EBay gave Dale Andrews easy access to a storefront that now nets $10,000 a year
Michael Kane
Sun
Who knew there was a market for NHL hockey pucks in England? Who knew that two competing bidders for an old children’s book would turn out to be long lost relatives of the author?
Victoria‘s Dale Andrews found out after he set up shop in cyberspace four years ago.
All he knew at the time was that an “eBay storefront” would give him a global market for his part-time business selling sports memorabilia and collector’s items such as T-shirts, books and toys. He’d previously relied on weekend shows which had decreased dramatically after the bottom fell out of the market for sports cards.
Andrews, a 33-year-old single, currently earns about $10,000 a year from Downstairs Collectibles and Gifts to supplement his income as a part-time courier and freelance writer.
After attending eBay’s 10th anniversary convention in June in San Jose, he is confident he can eventually make a full-time career on-line. “When you start talking to people from all walks of life and from all around the world, you realize many are making a full-time living and making a great deal of money selling just about anything you can think of,” he said in an interview.
Not surprisingly, the folks at eBay say “the world’s on-line marketplace” is one of the best places on the Internet to start and operate a small business. They note that Andrews is just one of 724,000 individuals in North America who are earning all or part of their income on the eBay site, an increase of 68 per cent from 2003.
The American monolith has levelled the playing field among entrepreneurs, small businesses and multinational companies, says Jordan Banks, eBay Canada‘s managing director.
“It offers a new global frontier, opening up borders traditionally closed off by geography and distance, giving the entrepreneur in downtown Vancouver and business owner in rural Saskatchewan the same access to the same buying community in the same real-time,” Banks said in a release.
Andrews started selling baseball and hockey cards in high school and now does most of his business across North America, but he has sold items as far afield as Australia, Malaysia, Japan and Germany.
He can’t explain the on-line demand for hockey pucks in England — “perhaps the buyers are transplanted Canadians” — but is happy to satisfy it.
His favourite selling moment began about two years ago when two buyers began a bidding competition over an old children’s book called Poco and the Parrot. Bidding started at 99 cents and closed seven days later at $28.
It turned out that both American bidders were relatives of the author and over the course of 20 years had lost touch with one another. Andrews says he is thrilled that the book played an instrumental role in reuniting two lost relatives. He is also pleased that he earned many times the $1 he paid for the book.
The “Downstairs” in his storefront name comes from the midden downstairs in an earlier rented home where he stored his merchandise.
For more information visit www.eBay.ca or http://stores.ebay.com/downstairscollectiblesandgifts.
© The Vancouver Sun 2005