Business Series - Selling Your Vintage & Antiques Online Part One with Bonanzle

We hope you've enjoyed our Business Series so far. If you need to catch up feel free to visit our archives. If you've been thinking of starting your own business selling your vintage or antique goods online we hope to show you a few options during the next few sections of our series.

Opening your own website with a shopping cart can seem daunting, so we are here to help with a few different options including opening your own website when you are ready to take that step.  First in our series is selling your wares on a website where you hold a "shop" or "booth". Similar to the Vintage Indie Market that we held in December. (Stay tuned for our announcement for the Spring Summer Market).

 We are starting with the fairly new site Bonanzle We've heard a lot of buzz surrounding this new site and think they hold their own when it comes to vintage and antiques. Although you can sell almost anything on Bonanzle, vintage and antiques plays a large role there. We've recently interviewed with Mark Dorsey, the Co-Founder of Bonanzle.com, on why he thinks Bonanzle is the place to set up shop and start selling.

It is important to note we are not associated with any of the sites that we'll be featuring in series but hope to offer informative details about each site so that you can decide which is best for your business.

Why Bonanzle?

How did Bonanzle come about?

Bonanzle had been designed and developed for a year and a half before it went online in beta form in June of 2008.  We officially launched to the public in September 2008.  The name "Bonanzle" is a derivation of the word "Bonanza," which is our site's signature event, as mentioned below.  We felt that there was an audience who would appreciate a buying and selling experience where the people mattered.  The seller paradigm established by eBay is one where the seller lists their items and checks back in a week to see if they sold.  From an interaction standpoint, this isn't much different than listing items in the news paper. 

We think the people on the site are just as important as the items.  On Bonanzle, the user's profile picture is shown alongside their items, as is a map of the user's general region (postal code).  You can chat with your buyer and sellers in real time to get questions answered or negotiate prices or get the story behind the item you're interested in.  You can host a "Bonanza," which is a sale of your items where you wheel and deal with buyers to quickly sell as many items as possible (Bonanzas are limited to 3 hours maximum).  Or you can add a personal endorsement of a user that you have had a particularly good experience with.  The theme of these and our many other Bonanzle-first features is that buyers and sellers are more than their user name. 

This feature focus reflects our core belief:  that a more human (and less anonymous) experience is a more satisfying one. 

What types of items can be sold at Bonanzle?
We have branded Bonanzle as the online marketplace where you can "Find Everything but the Ordinary."  We believe that Amazon already does a fine job with shiny new electronics and mass produced items.  However if you have a vintage "Atari Video Game" or something similar then you would probably fit in nicely at Bonanzle.  That is not to say that we do not allow ordinary items at Bonanzle. 

What makes Bonanzle stand out from eBay or other sites who seem to barely include vintage?
We involve our community.  Our community showcases the unique items via our "Tagging" system to highlight "Exceptional" items (Most Bizarre, Most Beautiful, Funniest, Coolest and Best Priced) at Bonanzle.   We also have "Hand Picked Lists" that our community creates in different themes.  They are creative and really fun to browse.

How is Bonanzle handling the new CPSIA law about to go into affect?
To be completely honest we have not really addressed this at all.  It seems that there are many misconceptions and overreactions to the new CPSIA law and given our time constraints we felt it was better to see where the chips fall and then take the necessary actions.

A special thanks to Mark Dorsey for his time.

We don't have a booth set up on Bonanzle, but we have joined and found it a very easy process.

Tomorrow we'll be back with a fairly newcomer to Bonanzle getting a first hand glimpse on creating a booth at Bonanzle.

Comments

[Dede]

Bonanzle has been a blessing for many small sellers. The fees are next to nothing, the listing time is so quick,you have control of your business. There is real customer support, e-mails are answered by real people with in an hour. The community if helpful and friendly.

[Victor]

Bonanzle sounds like a great site. I'm going to check it out!

[Tia]

We have a booth on bonanzle (tiasmenagerie)and yes it sure does seem to be a very viable alternative for marketing our vintage and collectible pieces. I can attest to their superb customer service too. I once e-mailed them and had a live human reply in under ten minutes!