Tales of Transparency

Speak Softly But Carry a Big Diecast Stick

Ever since we started accepting AmazonPay a couple of years ago, we’ve realized that Amazon has become one of the more progressive voices in the world of e-commerce. Now they are literally as well as figuratively looking to put their money where their mouth is. This year, Amazon plans to roll out voice communications and specialized vocal commands for prospective customers interested in placing orders with select merchants. So, instead of having to enter loads of information by hand or over the phone, shoppers will be able to use their Alexa-enabled devices to check on their existing orders as well as place new orders at any time of day or night. This will no doubt simplify the order-taking process and should make things easier for those shoppers that may not speak English as their primary language.

Next week, we will be attending an Amazon-hosted webinar that seeks to spell out the process in detail and hopefully provide dates as to when the system will be rolled out to merchants and customers alike. Once we feel confident that it is working as advertised, we will provide further details and go from there. Start testing your vocal chords!

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: Don’t Tax Toys

The Toy Association has created a pair of moving videos that are designed to raise awareness about the proposed 25% tariff on imported Chinese goods and its impending impact on the toy industry. We encourage you to both view and share these videos and pay a visit to the newly-created Don’t Tax Toys web site to voice your opinion and gain further insight on the tariff that will affect our industry shortly.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: Walk the Floor

When I broke into retail management back in the late 1970s, one of the responsibilities that came with the job was walking the store’s floor each day before it was opened to the public. “Patrolling the physical plant”, as its called by some, means just that – picking up any rubbish on the floor, inspecting and aligning dump displays, repairing torn or hanging signage, and returning stray shopping carts to the queue. Its a relatively simple task that pays dividends each and every day, particularly if your store was due to be inspected by upper management. It also meant your store looked good for the public-at-large, ready to cater to their every need.

Today, with many retail establishments eschewing brick-and-mortar store fronts in favor of online virtual ones, I’m constantly amazed at how this simple concept seems to have fallen on deaf ears, fallen out of favor, and even fallen by the wayside. Time and again, I see manufacturer web site that feature old, out-of-date information, incorrect information and even no information at all, as if it was a job left for some one else to one day repair and update. There are web sites that time out day-in and day out, are slow to load and even have information that is completely useless to anyone in or out of the industry, making it all but pointless to visit.

People seem to think that Hobby Master has risen to prominence simply by producing an ample supply of collectibles month-in and month-out, outstripping and outselling the competition with an avalanche of product. While that is partly true, one of the reasons they have succeeded where others have failed miserably is the fact that they also update their web site, constantly and continually freshening up the site so that it contains pertinent and up-to-date product announcements. They also provide Hobbymaster.com, an enthusiast-operated and owned site that has been around for a number of years, with regular imagery and updates, making it a go-too page for anyone interested in Hobby Master products. Why this fact has alluded the attention of many competing firms is beyond me. I don’t understand how they can expect to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Hobby Master and a handful of other manufacturers when they approach the business with what can best be described as a lackadaisical attitude, failing to understand the importance of putting their best foot forward by offering timely and accurate information ahead of the release of every item they make.

Ladies and gentlemen, its time to walk your virtual floor. Clean up before the clock strikes twelve.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: Collecting Out-of-State Sales Tax

Earlier today, I read, with great interest, an email sent out by one of our competitors to their clientele regarding the collection of online sales tax. In it, the owner expressed his dismay regarding the onerous task of collecting sales tax for states outside his immediate purview. While I can understand his frustration and cause for alarm, I just wanted to point out something he and the rest of the collecting community may not be aware of after doing some due diligence of my own.

The following text was excerpted from the SalesTaxInstitute.com web site and may help to explain why some sellers are collecting sales tax and others are not: “On June 21, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., addressing South Dakota’s economic nexus law. This decision overruled the physical presence rule for sales tax nexus for sales made over the internet. States now have right to require tax collection from online retailers and other remote sellers that do not have physical presence in their states. Looking strictly at the South Dakota economic nexus legislation addressed in the case, South Dakota’s law minimizes the burden on online and out-of-state sellers. The legislation provides a safe harbor for small sellers: a remote seller must make in-state sales exceeding $100,000 or makes 200 or more separate sales transactions in the previous or current calendar year for the nexus provision to apply. The legislation also ensures that the nexus provision does not apply retroactively.”

So, in effect, unless the seller is doing a truly bang up job in a particular state, they are exempted from this Supreme Court ruling by this so-called safe harbor. Online sellers such as Amazon and eBay are clearly exceeding these thresholds, which is why they are currently tacking on sales tax to online transactions made in states mandating the collection of sales tax. Now, should things change from a legislative standpoint or we start doing incredibly well such that we are meeting or exceeding these thresholds, then I doubt a retailer of our size and stature will have to collect and remit sales tax for states other than New York, our nexus, which is where we are currently located.

As states seek to raise revenue in the wake of store closings and online sales continue to increase vis. a vis. brick-and-mortar businesses, this ruling will likely be reviewed again and possibly amended to reflect the state-of-affairs. Until such time, however, we will continue to collect sales tax from customers located in New York but will certainly notify everyone if it appears as if we must follow suit and start collecting sales tax from and for other states.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: Why We Do What We Do

From time to time, we get asked an uncomfortable question or two where the answer we provide never seems to sit well with the customer. Two of the most pervasive issues have to do with holding merchandise for the customer and refusing to ship to an alternate address. To get everyone on the same page, here’s the reason we do what we do.

To answer the first question we have roughly 15,000 customers in our database. Now if every customer asked us to hold an item or two for them so they could save on shipping costs we would literally have to open a separate warehouse containing held merchandise potentially for indefinite periods of time. Not only is this problematic for any number of reasons, the simplest answer is that we have invoices to pay and cannot do so with held merchandise. Our cash flow would be crimped and, from a logistical standpoint, it simply would not work for us as we continue to stack and dodge piles of unpaid merchandise that could have been sold off.

Now. to answer the second question. We did at one time ship to an alternate address, oftentimes because the item was meant to be given as a gift or no one was going to be home to receive the package. Lo and behold, a few years ago we shipped two radio controlled vehicles to an alternate address as stipulated on the order. A few weeks later, we received a charge back notification in the mail from our credit card processor. It turns out that even though we provided proof of delivery, the credit card company would only protect the merchant if he or she ships to the billing address. It doesn’t matter that we got a legitimate authorization code when the sale was entered, did our due diligence by going over all of the order’s details, or shipped the package where it was intended to go and provided proof of delivery. As a result, we got stung and lost the case, leaving us little else but to lose out on a couple of hundred dollars as well as a charge back fee to boot. Now I know that by publicizing this, other merchants might get a bit nervous, but have hopefully taken similar steps to protect their business from fraudulent transactions. I cannot speak for them and they are certainly free to do as they please. But for me, that one bad transaction left a sour taste in my mouth that I never quite got over.

Ebay offers one solution to this quandary. If the mailing address is different than the billing address, the customer must stipulate where the package is to be sent in their closed messaging system where the merchant, customer and eBay representative can see the back-and-forth communiques. At that point, eBay will protect the merchant should the customer still decide to open a case for non-receipt of goods or claim they never ordered the merchandise to begin with. Its not the best solution for everyone concerned, but one that seems to work given the vagaries of e-commerce and the risk the merchant is willing to undertake to help a customer and complete a sale.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: Wrapping Up 2018 and Looking Ahead to the New Year

We’re just a handful of days away from saying farewell to 2018 so we thought it a good time to look back at the past twelve months as well as gaze ahead at the coming year.

For starters, we’ve moved the current shipment of Corgi and Dragon Armor products from our Product in Transit section to the New Arrivals area so that we can close out the books at our end and get ready for our end-of-year inventory. These last two shipments are still scheduled to arrive during the first week of January barring any unforeseen shipping issues brought on by the holidays and/or the weather, so we appreciate your patience should you look forward to receiving them sooner rather than later.

2019 is stacking up to be quite a year for us. In the first quarter, we plan to spin up our new Walmart and Jet.com marketplace stores, bringing our marketplace tally to five (Ebay, Amazon and Facebook being the others) in addition to our main site. There are some other irons in the fire, so-to-speak, which will require a bit of fine tuning on our part to get them completely aligned with our present marketing strategy. More on that later.

We don’t foresee any issues with the current crop of product lines we stock — in fact, as Forces of Valor finally comes on line in a meaningful way, we anticipate things will get hectic early on without the added pressure of the holiday season bearing down on us. Again, this all depends upon Waltersons, the new caretakers of the brand, sticking to and maintaining a reliable release schedule all the while expanding their product portfolio to cover all of its previous ranges as well as those still expected to be bolted on.

Naturally, there are the old stalwarts to consider too, which include Hobby Master, Corgi, Eaglemoss and a few other longtime brands, who continue to improve and expand upon their own core ranges and synergies to round out our selection and those of our customers. Several manufacturers have made quite a name for themselves and will likely continue to carve out respectable niches in the marketplace that few can ignore.

We will have more to say about 2019 shortly, which could include a relocation for us should we decide to move forward with the change. As always, we wish all of our patrons a happy and healthy new year and continue to say thank you for your patronage as we embark upon our nineteenth year of operation.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency – The October Update

As we close out the month of October, I just wanted to remind everyone that we will be closed for vacation from Saturday, November 27th until Sunday, November 4th. All of our marketplace stores will be shuttered during this time frame although you will still be able to place orders through our main web site. Naturally, we will not be around to answer any questions but will do so upon our return.

Our Amazon store has been up-and-running for several months now and we’ve witnessed phenomenal results as well as some curious issues.  We’re still learning the ins-and-outs of selling on Amazon and the importance of winning the “buy box” as a means of generating sales and moving inventory. Currently, we only sell to the United States and Canada. We were hoping to make the Amazon store available to customers in Europe and elsewhere, but have since learned that you must have a physical location within each “territory” to cater to the clientele. It doesn’t make sense for us to use their Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) operation as a means of selling product overseas due to the storage costs involved as well as logistics and other criteria that invariably affects our bottom line. So, for now, if you’d like to make a purchase from us and you live outside North America, eBay and our main web site remain your only course of action.

We’ve also discovered several other problems with selling on Amazon that we are attempting to address as expeditiously as possible. First, which ever retailer creates a listing for an item, generally gets to provide much of the information for it, even if its superficial in nature and less than optimal. For instance, we’ve noted, time and again that an item’s title may be inaccurate, containing little descriptive information and sometimes accompanied by line art images instead of actual photos of the product. Moreover, many products are not even listed on Amazon since they do not come with a UPC bar code or other means of digital identification to be entered into their product catalog. After we return from vacation, we plan to address this issue by purchasing independently-created UPC codes and affixing them to each item, thereby enabling them to be sold through Amazon and elsewhere. We’ve told several distributors and manufacturers that they need to correct these deficiencies in their product packaging if they hope to sell their products on Amazon or elsewhere, as more and more marketplaces require UPCs, EANs or ASINs for inclusion in their product catalog. Frankly, its a headache that a retailer shouldn’t have to address in this day-and-age. Be that as it may, we will rely upon this short-term fix as a means of getting more product online across the entire spectrum of marketplaces.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency – September is Upon Us

Now that summer has come and gone, we’ve taken several steps to get ready for the upcoming holiday season. Our Calendar of Events, for instance, now shows the cutoff dates for both domestic and international shipping. Please make sure to review it if you plan to wait closer to the holidays before placing your orders.

We have decided to temporarily delay the spinning up of our Walmart and Jet.com marketplace outlets. Originally scheduled for a November opening, a Walmart spokesperson recently announced that they understood the deficiencies of their present software program and were taking steps to offer a more user-friendly set of selling tools that is both more intuitive and more in line with systems employed by other marketplace venues. By delaying their roll out, it also gives us more time to investigate and deploy a stock balancing software program that is aimed at keeping inventory levels correct across all of out sales venues in real-time. We will likely roll out both stores in early 2019 once we have had time to better analyze their intentions.

We were recently awarded a Store Loyalty badge from Yahoo Commerce which signifies how often our customers’ return to our store after checking out the competition. The badge appears in the lower left hand corner of our web site.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: August Updates

So, as we close out the summer and head into the 2018 holiday season, we thought it a good time to discuss some of the recent changes we’ve made along the way. For starters, our fledgling Amazon store is now up-and-running and doing quite well. In fact, we were invited to become an Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime operator last week and we dutifully agreed. This means you can now enjoy free standard shipping for domestic orders for those items we have listed in our Amazon store. Obviously inventory levels will vary over the course of the year as will our product selection, so we cannot guarantee that every item you see on our web site will be featured on Amazon.

Second, our Walmart store is scheduled to go live later this fall, although we are still working out some kinks as well as deploying the latest in inventory balancing software that will work in the background for all of our retail venues.

Next, we have decided to use ShipStation as our primary means of mailing, tracking and overseeing orders placed on our web site. ShipStation offers an elegant means of addressing all of our shipping needs and we recognize its value as we continue to grow. You will no doubt notice that shipping notifications will look somewhat differently going forward, but should contain all of the requisite information to track your deliveries.

Other improvements and upgrades are in the works but we aren’t as yet prepared to discuss them in detail. Rest assured we are working diligently to remain the preeminent supplier of diecast military products anywhere on the globe.

Share This:

Tales of Transparency: The eBay-PayPal Quandary

Earlier this year, eBay announced that it was ending its partnership with PayPal, its longtime handler of online payment processing, which has facilitated transactions both here and abroad for the better part of two decades. At one time, eBay actually owned PayPal, but decided to spin off the service a few years ago to unlock its potential — as Wall Street analysts claim — and enable it to enter payment processing agreements with other etailers, such as Amazon. We have since learned that eBay will be rolling out its own payment processor this September, initially offered by invitation only until it is ready to go prime time with all of its sellers and customers. At some point, according to eBay, PayPal will no longer be accepted as its principal form of payment although eBay has hinted that it will make it available again as an alternative means of payment processing, perhaps as early as 2019 once it feels confident that their own service will take center stage.

Adyen has reportedly been enlisted to handle eBay’s payment processing, and the new system has been reportedly called Ebay Payments. According to Ecommerce Bytes, the new payment system has entered the beta phase with a number of select merchants. We will post more information on these changes as soon as they are rolled out this September. Keep in mind we will still accept PayPal as a form of payment on our own web site, in addition to all of the major credit cards, AmazonPay and potentially ApplePay once it too has been approved as a payment processor by our web hosting solution.

On a personal note, we’ve been selling on eBay for almost two decades ourselves, initially selling a couple of lines of diecast classic cars for a friend. Back then, payment was made by cash, check, or money order, and oftentimes we were left in the lurch for weeks on end waiting to receive payment. When PayPal began, we viewed it as a godsend largely because we were getting paid almost as quickly as an item sold. It also streamlined the international payment process, since everyone was now operating on a level playing field and using PayPal as an intermediary should a problem occur. With their being shunted aside, its almost as if we’re starting over again, forced to create new bonds of trust through a brand new payment system. Ebay has hinted that they plan to incentivize the system, either offering bounties for each person/organization that signs up or perhaps lower payment processing fees to make their new system more attractive to the average seller. Still, it feels as if we are taking a step backwards by having to accept a brand new payment processor that no one is familiar with, hoping that it covers the same types of issues that can sometimes occur between a seller and buyer should the transaction go awry. Its not an enviable system for everyone concerned, but one we have no choice but to take on if we are to continue selling on eBay.

For more information on the upcoming payment intermediation, visit eBay’s Seller Center.

Share This: