Misc01 Jan 2006 09:37 pm
An Uncluttered New Year’s Resolution
One of the more common New Year’s resolutions of 2006 will be to unclutter your life - this will especially be true once FutureShop goes on sale (January 23) and finds its ways into the hands of people that want to improve their lives. Getting rid of the things you no longer use will allow you to enjoy more fully the things you really love. Martha Stewart is pushing the same message as she advises her readers to “clear out the clutter” in this New Year’s Day article she wrote.
Prudent auction companies and dropshops will drum up business by echoing the same timely message to their communities.
January 3rd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Great advice! I couldn’t agree more. Less is often more and what better time then the New Year to clean house. And regarding your overall premise in Future Shop — you couldn’t be more right about what is going on. I was just gifted two iPods this Holiday season, and I have the perfect plan: sell one of them online and store the cash for my next new gadget.
Love the book and teh Web site. You are certainly onto something with this impactful trend that is sweeping the world.
January 31st, 2006 at 5:07 pm
As a clutterer trying to regain control, I welcome ways to reduce my feeling of dependence on having immediately on hand everything I might ever need, or that someone else may need, or that has some other monetary or sentimental value. I have found good homes for some things with FreeCycle, and other venues like a local swap shop. I like the idea of being able to borrow or inexpensively lease things I only need occasionally. I would support any way to reduce waste and promote conservation of precious resources.
February 5th, 2006 at 12:32 am
Daniel:
Take a look at www.librarything.com The site is a self-inputting cataloging service for individuals. I have created an account there under there username postzavtra.
The reason I suggest this site is because it is a new type of user generated “web2.0″ SaaS which I believe provides one of the missing keys to creating more liquid secondary markets for consumer goods.
That missing key is finding a way to value “stuff” people currently own but haven’t yet thought of selling. Would not you have perhaps sold those early Elan parabolics if you had known that you could have sold them for $500 after a couple years?
Everyone has a huge “portfolio” of stuff. All that stuff has value. The “problem” with the current model is that folks like yourself and eBay must wait until someone actually decides to sell the item. Often it’s too late by this point.
However, if folks could put a realistic dollar value of their portfolio of stuff they would often be surprised by how much an item might fetch and thus, be inclined to put that item into play.
Librarything.com is a great example of a piece of web2.0 social software which could easily be adapted to be used to show folks the value of the books they currently own.
Perhaps I might be willing to part with a couple of the 1st Edition John Irving books if I knew I could get a grand to buy a pair of Stokli parabolics slalom cut.
Think about how cool it would be for folks to catalog their “crap” and then receive rss feeds daily with offers on goods that they weren’t planning on selling?
I would recommend that opml files be the standard platform on which folks could aggregate their stuff portfolios. Through opml, rss, and xml the tools are falling into place.
I’m enjoying your book (1/2 way through) and look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Regards, Tim Post
February 5th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Daniel:
One last thing before bed.
Folks who are in the market for an item will have the ability, just as users at Library Thing have the ability to look at others’ book collections, to look through people’s stuff. If they see something they like they can make an offer. Talk about “home shopping.”
The seller can always throw a reserve price up for something that they still use and like but wouldn’t mind parting with if the price were right.
The key to this new approach is to dramatically populate the marketplace with inventory so that more markets can resemble dealer markets.
ONe very cool feature of Library Thing is that it uses Amazon’s API to access its database (in addition to numerous academic of civic libraries). By using Amazon’s API it enables folks to do a quick and dirty key word search when entering their book collections. I can type Garp and the correct book with cover art et al with appear. My book collection can also be exported ain n opml file.
OK. That’s it for now. You get the idea. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
Tim Post
February 6th, 2006 at 10:39 am
Tim,
Your way ahead of the game in your thinking here. I’m working on a post on this very point. Look for it soon.
February 6th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Daniel:
Some more thoughts after further reading your book.
It seems to me that one of the constraints in the business model of dropshop is the sourcing of items to sell.
My step-brother sells high-end American Sporting Art and his biggest challenge is finding works of art to bring to auction or sell privately.
One of the solutions implemented to address this constraint was for Portero to do home pick-up and, I assume appraisals.
The issue/problem/constraint with the current model is that there must be a single point in time when someone says, “I want to sell this watch/cell phone/pair of skis.” The underlying assumption is that this decision to sell is made independantly of potential buyers. I think it’s not asynchronous but reflexive.
Based on many of the examples in your book one glaringly obvious fact is that most people will part with almost anything if the price is right.
The problem with eBay is that one doesn’t know if the price is right until AFTER s/he has made the decision to sell and gone through all the effort to prepare the item for sale.
Dropshops only address half the issue. Namely, they make the process of preparing for sale easier. However, they do not let a potential seller know if “the price is right.”
Now, based on my limited understanding auction houses and dropshop might offer an alternative prospect of offering cash up front. Essentially they take title/ownership and then sell.
Leaving aside the potential for conflicts of interest (the broker’s products might compete against his/her consignment items) there is still an underlying assumption that the seller must have already decided to sell an item before approaching the dropshop/broker/auction house.
My idea is that through the use of cataloging software, one’s whole portfolio of items (essentially everything s/he owns) would by definition be “in play” and available for purchase.
For example, I am typing this email on a Fujitsu Lifebook which I’ve had for a couple years. I just bought an iMac for home and would like to buy a new Intel MacBook. Under the current “secondary market” business model there is too much friction and not enough information to entice me to offer the laptop for sale, regardless of the channel (eBay, private deal, classified, dropshop, etc).
Under the new always in play model, I don’t need to make the sell decision until after an offer has been made. By publicly (anonymously we presume) displaying everything I own, I am able to participant without friction.
Basically, what I suggesting is that the dropshop model go virtual through the use of free cataloging software. Think of all the excitement and viral energy surrounding the social software companies such as MySpace, Del.icio.us, Flickr, etc. There is an opportunity for a dropshop to create a community of MyStuff portfolios through which buyers could make unsolicited offers.
Now, some folks might rightly ask, “Why would anyone cretae a public portfolio of their stuff?” Fair question. First, not everyone would. Not everyone uses www.flickr.com. Nor does everyone use www.librarything.com Nonetheless, there are enough folks who would use such a cataloging service to validate proof of concept.
I would suggest that one take a look at the MyStuff page within Vanity Fair magazine. In addition to the potential monetary implecations of displaying one’s MyStuff online there are some fun and interesting voyeuristic effects of seeing what other people use. After all this is the logic behind celebrity endorsements (e.g. if Brad Pitt use Crest toothpaste maybe I should as well).
The next hurdle would be making the input of items easy. As one can see at www.librarything.com, the input of books is achieved easily through a search box which then searches the databases of multiple book databases (Library of COngress, Amazon, Yale, etc). There is minimal data entry required on the part of the user.
The same results could be achieved in other product catagories. Think electronics. Bestbuy.com has an unbelievable database full of product information. Were the API for BestBuy to be opened, like Amazon, then the software could easily search and retrieve product info. There are hundreds of databases out there that are just waiting to be opened.
So to wrap things up, the new social software models of web2.0 are just waiting to be applied to the dropshop space.
Were there to be a standarized API for such a dropshop social software there would be many opportunities for third party dealers to create value-added sub-software programs which would focus on specific product niches. The key would be that the accumulation of data would reside in the top level database and would
I personally would love to input data about the stuff I own in hopes of unlocking some cash liquidity.
Thanks, Tim Post
February 7th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Daniel:
You identity a very interesting methodology for analyzing the point in time when someone should offer for sale an item they currently own on page 115.
You graph two downward sloping curves over time- residual value and perceived utility (I think it’s important to label this curve with the qualifier of “perceived” because utility is subjective depending on the context and person involved).
The then go on to identify that point in time when the 2 curves cross to be the point in time when one should liquidate.
While I am not a mathematical specialist I think that there may be an alternative trigger point at which one should liquidate.
I would suggest that the perceived utility curve is actually quite flat for an intitial period of time and then slopes downward quite sharply. Almost an inverted hockey stick. Let’s leave aside for nbow the topic of whether perceived utility goes to zero, goes negative, and/or then rises as an item acquires antique status.
I would agree with yopu that the residual value curve starts out declining (often quite sharply as demonstrated by the perverbial new car losing 20% of it value the moment it’s driven of the car dealer’s lot) and then flatens out over time. It’s important for folks to understand that neither curve is linear.
On page 115 you further hypothesize that the residual value curve should be adjusted by the presence of a liquid secondary market for that good. I’m not sure I follow your logic on this point. I think this point is critical in one’s quest to figure-out at what point one should liquidate.
I’m guessing that because it intuitively follows that the liquidation point should be at that point in time when the lines cross, this hypothesis regarding the residual value curve is convenient.
perhaps there’s another way of looking at the curves to determine the point of liquidation? I would offer that the point in time when the distance BETWEEN the two curves is greatest might be that point when one should liquidate.
One possible consequence (I haven’t run enough numbers to be sure) of this second way of analyzing the curves might be that the point in time when one should liquidate is actually much earlier than we conventionally think. Perhaps you should be selling that Blackberry 7100t 5 months after purchasing not 11 months.
I suspect that one of the reasons why the secondary markets have not become as liquid as dropshops might like is due to the fact that people have independantly graphed their perceived utility curves without the benefit of offers to buy. In other words, people hang on to their goods much too long. Unfortunately, the current business model of eBay and dropshops does not provide the immediate feedback to enable folks to liquidate when they should.
As my previous emails have tried to map out, perhaps by making the selling process continuous, rather than at one point in time, folks will begin to adjust their perceived utility curves and liquidate ealier.
Your thoughts?
December 2nd, 2006 at 10:03 am
Dan! You’d be proud. I’m decluttering and I’m so happy. My favorite feeling is looking hard at something and having the revelation I don’t need it anymore. Things that are part of the landscape.
Today I’m having an invitation-only free yard sale. Actually, it’s tonight and it’s for 30 or so of my friends. They’re invited to take whatever they want for free. They can’t trade me anything unless it is consumable. Monday, the Rescue Mission is coming for the rest of it, along with some other donations, and I’ll take the donation as a tax deduction.
I loathe traditional yardsales. They are never really worth the 50, 100 bucks you may make. So I’m having a party and it’s all free!
Mary K.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
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