I just sent an email blast to the folks on the FSM mailing list (sign up here). I’m a little uncertain how often to do that, because I’m on a bunch of mailing lists (as are we all) and finding the right amount of communication can be tricky. So I promise not to abuse it!
A funny thing happened now that we have our e-commerce site: we were too efficient! We shipped more than 3,000 CDs last week—it used to take us two and a half weeks to process that much. (Check out the store: www.fsmcds.com.)
But what happened with the old sales that I took manually is that people would inevitably add to their orders before we could ship. So I got in the habit of letting folks know ahead of time, “Hey, we’re shipping your order Tuesday, so if you want anything else, let me know by Monday at 9PM [or whatever].”
We ended up selling a lot more than way—but we couldn’t do that this time! Consequently, we’re still sitting on a ton of stuff that would have otherwise sold.
So I guess I’m sending out the blast today to ask if anybody wants anything else? We still have 2,000 CDs on hand, and I am thinking of what to do with the hundreds of non-soundtrack titles (classical, Broadway, jazz, pop, a little bit of new age) that Tim Knapp collected. I may just have to bring them to Amoeba or the local library.
If you haven’t signed up yet, please create a registration before you shop, otherwise the CDs may vanish from your shopping cart. (The carts are normally set to hold items exclusively for six hours. After that, they will still be in your cart, but other collectors can buy them too.)
The real reason I need to move these, not only because I want my living room back (albeit temporarily), is because we’re getting in several more collections and parts of collections. And I literally, physically do not have the space!
Thank you all for trusting us with your orders. I never thought I’d be back to selling CDs, but it’s been a good opportunity, and it’s been nice to help the families who were trying to get their loved ones’ titles into good homes—as well as all of you, looking for good stuff at bargain prices. Thanks!
To add a thought to what I just posted: what about networking with similar sites that get collections in periodically, such as SAE and Moviemusic, to trade around items that haven't sold? It seems you all could accomplish this by linking to one another and agreeing how certain costs, processing, and shipping would be handled rather than actually physically shipping unsold inventory to one another. It seems to me that smallish eCommerce purveyors in niche markets have GOT to start thinking outside the box in this way to reach consumer bases that tend to exist in siloes. It's a fact that people search and patronize sites with which they're familiar, fragmenting the potential consumer base you and all similar s…
What about also posting such items, or linking your store, to Discogs, Ebay and Amazon? Film scores remain such a niche market and most people hunting for items to fill out their jazz/pop/classical/other genre collections are not aware of sites like yours, SAE, and Moviemusic--and therefore have no idea that collections come in that might include the types of items they're searching for. I would think you have to do both: expand your search reach to capture more generalists to look at your store, and also discount more readily those items that haven't sold to enthusiasts already aware of your site. Selling something at all is much better than nothing.
Another option would be to reduce the prices on the remaining CDs. Some could be reduced a little; some could be reduced a lot. Call it a 25% off (or whatever) sale. You would still get a lot more than you would at Amoeba!