Guides

Every resale business in Australia hits the same wall. You start because you love the hunt — finding great items, listing them, selling them. Simple. Then it’s not simple. You’re managing 100 items and can’t remember what’s listed where. You’re jumping between eBay, Gumtree, and Facebook Marketplace with sticky notes on your monitor. Consignment sounded like a great way to get more stock without buying it, but now you’re tracking payouts in a spreadsheet that’s lying to you. ...

Every second software product claims to have AI these days. A spreadsheet with a random number generator could call itself “AI-powered” and nobody would blink. Consignment store owners are right to be sceptical. You’ve been pricing items by hand for years — checking eBay, tweaking based on what moves, building intuition about your local market. Can a computer really do better? Short answer: yes, in specific and measurable ways. Here’s the honest version of how it works, where it helps, and where it still needs a human eye. ...

If you’re listing consignment stock manually, you already know it’s slow. The question is how slow — and whether the difference actually matters for your bottom line. Let’s run the numbers side by side. The Manual Workflow — Minute by Minute Every item that comes through your door follows the same path. Here’s what the manual version looks like for a typical consignment store listing one handbag across two marketplaces. ...

Pricing secondhand items has always been more art than science. You look at an item, think about what you paid, check a few eBay listings, and pick a number that feels right. Sometimes you nail it. Sometimes you leave money on the table. And sometimes the item sits for weeks because you priced it too high. AI pricing is changing that. Instead of gut feel and a handful of eBay searches, you get a recommendation based on thousands of actual sales — adjusted for condition, seasonality, and marketplace fees. ...

Every Australian reseller hits the same crossroads eventually: consign this item or sell it myself? It seems simple — consignment means someone else does the work, right? Not quite. The real answer depends on the item, your time, and how much margin you are willing to share. Let us break it down with real Australian dollar figures. The Case for Consignment Consignment means you hand your item to a store or platform. They photograph it, list it, handle buyer questions, ship it, and deal with returns. When it sells, they take a commission (typically 30-50% of the sale price) and send you the rest. ...

Consignment is one of the lowest-risk ways to start selling. You don’t buy stock upfront — you sell on behalf of others and take a commission. Here’s how to make it work in Australia. Why Consignment Works The traditional retail model requires significant capital: you buy inventory, hope it sells, and absorb losses when it doesn’t. Consignment flips this. You only pay consignors when items sell, meaning zero inventory risk. ...

Price an item wrong and two things happen: price too high and it sits for months eating shelf space; price too low and you leave money on the table. Here’s the framework that consistent resellers use to get pricing right. The Three Inputs to Every Price Every price decision comes down to three numbers: Market value — What comparable items have actually sold for recently Time value — How long you’re willing to hold the item Platform cost — What it costs to sell on each channel Miss any one of these and you’re guessing. ...

Whether you’re running a consignment store or flipping finds from Abbey’s Auctions, your eBay listings are only as good as the strategy behind them. After analysing thousands of Australian eBay listings, here are the seven patterns that consistently outperform. 1. Front-Load Your Title With Search Terms eBay gives you 80 characters. The first 35 show on mobile. Put your brand, model, and size up front — not adjectives like “Stunning” or " Gorgeous." Buyers search for “Louis Vuitton Neverfull MM,” not “beautiful designer bag.” ...