Sales 2021 vs 2020

[Sozial]

How were your sales this year compared to last year? I solely do FBA. I had far less sales (43% decline) this year compared to 2020.

I suppose the main reasons are:

- more competition with sellers with much bigger quantities (200-500pcs)

- UK not part of EU anymore 

- prolonged product cycles because of covid, so I had less ripe product to sell

- surge of power prices/inflation - so no money for expensive toys

 

 

 

 

 

[brickvoyeur]

Down 27%. Amazon opening the gates wide is my best guess.

I decided to check just how wide open the gate was by opening a seller account for my wife. I submitted a Kohl's receipt from their black Friday sale, and was approved to sell the brand on a brand new seller account. If the gate goes back down at some point, there will still be a ton of people behind it. 

Local sales are way up though, it's been incredible. Emazers would say that you don't receive a 1099 for cash payments. 

[BrickLover80]

40 minutes ago, brickvoyeur said:

Down 27%. Amazon opening the gates wide is my best guess.

I decided to check just how wide open the gate was by opening a seller account for my wife. I submitted a Kohl's receipt from their black Friday sale, and was approved to sell the brand on a brand new seller account. If the gate goes back down at some point, there will still be a ton of people behind it. 

Local sales are way up though, it's been incredible. Emazers would say that you don't receive a 1099 for cash payments. 

Online volume was good but prices were down. 

Where/how do you market your local sales? I got very little traction through FBM/offer-up/Craigslist. Only total low ball offers and a few questions about diagon alley.

[Mark Twain]

I don’t think we can really compare anything to 2020 sales. I sold more in the spring and fall than ever before in 2020 and burned through virtually 90% of stock on hand. Yes, this year there are more resellers on Amazon, but I haven’t had an issue moving sets. I’m just waiting for most of my current inventory to ripen. A lot of these new resellers were selling close to cost, at least on some items that I could see, so I doubt that they’re going to stick around for the long term.


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[brickvoyeur]

54 minutes ago, BrickLover80 said:

Online volume was good but prices were down. 

Where/how do you market your local sales? I got very little traction through FBM/offer-up/Craigslist. Only total low ball offers and a few questions about diagon alley.

I literally just make a single post per theme with prices in the description. Refresh it every Friday. Nothing too fancy. Prices are all that matter and I ensure mine are cheaper than what they can get online.

8 minutes ago, Mark Twain said:

A lot of these new resellers were selling close to cost, at least on some items that I could see, so I doubt that they’re going to stick around for the long term.
 

I think we're all hoping that tax time will knock them out of the game. SSNs will be requested once they hit $600 in sales and hopefully that starts an exodus.

As a side note this is apparently my 1,000th post. With only 2,948 likes, I was unable to maintain a 3 to 1 like to post ratio. Sad times were had

[redcell]

My sales are down about 25% from 2020 to 2021, but that is not surprising since I offloaded a huge chunk of my inventory in bulk deals earlier in the year. All of the new competition is going to make things more challenging in the years to come and will tighten margins, but I've been planning for this for at least 6 years and have enough scale to make up in volume what I lose in margin.

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[chinothegeeko]

Happy where that’s at but haven’t broken it down for just Lego yet. Year is not over and orders still trickling in and will pick up once again after Xmas. I shut my store down for 3 days this past weekend for FBM to take a break and enjoy family and friends. Sold about $10k worth of used and damaged stuff on eBay so nothing big there but that is down from previous years.


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[KShine]

Sales down 35% this year (compared to last), but still good (since last yr was nuts).

My big drop/concern is this holiday season - Holiday sales down almost 60%, and over 45% this quarter.

I am thinking it is related to waning LEGO interest.

Definitely not feeling optimistic for 2022.

Edited December 23, 2021 by KShine

[Bricklectic]

my 2 cents on causes:

1) Covid related: 2020 Covid supply issues outpaced this years issues

2) Economy related: No more Money printer this year

3) Amazon related: 10k more sellers ungated

4) Lego related: Bazillions of new sets capture collectors interests and divert their attention from inflated old sets.

 

All 4 are significant factors I believe but I dont know which is the *reason*

[$20 on joe vs dan]

1 hour ago, Bricklectic said:

my 2 cents on causes:

1) Covid related: 2020 Covid supply issues outpaced this years issues

2) Economy related: No more Money printer this year

3) Amazon related: 10k more sellers ungated

4) Lego related: Bazillions of new sets capture collectors interests and divert their attention from inflated old sets.

 

All 4 are significant factors I believe but I dont know which is the *reason*

#2 gets my vote as the pirmary (all contribute some)...something about free money and luxury goods

[vasp]

IMO : Ungating is the worst thing amazon did this year. Many listings had new sellers with prices $30-$40 less next closest or prime offer.

Whatever happened to the eligibility to sell during holiday criteria.

I guess amazon got greedy, more sellers --> more profits.

FBA: Up until last year FBA vs FBM was approximately $10 difference with FBA getting buy box. This season it was $5. That doesn't even cover FBA expenses per item.

Some products sold at a higher price in December 2020, then this season. 21307 comes to mind to top the list. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by vasp

[ravenb99]

1 hour ago, vasp said:

IMO : Ungating is the worst thing amazon did this year. Many listings had new sellers with prices $30-$40 less next closest or prime offer.

 

Even old sellers were doing that with huge quantity.

LEGO was not very short at all,  even when it went oos it was back in and out frequently.  Some stuff never went OOS at all and was even on sale 20 off the entire season.

Nothing ever went up like last year over a certain point.  If you raised a little it stopped selling altogether and had to lower back down.  Then risk getting stuck on the non retiring with the sporadic restocks or stuff showing up in stores scattered all through the 3 weeks.

Money was definitely tighter and a lot of people just jumped to other cheaper priced items instead of pushing up items like last year that they really wanted.  That also was easier with so many damn sets out there.

The most baffling part was the non lego toys that were actually hard to get and not out there online or in store many times that never took off yet still somehow had 300+ sellers.  

The limit 20 and unlimited stuff early on in season Oct/Nov with 30-60 day delivery times on amz didn't help either as a lot of that got into resellers hands during peak time and in large quantities.  

The whole Target x Collection BS Dec 4th didn't help any seasonal sets.  Wreath never going OOS anywhere was ridiculous as well as other previous year holiday sets which is just pure overproduction.

Pretty sure sales were even or a bit higher but only cause I bought more for the holidays.  Profits were minimal at best on the stuff that actually did sell and had a good amount of speculation breakevens and losses.

Few big winners but was hard to get those in quantity.  

 

 

 

[HandyHand]

My total number of sales in 2021 was down with 35% compared to 2020. But 2020 was unique with the LEGO shortages in production, the lock down and people being bored at home, the money printing (indeed)...