there was no designated central place. And the more central a place you can make, the higher prices everybody can get. Right. Because you’ve got more eyes on it. And so, we thought, wow, what a fabulous, we can provide a solution to that.
Emma:
Kat’s a fantastically talented developer and she was like, yeah, I can build that. And I said, you know, there’s the demand. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen people already in practice doing this. What if we can build this? And then based on the success of this reseller to reseller marketplace, we can start testing out that idea of average people out in the community, out in public, just adding their stuff for those resellers who are already on their buying and selling amongst each other. So, we sort are in this phase that we hope will turn into a larger sort of public facing alternative to tag sales, alternative, to estate sales. But for the time being, we’re addressing that need, that already existed from reseller to reseller wholesaling.
Doug:
So going back to something that Kat said is like buying clothing online. It’s tough. And so, so many of us are doing it right now. My wife bought a swimsuit last week and she got it and she came down and she said, “this doesn’t look on me like it does on the model. Does it?”
Liz:
Yes. Trick question. That’s your, your answer was yes. <Laughter>
Doug:
You have to answer with a question “Yes?”
Liz:
I hope the answer was “no, you look better.” <laughter>
Doug:
That’s right.
Liz:
You’re welcome.
Doug:
That’ll be for next time.
Emma:
Yeah. Trust me as someone who has purchased bathing suits on Poshmark, it’s truly one of the toughest ones to do, but it kind of speaks to the demand that’s out there right now for secondhand clothing. You know, Kat is part of this huge wave of people who are almost exclusively shopping secondhand. Like it’s on principle. I think our generation is extremely conscious about the source of their products that they’re buying, whether it’s clothing or even household goods. And that’s why, you know, Facebook Marketplace has exploded in popularity because there are so many people who want to buy secondhand, and that number grows every year by millions. And you know, what we really think is like, okay, how do we, there are, there’s this force of resellers across the country who can get the inventory into all those, like demanding, you know, buyer’s hands, but they have to have an efficient means of sourcing it. And we think that wholesale is the most efficient means of sourcing it. And you know, there’s a demand for vintage. There’s a demand for collectibles and there’s currently no mechanism by which people can wholesale source those types of items that aren’t just big box store pallets.
Liz:
Right. And something that you said a little bit ago too, was something that I wanna mention is you said, you know, because there’s various ways that sellers are already doing this. And one of them was through mystery boxes. And one of the things that you said to me really stuck out, it’s like, we’re kind of taking the mystery out of mystery boxes because when I create a listing on Haulsale, I’m not creating a listing like I’m creating a listing on eBay. I’m not having to fill out a thousand things. It’s very simplistic manifested, and it’s not so much of a mystery, but it’s a large lot. And I love that about the listing flow.
Kat:
When you’re buying something, for example storage lot auctions, you have no idea what is in that storage lot. And, we’ve spoken to a few sellers who deal almost exclusively or at the very least buy a lot of storage lots. And some of the tricks they use, my God like inspecting, you know, the shade of the mattress or how highly it is stacked upon all of the boxes as an indication of worth. But that storage lot might sell for many, many thousands. And it might go for $5, $10. And it’s because of the risk. If everything in there was a little bit clearer and manifested, you could get a much, much higher price. We wanna make it as easy as possible for you to write out that description, but also to make it clear enough for the buyer to trust what they’re getting. And therefore, to be able to offer a higher price.
Emma:
We really recognize that the information that a reseller needs when they’re buying inventory is much less than the information that someone who’s buying it to go wear the thing or will use the thing in their home. And so, we wanted to totally pare down what kind of fields were required and really get it down to the most barebone possible information. And we also were able to sort of build up a system that in theory can work extremely quickly to document everything that you wanna put in kind of…this on social media a little bit, but one of the features that really makes that process a lot faster is the fact that if you’ve already got your inventory cataloged, like if the stuff wanna bundle up and put on Haulsale is something that you’ve previously listed individually elsewhere, you can actually take spreadsheet data of those listings and put it right into our system where we then sort of bundle it up and create one large listing with an itemized manifest.
Emma:
List Perfectly is probably the easiest way to do that because in List Perfectly, all of your images are stored, all the data stored. You can export that very simply to a CSV. We’ve got some information on our Instagram and soon on our website about how to do that. But you really can just take listings that you’ve previously housed individually and bundle them all up into one. So, we have the tools that you can build those listings out from scratch. If it’s in inventory that you haven’t previously documented, and all we require is a quick title, one photo, we swipe how many stars outta five the condition is. And then we ask for a brand, cuz people do wanna know the brand when they’re trying to, you know, evaluate how much they can flip it for. And then just like boop, next onto the next one, boop boop boop. And it’s like we, when we’ve gotten good at it, we’re doing about like five seconds an item. So, we hope that that option is efficient enough and earns enough in return as compared to how much people could ask for a totally opaque mystery box that that little bit of extra effort feels worth it on the seller’s part.
Liz:
I have not done the CSV download from my List Perfectly catalog yet, but I think that that’s gonna be on my agenda for my next slot for some of the things that I’m changing in my store. And downsizing in certain categories. And I love that you have an entire slideshow a carousel, what is it called?
Emma:
Yeah. little Instagram carousel.
Liz:
Yeah. A little Instagram carousel and how to do that with List Perfectly. So, we need actually, by the time this airs, if you’re listening to this, I have already put a post in the List Perfectly Facebook group on how to do this.
Emma:
Nice.
Liz:
For Haulsale sellers that are in on this, or at least the link to this so far, everything for me has been great. I love, like I said, you know, the community has been helpful. Haulsale has been helpful at knowing that this is, you know, the beginning, but you’re quickly gaining ground on what’s next for Haulsale.
Kat:
So, from my perspective, as the only developer and a million other things falling into my lap, I wanna make sure that all of the burning concerns are addressed. So, for example, we’ve had some people with issues logging in, we need to rebuild that some issues of search need to rebuild that adding things in the coming days. So, by the time this is live, hopefully those are already at the very least, like in, some kind of halfway live form like messaging the seller to ask them a question about their lot or having a public profile where you can show off all of your lots and send that to your friends. A lot technically in the works from my end.
Emma:
And then in terms of, you know, as, as the non-tech I say, I’m like, Kat’s the developer and I’m around. And my goal is to do a lot more like community development. Like we’ve met so many, like there’s just so many, really extremely lovely people that have joined our early access group and are in the Facebook group. And they’ve been such a pleasure to talk to and learn from, and it’s valuable, not just in terms of helping us figure out how best to shape our platform. But when I think of how I see Haulsale functioning in the future, it’s like the buyers really would be in control of this platform, especially as we open it up to the public. And so, I really want to kind of cultivate a community around the people who are resellers using this platform.
Emma:
So that first of all, that they feel like their needs are being heard. And also, so that, you know, we can kind of share tips and tricks and that, you know, people who are, let’s say I’m in this area and I saw an auction, that’s not my specialization, but I see somebody, I know I have a friend through the Facebook group who’s into it. I can kind of share that information with them. So, e, we definitely see a lot of opportunity for like building up reseller communications around the auctions and the content on the site itself. But also, I think one of the things List Perfectly has done so fantastically is like building up like a resource and a help center for subjects in selling outside of even use of List Perfectly’s own tools. And I really admire that. And so, anything that we can do to kind of become an additional resource for sellers outside of even our own systems, I would love to do that. So I’m gonna be working to get in some like regular kind of like Q and A, you know, Hangouts, you know, webinars, how tos and that’s sort of like what’s on my agenda for the next couple weeks is really getting a little bit more like face to face time with everybody who’s been so helpful to us so far.
Doug:
Obviously, Liz sells obviously theposhkings sell, believe it or not, I sell as well, but it’s like, Liz is…I like football. Liz is like the NFL. And I’m like the Friday night flag football Peewee guy.
Emma:
You’re the underdog.
Doug:
There we go. Yeah. Underdog, underdog…<laughter>talk to the broad spectrum of sellers. What are some things you want sellers across the board to know about Haulsale?
Emma:
Well, I think that we wanna make sure that people know that this is for sellers of every size. I think that we offer a tremendous opportunity to like the big dogs who have enormous operations, who are either looking to move a tremendous amount of inventory because they have the sort of, you know, scale in their business that they need to be sourcing like major pallets and buying like enormous amounts of inventory that this could be a place for them to sort of part those out into smaller, more manageable lots for sellers who don’t have the liquid assets that they need to like buy tremendous amounts at once. And then also that this could be something for people who have their niches that they can kind of come on and they can look for specific lots in their areas. We really want this to be a place for collections where it’s a gap in the market that we’ve seen.
Emma:
There’s really no designated spot for collections to be bought and sold. So, we really see this as being, you know, something that the big people on Amazon can do. And then like I’m an Instagram seller of, you know, niche Pyrex. Like we want this to be something for resellers on any scale. And that’s one of our goals too is we really saw in the existing wholesale marketplace ecosystem that it requires like it’s very capital intensive to start getting into that game. And there is an intense amount of risk when you’re buying pallets, because there is that opacity around what you’re getting. And we think that this can be a great entry level into buying in bulk for people who are maybe just getting started in their reselling career or have kind of done your one off sourcing or they’re more of like a picker going out into their community, that this is now a way that they can kind of keep operating at that like level of financial investment, but have the convenience of being at home and not having to go out and hunt.
Emma:
You know, so really see this as being a place for everybody. You know, we wanna continue to refine our offerings to best suit different types of sellers but we hope that we can kind of continue to accommodate people no matter what size they’re operating at, no matter what kind of niche they’re operating in. Andon matter what their interest is in terms of the types of inventory they’re looking for. So, I guess that’s the biggest message is just, even if you think, “Oh, I’m not sure that bulk sourcing is for me,” you’d be surprised you can go on and bulk source six pairs of shoes, or you can go on and bulk source 1500 pairs of shoes. And it really, and that’s not just shoes, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got hardware, we’ve got mechanical goods, we’ve got electronics, we’ve got collectibles, they’re all on there and all in a huge variety of sizes. And I guess that goes for sellers and buyers, you know, there’s stuff to purchase in all different categories and sizes and there’s opportunity to sell in all different categories and sizes.
Liz:
So, if you are a seller that’s a great picker and has access to a lot of great inventory and don’t have time to list it all individually, like Kat, like uhh, right. I don’t wanna do all of these individually. There’s gotta be a better way. Well, there is. And then for buyers that are either homebound or don’t wanna go out or for some reason, or in the middle of nowhere and don’t have access to the inventory they wanna sell, this is a great opportunity because it’s not 1500 items that you have to sell or buy. So, I did get in early, and my auctions were some of the first rounds that I’m super excited about. Can buyers sign up to buy now and can sellers sign up to sell all sellers and all buyers?
Emma:
While we are not technically open to the public just yet, so right now, when you go to haulsale.com, there’s just sort of the option to join our waitlist because we don’t really want it to be discoverable to people outside of the reselling community. We want everybody who’s coming onto our site to be connected in some way to other resellers and have a real, like a good faith kind of investment in the success of the project. So, if you are interested and you wanna get in here while it’s early, we’re definitely able to get you one of our early access accounts. So long as you come in with a little bit of a measured expectation that some of those features are still on the way, but of course, if you have any questions or concerns, I’m here to answer any of them. And I’m happy to tell you, it’s not just you who noticed that this thing is missing, you know…
Doug:
And I love that you talked about community and you’re considering both sides. And thank you for looking out for the underdougs of the world. We appreciate that, but we’ve covered a lot. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to add?
Emma:
I guess, just that there’s more stuff on the way. So, we really have been working with some larger sellers to kind of facilitate this launch. And we had a tremendous influx of inventory just in our first couple weeks from the early access group. And we didn’t even need to list all of the stuff that our larger launch partners had…like had not promised but were eager to list with us. And we said, you know, hold off, let’s see how much we get. So, there’s still a lot more, really good stuff that’s kind of waiting in the wings that we’re gonna be rolling out over the next couple weeks. So I guess what I’d like to say is if you did check us out very early on and you know, you didn’t necessarily see something that was perfect for you at the exact time you signed on it was sort of a factor of artificially kind of keeping things a little bit smaller than they would be. So, as we continue to expand and just, we already know we are rolling out increases in inventory. And in terms of the diversity, the quality that’s on there, another kind of thing I wanted to say is if you checked in early and, and you maybe said like, “Hmm, I’m not sure that these prices are right for me.” We really were kind of taking a stab in the dark, all of us in terms of what made the most sense for kind of like a wholesale pricing form in, and based on the success of the first couple weeks, we’ve really figured out, okay, things that are selling around this rate or as compared to like their resell rate are doing better. So, what we’ve been doing is kind of doing some outreach to the sellers on our site to give them advice on, you know, we think that if you’re bringing your prices to this rate, you’ll see a little bit higher sell through.
Emma:
So, what we’re doing, we’re making a concerted effort to get the prices a little bit more in line with where buyers are hoping to see them. So, yeah, that’s to say, if you came on to do a little shop early and you didn’t necessarily see something that was for you, I really encourage you back and check it out in the coming weeks and keep coming. Eventually we’ll get to a point where we are giving you email updates about stuff that’s like your expressed interest and in your geographic area. For now, it does kind of require periodic check-ins and I hope you’ll do so. And definitely we are really excited to see some of the new inventory that comes on in the next couple weeks and I hope buyers are as well.
Liz:
Bookmark it, keep going back. It’s early. Like…
Emma:
It’s been a month.
Liz:
It’s been a month.
Emma:
One month since the very first people got on. Yeah.
Liz:
So, tell us where buyers and sellers find Haulesale.
Emma:
Right now? We are very active on Instagram, so you can kind of learn little updates of what it’s going on there. Probably the most in depth place, if you really wanna get into it with us and talk to us in real time and offer your suggestions is our Facebook group. So, we do have a dedicated Facebook group for the early users. And perhaps I can include that link with the signup link as well. If you are on our site already, and you haven’t yet joined the Facebook group, there’s a little link in there once you’re logged in, you should see it right on the screen in front of you. We are also accessible by email, by chat, right on our website. I really encourage you to join the Facebook group. We’re also starting a Discord as well so if you happen to be somebody who’s like, you know, a gamer and you’re on Discord that’s something we’re getting started. But it’s not to say that that’s going to replace or take away from the Facebook community. The Facebook community is definitely where we are seeing the most activity. I wanna say there’s like 900 people in there right now, which is awesome and it’s like, about half the people who are actively on the site have also joined the Facebook group. And we had a lot of discussions there. And as we’re sort of trying to get feedback like, okay, which thing do we do next? How do we do this thing? Do we do it this way versus this way? It’s like the Facebook group is the first place that we go to ask that kind of information. So, and I hope you guys will check it out and yeah, it’s just, I’m trying to get back to everybody as fast as I can. And like, I’m so happy to talk to everybody. I just, it sometimes takes me a day or two to respond to non-urgent emails, but I definitely wanna hear any feedback. If you wanna just get in touch and introduce yourself, if you’ve got ideas of how we can either shape the platform or work together I would love to meet anybody who’s interested.
Liz:
And on Instagram, it’s instagram.com/wholesale_.
Emma:
Underscore. So, there is somebody with all of five posts from two years ago, sitting on @haulsale, the bane of my existence. So very soon on the agenda is to get a trademark so that we can petition Instagram to get us that handle. Also, it does appear as though there is a not very big company in India that is called Haulsale. And so, we are really working on getting our SEO to the point that you don’t find them before you find us. I think it’s only a matter of time before we outrun them in search results, but just know that you should be looking for at haulsale_ on Instagram, Facebook group is Haulsale Resellers Connect, but I’m gonna link to that as well. And then we are just at haulsale.com. You can learn more about the project there.
Liz:
Emma and Kat, thank you so much for joining us today. I really, really appreciate our talk today.
Emma:
Us too.
Kat:
Thank you for having us.
Doug:
Yeah. And thank you both. It was a lot of fun and I know a ton more about Haulsale now.
Emma:
I’m very happy to hear that. And if there’s anybody who wants to learn even more, I hope you’ll give us a shout. We’re just an email or a DM away.
Liz:
And all of the links will be in the show notes. Thank you for joining us on The Seller Community Podcast from List Perfectly. You can find us at thesellercommunitypodcast.com. Leave a message or ask a question at anchor.fm/sellercommunitypodcast, or email at podcast@listperfectly.com. You can also post a question in the List Perfectly Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/listperfectly use the hashtag #sellercommunitypodcast and mention Liz or Doug.
Doug:
You can listen to us anywhere you listen to podcasts and be sure and subscribe, tell your friends, and if you’re on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a review. You can also follow us on Instagram and TikTok, Liz is @coloradoreworn I’m @snoop.dougie. And of course, follow @listperfectly. Also, you can use our promo code podcast, P O D C A S T for 30% off your first month of List Perfectly or 30% off your first month of upgrading your plan.
Liz:
All right, Doug, I’ll see you next time.
Doug:
Next time.