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.