Selling Filipino arts & crafts on Ebay a good idea?

[Winston]

Hi all,

Check out these awesome arts and crafts I got from Baguio, Philippines that you can hang up. I took photos of them and posted them here.

http://www.happierabroad.com/Artwork.htm

Do you think stuff like this would sell on Ebay on a regular basis? If so, at what prices? Enough to generate a regular income?

Momopi, what do you think?

[Rock]

I had a friend who tried the something similar - selling Taiwan aboriginal arts and crafts on Ebay about 2 years ago. He would go out and spend time in their mountain areas near the east coast and way down south to source the best stuff. I don't think his accumulated sales exceeded $300 before he gave-up.

[Winston]

I had a friend who tried the something similar - selling Taiwan aboriginal arts and crafts on Ebay about 2 years ago. He would go out and spend time in their mountain areas near the east coast and way down south to source the best stuff. I don't think his accumulated sales exceeded $300 before he gave-up.

How much did he get for them on Ebay? Did they sell easily? Do you know any more details?

[Rock]

I don't know too many details except that he was not able to drum up sufficient demand to cover his costs (time, travel, etc.). He gave it a hard shot for about 4 months. He did tell me there is a lot of interest in arts and crafts from some aboriginal peoples but likewise, there are a lot of experienced sellers serving these niches.

[Master]

selling on ebay is a dead end. only the ebay owners make all the profits.

[Travel Dude]

selling on ebay is a dead end. only the ebay owners make all the profits.

Really it depends on what business you are in and what you are selling. (In terms of selling)...You have to know what is hot and what is not.

[Travel Dude]

I had a friend who tried the something similar - selling Taiwan aboriginal arts and crafts on Ebay about 2 years ago. He would go out and spend time in their mountain areas near the east coast and way down south to source the best stuff. I don't think his accumulated sales exceeded $300 before he gave-up.

You have to look at what he is selling....."Taiwan aboriginal items"...not a very popular item.

I read of a American woman that moved to Greece and sold Greek art items. It took her lots of work and money in order for her to start making a profit.

People think you can start up a website, add paypal and the dollars just keep flowing in....not true.

I had two websites when I lived in Peru. Both were Latin romance sites and both made very little money.

[globetrotter]

This could be very illegal.

[momopi]

Just like Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, etc., popular stuff goes through trends that vary widely in demand.

When I was a kid & living in Taiwan, stamp collecting was popular, and there were specialty stores in Taipei that bought and sold stamps. Every year, they published a stamp collector's guide with retail price/value on the stamps. Today, I think it's obvious that the stamp collecting hobby is not doing well.

When Ebay first started, people would put up auctions on "pocket lint" as a joke and crazy folks would bid $1 for it. I sold a pencil eraser on Ebay. @_@;; Who in their right mind would bid on something that dumb, I have no idea, but there were so many people with nothing else better to do than to browse silly Ebay ads.

Ebay was never popular in Asia and Yahoo Auctions took over the Japanese market. I recall going to Los Angeles garment district with friends and they'd buy stuff cheap and sell it to Japanese customers via Yahoo Japan auctions. "California Fashion". You could buy tops for $15 and sell for $30-$60 + s/h back then.

Then there was the digital camera craze when everyone wanted one. I'd hit up Target when they discount older models and sell it on Ebay for quick profit. After that my friends were going to Costco to see what's avail and putting it up on Ebay. If someone buys it, he'd go buy the item from Costco and ship it to the customer for a profit. This lasted for about couple of years before people started buying directly from the store's web sites. Then some crazy people got the idea of running retail stores that would take people's junk and sell it for them on ebay for a % fee. That didn't last too long.

Art on Ebay doesn't sell well because there's simply too many sellers and too few buyers.

What sells well right now? Stores like Buffalo Exchange is doing very well at certain retail locationsa. It's basically a trendy used clothing store for teenagers to young adults. You bring your "almost new" used trendy cloths to sell to them at a fraction of its value (like selling your textbooks), and they dry clean it and put it in the store for sale with a markup. I bought designer jeans that are $60-$80 retail for $16-$18 there. Store is filled with pretty young girls & people in the alt scene looking for a good deal. If you like photography with Holga or Diana Mini, you'd probably fit right in with the people there.

http://www.buffaloexchange.com/

[tom]

Many years ago I was in China, My Chinese friend was looking for business opportunities. I told him direct export via Ebay, Ebay was a new thing at that time. He just could not understand it, so declined the idea.
Direct exporting is good I think. I dont know if it was Alvin Toffler who wrote this, He described Americans the salesmen of the world. I think it could work, you build a business model that works you can transfer it to other locally produced things.
A focused flexible direct sales to the world.

[XDED4]

Well I would like to add my own real designs of Aboriginal Art here. You can also have a look of them. Most probably it would be great for the promotions of my creating designs, and all designs are unique.

[publicduende]

I agree with Master: much easier to invest on a simple website with an e-catalogue and hooked up to Visa or Paypal. When I was in the Philippines I bought some stuff from this shop:

http://www.kulturafilipino.com/Kultura/index.php

I think whoever wants to sell exotic craft from the Philippines will be up against some competition...as usual.