TOPIC: NEW: TD Tavern Consignment (sell your tokens!)

Good morning everybody! I am ready to announce something that I have been working on since GenCon last year (yes, life has been crazy). You can now list and sell your tokens on www.tdtavern.com through our consignment service.

What does this mean? In short, you use our web interface to specify the tokens you want to sell and the prices you are willing to accept for them. Our pricing algorithm adds your tokens to our product pages, either as the only option, or as an alternative to the tokens sold directly by TD Tavern. We handle making the sale for you (finding the buyer and collecting the payment), all you need to do is ship the token and provide the tracking number within 3 business days.

Benefits:

• Easier to manage than a forum post and easier to list than an eBay auction
• Reach a broader audience; we have lots of customers not on the forums and we invest in Google AdWords
• No need to communicate with the buyer or deal with collecting payment
• Our commission (10%) is less than eBay plus PayPal fees (about 13%)
• Vacation mode allows you to quickly remove your items from the system when you can't ship

How it works:

1. You create or log in to your TD Tavern account, go to My Account at the top of the page
2. Go to the "Consignment" section where you agree to our consignment agreement and then can view and add your consignment items
3. To add a token, choose the token (auto-complete if we already have a page for it, or enter the URL from tokendb.com), quantity, year, color, low price, and high price. That's it!
4. Every hour our algorithm will review all consignment options and update our product pages as necessary (more details on this below)
5. When a customer purchases your token, you will receive an automated email letting you know where to ship the token. You must ship via USPS and provide the tracking number within 3 business days. Note:
   if the buyer is international you will ship the token to TD Tavern instead.
6. When USPS marks the token as delivered we send an automated email to the customer letting them know they have 5 business days to contact us with any issues.
7. Once 5 business days from delivery has passed, you will receive a PayPal (Friends & Family) payment for the sale price minus our 10% commission (this is the only part that is not automated as of yet, but will be soon

As a seller you can sell unwanted tokens with minimal effort. When you list your item, you specify both a low price and a high price. The low price is the lowest you are willing to sell your token for, but keep in mind you will receive less than the actual sale price. We regularly offer coupons with a discount of 5% as well as discounts up to 6% through our rewards program (although most customers have a rewards discount of 0-2%). TD Tavern also will keep a 10% commission, in part to cover our PayPal fees. Finally, you will be required to ship the item via USPS (with insurance if you prefer).

As an example, if you set your low price to $50 for a token and $60 for a high price, we may price your token at $55 based on other competing options. If a customer buys the token for $55 with a 5% discount coupon and 6% customer rewards, the actual sale price is $48.95. You would receive a payment of $44.05 after the TD Tavern commission.

In order to keep the experience simple for our customers, we only show one consignment item on each product page. If TD Tavern doesn't sell the item then the consignment item will be the only item available. If TD Tavern does sell the item then the lowest-priced consignment item will be added to the TD Tavern options. If a customer adds an item to their cart from a search or browse page, the least expensive item will be added by default (ignoring color, year, or consignment status). This may be a TD Tavern item or it may be a consignment item. If a customer goes into the product page they will see all available options in a table format and will be able to make their own decision on whether or not to purchase the consignment item.

Here is how the pricing algorithm works (which runs every hour):

1. For each unique token, year, and color option, collect all consignment offerings as well as any TD Tavern offering.
2. Rank each consignment item based on their low price. If multiple options are tied, the consignment item that was created first is ranked earlier than the one that was created later.
3. The consignment item or items that were ranked first (priority 1) is priced $0.05 lower than any other low prices, or the TD Tavern offering. However your price will never be lower than your low price.
   
4. If there are no competing items, or if all competing items' price ranges are higher than your high price, your item will be priced at your high price. Note that setting your high price too high might guarantee that your item never sells.

You can see the results of the algorithm by viewing your consignment listings and seeing the priority and price for each token.

Finally, the vast majority of our customers (and hopefully our consignment sellers) are awesome people, just like the vast majority of True Dungeon players. However in the unlikely event that there is a problem with a consignment purchase we will following this resolution process:

• If the seller is unable to ship or provide tracking within 3 business days, TD Tavern will offer the customer a refund or a replacement item and the seller will not receive any funds for the token (token will not be re-added to your consignment inventory)
• If the tracking number was properly scanned as received by the USPS but the USPS fails to deliver the package within 30 days, the consignment seller will have to send a replacement token. If unable the customer will receive a refund or a different replacement token (sellers should consider purchasing insurance for this situation)
• Once the USPS marks the package as delivered, the customer has 5 business days to review the shipment for any issues. If there aren't any issues then no action is required. The seller will receive payment via PayPal with no further action. Once payment is made, the seller can no longer request a replacement or a refund.
• If the customer contacts us with an issue with the shipment we will work with the buyer and the seller to come up with a resolution that is satisfactory to both parties, specifically:
  • If the package was marked as delivered by the USPS but can't be located by the buyer, the buyer will have to locate the token or make a new purchase. Unfortunately we can't offer refunds in this situation.
  • If the package arrived damaged and the customer can provide photographic evidence of the damaged package or the damaged tokens, then the seller will be required to replace the missing or damaged tokens at their own expense, or the customer will receive a refund.
    
  • If the customer receives the incorrect token, they will be required to return the incorrect token to the seller at the seller's expense, and the seller will send the correct token at the seller's expense.

If a particular consignment seller has repeat issues with shipping properly and on time and/or delivering incorrect or damaged tokens, or causes other significant issues, TD Tavern has the right to revoke their consignment access at any time. Likewise, if a particular consignment buyer has repeat issues then they will be asked to avoid purchasing consignment items in the future, or if they continue to do so they will assume all risk going forward.

I will also note that this system is currently designed for the more expensive tokens, due to the fact that your price has to include your shipping costs. I think $5 would be the minimum you should charge for any token you are selling through consignment, although some may prefer to set their minimum much higher.

This sounds like a great idea!

Kaledor wrote: This sounds like a great idea!

I hope people like it! And please use this forum post if you have any questions or issues with the new system. I'll keep an eye on it and respond to questions and fix any issues as quickly as I am able.

Sounds great, good luck Kirk!

For the pricing algorithm, it seems to set the price to 5 cents lower than the 2nd lowest price.

What if 5 cents lower is less than the absolute lowest price, like this:

Alice's token: low 1.00 high 1.50
Bob's token: low 1.01 high 1.50

Here it would seem Alice's token should be shown, but at what price?

You should specify the maximum discount from promotions or coupons that can be applied to a consignment sale.


For example if you decide to issue a 20% off your order of 100 or more coupon at some point in the future could a consignment seller end up with their low minus 20% and fees?

How does shipping costs work?

I would like to participate in this progra but here a a scenario that would make me avoid it:


I list Defender Helm for 2.50 low 5.00 high

My token is selected as the consignment offer at 2.60.

Alice buys my token (only) for 2.60 less a 5% discount pays TD taverns standard $4 shipping. Alice remits $6.47 to td tavern.

Td tavern remits to me $2.22.

So, I'm down 1 defender helm, have to pay to ship a token, and I get 2.22.

Meanwhile td tavern gets 4.25 for enabling the transaction (less maybe 15 cents in payment processing fees).



This would prevent me from listing any cheap tokens on the site.




I would suggest something like:

A. $4 added to the shipment total per consignment seller in the order, of which 3.90 is remitted to the seller (no commission on shipping, just enough to cover tds fees in the payment).

B. The shipping fees are allocated proportionally across all sellers (including td tavern) based on the percentage of the order that their items account for, for instance:

Alice buys an $2 token from Xerces, and a $3 token from Yon, and a $5 token from TD tavern. Xerces gets 20% of any shipping fees charged, Yon gets 30%, TD tavern gets 50%.

Matthew Hayward wrote: For the pricing algorithm, it seems to set the price to 5 cents lower than the 2nd lowest price.

What if 5 cents lower is less than the absolute lowest price, like this:

Alice's token: low 1.00 high 1.50
Bob's token: low 1.01 high 1.50

Here it would seem Alice's token should be shown, but at what price?

Alice's token will be given priority #1 due to the lower minimum price. Normally it would be priced at $0.96 (5 cents lower than Bob's lowest price), however due to her minimum price only being $1, she will instead be priced at $1.

Have you thought also of having a consignment manger buy list?

Like, if you already have a buy list feature and people could put in their buy list prices, and you'd get a commission on any transactions?

Matthew Hayward wrote: You should specify the maximum discount from promotions or coupons that can be applied to a consignment sale.


For example if you decide to issue a 20% off your order of 100 or more coupon at some point in the future could a consignment seller end up with their low minus 20% and fees?

That's a good thought. My other option that I'm considering is contacting the consignment sellers in advance of a special promotion and allowing them to turn on "vacation mode" or otherwise adjust their pricing during a special promotion if they feel the discount will be too high. This also allows them to choose to benefit from the increased sales due to the promotion if they so desire.

Matthew Hayward wrote: How does shipping costs work?
...
This would prevent me from listing any cheap tokens on the site.

You understand correctly, and to be clear the current consignment program is not intended for inexpensive tokens, due to the shipping problem that you described. Assuming people find the program useful and I get sellers who are interested in it then I will review how to incorporate shipping prices into the consignment system. But for now, each of your tokens should be priced high enough to allow for you to ship it individually. If you get multiple purchases from the same person then you get extra cash in your pocket.

I will also consider adding support for a scenario where the buyer *only* buys consignment tokens yet still pays the $4 TD Tavern charge. In that case I won't have any shipping expenses so I'd be open to giving that completely to the consignment seller(s). But it will take some effort to add that to the back-end processes so perhaps in the near future. Since I'm paying payments manually at this time (hopefully not for long) I can also see if this comes up and handle it manually for now. My suspicion is the number of orders that will *not* qualify for free shipping and also contain only consignment items will be very small.

I have numerous goals with this consignment program: it must be easy for the buyer, it must be easy for the seller, and it must be easy for me (specifically as fully automated as I can make it). This is why I went with the simple solution for now. I think it is perfect for people to use for selling tokens for say $25+ (URs and transmutes as well as other uncommon and therefore expensive tokens).

Kirk, it sounds like an interesting option for people, good luck with it!