eMoviePoster.com

Last week, I recounted how before we had our own site we were among the very top eBay sellers and I explained how we came to leave eBay, and how once we left, we found that our sales were even better on our own site than they had been on eBay (and in fact, in 2008, we had our first three million dollar sales year ever)!

By the end of 2008 it had become obvious to us, due to increased sales and greatly increased consignments, that we were ready to expand to yet another night of auctions! We picked Sunday because it was two days away from the others (Saturday could also have worked in that sense, but we figured that many people go out Saturday nights, and we also didn't want to have to wait two days to send orders, and that would have happened with Saturday auctions. 

We also realized that adding Sunday auctions gave us a chance to run the auctions earlier in the day. The Tuesday and Thursday auctions closed starting at 7 PM CST (so that all U.S. bidders would likely be off work when they started closing), but they had the slight problem of European bidders having to stay up extra late (or set an alarm) to bid as those auctions closed.

So we had the Sunday auctions start closing four hours earlier, so that European bidders would be able to bid on them that much earlier, and U.S. bidders were not inconvenienced, because few of them work on Sunday. Our first set of Sunday auctions began just over a year after we left eBay, and it ended on Sunday, Jun 28th, 2009 and it contained 206 glass slides, German programs & magazines.

Since that time we have continued with the three weekly auctions, and the only change is that where we used to vary between just a few hundred and 999 auctions per set of auctions, we now almost always have three sets of 999 auctions each, which has allowed us to go from around 110,000 auctions per year to over 140,000 auctions each year!

Would we ever consider adding a fourth night of auctions? I never like to say "never", but probably night! It takes 30 employees to make the three nights of auctions possible, and a fourth night would likely require an additional ten or so employees, and I don't know how easily I could possibly find ten GREAT ones (similar to our current 30!).

Meanwhile, while we don't increase the number of nights of auctions (or the number of auctions per night), we DO keep working on making our auctions more efficient for our bidders, and we keep improving the quality of what we auction (by moving more and more of the really low value items to our monthly bulk lot auctions, which contain from 15,000 to 25,000 items every month).

We know full well we are the best movie and poster auction there is (and some say we are the best auction period!), but we don't want to "rest on our laurels". We continue to do everything we can think of to make our site better in every way imaginable!

Did you see Part I of this article, Did you know... that before we had our own site we were among the very top eBay sellers?

See Also:
Did you know... how eMoviePoster.com got started twenty eight years ago?

For those of you who don't know more about our business, here is a brief overview:

About Our Philosophy Having seen how many auction houses operate first hand, Bruce Hershenson started eMoviePoster.com with the philosophy that auctions should be run with honesty and integrity.  That is why we are always as accurate as possible, have NO buyers premiums or reserves, ship orders as quickly as possible, endeavor to provide timely and friendly responses to customers, and provide our "no questions asked" return policy.  More so, these policies extend to EVERY SINGLE BUYER regardless of whether you spend a few dollars or many thousands.  When you buy from eMoviePoster.com, you aren't "just another buyer"; you are always be treated the same as our most valued customers!   

About Our Auctions Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, eMoviePoster.com adds 200 to 1000 items to online auctions (2,000+ items per week). All the Tuesday and Thursday items begin around 7 PM CST (Sunday items begin at 3 PM CST), which means they close the following Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday around the same time. If you go to our list of items each Tuesday and Thursday night PRIOR to 7 PM CST (or Sunday prior to 3 PM CST), you can view the current items just before they close (so you can make last minute bids), plus you can look at the items for the upcoming week (we add the next week's items just after the current items close).

Each week our three weekly sales combined contain around $70,000 of movie posters, lobby cards, and/or other movie paper, and EVERY ITEM starts at just $1, with NO RESERVE on any item, which means these have competitive bidding (where the final prices are set by two or more real bidders, not by you bidding against a reserve). Far too many auctions have sky-high reserves, which is why so many go unsold. Over 99% of OUR over 1,400,000+ auctions to date have sold (the few that don't get a $1 bid are displayed on the walls of our 35,000 square foot warehouse!), and around 60% of all our auctions close at under $20 each (and by contrast there are auctions with $19 minimum buyers premiums, who never auction ONE items for under $20).