My husband seems to be always quoting either himself, his father or his grandfather when it comes to business (and my husband started many companies during his business career). One of his favorite quotes come from his father. "It does you no good to have a warehouse full of inventory. For if product does not leave the warehouse, you can't make a profit, no matter how low you paid for any of the items."
Comparing that quote to Etsy is a lot more complicated as with Etsy, our products are handmade and with the case of my husband's business, it was inventory purchased (bought for $8.00 and sold for $10.00, etc.). There was no creativity, labor, pride, artist, etc. factored into our products.
So if we painted a beach watercolor painting, placed a price of $50.00 on the painting and then viewed other artist's paintings for $30.00, there is a element of competitive pricing and sales brought into view. If we then see that one of the artists has sold 10 beach watercolor paintings and I have sold 1 painting in the same period of time (and I also have 5 paintings available), there could be a temptation to adjust the price?
And then my father-in-law's quotes starts to chime in, too. "It does you no good to have a warehouse full of inventory. For if product does not leave the warehouse, you can't make a profit, no matter how low you paid for any of the items."
But "STOP" right there. There is much more to the story then price, quality, sales, etc. It has to do with marketing, exposure, value, perception, etc. So, just don't jump to any conclusions when someone else is selling more than you and the prices of their products are much less than yours.
We will continue our discussion on this topic in another post.
Mel
