Ebay s Craigslist

[fredgpops]

I sell bamboo abt every 3 or 4 mths to help cover my landscaping projects. I have done pretty good on Craigslist but gave Ebay a shot a few weeks ago. From my prespective Ebay is too complicated and has people looking for deals that are unrealistic. The major problem is that Ebay requires a shipping estimate. Who knows where you will ultimately ship? Craigslist gives me a large local market that eliminates the need to ship and deal with a cost adder plus I can deal better with individual needs. Craigslist folks are also looking for deals but you can deal more freely.
Lastly more flexiblity to list on Craigslist - a must because the market changes weekly. Rgds

[stevelau1911]

I sell bamboos a few times a week, and I do like craigslist better since I can get much larger plants to the clients, and it's also better since they can pick and choose what they need. Some of the drawbacks of craigslist is the reach is only within a local area, and I'm limited to the super hardy species since not that many people want to grow marginal ones rated for zone 7.

I've also been on ebay for over 2 years now selling on a regular basis. I have run into problems with packages getting lost by the post office, shipping labels getting torn off, and getting sent to the wrong address, but I've been able to resolve it every time with the customer. Sometimes I had to re-send a similar plant because when you ship hundreds of plants, some are bound to get lost.

As far as the price of shipping, I usually use flat rate boxes. Large flat rates go for 14.95, mediums go for 10.95, and smalls go for 4.95 which I rarely use unless I'm shipping non-bamboo plants like succulents. I will charge $3 per box for handling fees because it does take some work to get them packaged so that there's hardly an inch of free play in the box which prevents breakage, and maximizes the amount of bamboo that can go into the box. If I need to ship larger bamboos due to special requests, then I use a shipping calculator which can be found with a simple web search, and I can ship up to 75lbs. The great part about eBay is that there's not a lot of competition, especially once you get good feed back, and sell legit plants that are ready to take off, however they do charge a 9% sales fee along with a limit to 50 free listings per month which is not enough for me. The other thing that sucks is that I'm really limited to culms that are under 1/2 inch in diameter, by 6ft because anything larger cannot be wedged into these boxes without snapping. As far as using larger UPS ground boxes, the tallest they let you ship is 60 inch tall boxes, so that pretty much limits you to 8ft or shorter bamboos to avoid topping which I avoid because appearance matters.

Here's an example of the difficulty of selling on eBay. Yes, green means it has been bidded on, and almost everything you list will be bidded on as long as someone needs it, and it is priced fairly.



I will make a blog post on how I ship bamboos however I'll give a little preview on how I can do it efficiently. Here are 2 well developed 2 gallon heterocladas. I first shake off just enough dirt which is pretty easy so that it is possible to fit in the box, then I will wrap them up in plastic bags, stick them in the box, and when I close it, there should just be enough room to close up the boxes. Here are the pictures showing how it is done. Through feedback, flat rate priority mail boxes usually take 2 days, and I've done experiments where a bamboo plant has come out after 23 days, and could still be revived.

The plants.


All bagged up


In the box


Culms are curled around the box


Box is closed up


To save a bit on gas, I prefer to have many auctions ending over the weekend so that they can be shipped out on Monday.


Also one last tip is that if you sell plants that are always well developed and fill out the box all the way, some bamboo collectors, or people that want to have a screen will bid over and over again. I generally put multiple bamboos in the same box. Here's just a picture to show what I mean. I'm actually hoping for more people on here to start sharing their goods by giving eBay a try.

Need to have something to show that it will survive. Something like this is pretty fool proof.


Also need to make sure the box is mostly full of actual plant mass, (ie roots, rhizomes, foliage) not just filling with soil or packing material.

[fredgpops]

Ebay may work for small plants like yours but I don't normally deal in plants less than 5 gals. Bang for buck for what I am trying to accomplish ie high margin at low cost, min effort, makes no sense on Ebay. Also, it's hard to evaluate customer expectations on Ebay. Many folks think small plants and seeds will grow to large plants almost overnight. When I sell, I like to explain what will or will not happen in a 2 to 3 year window. I like to cover my costs but not at the expense of people who may find the experience below their expectations. Based upon what I see on Ebay, buyer beware. Rgds

[stevelau1911]

Some buyers will expect results to come almost immediately, and send me emails about it however most buyers are pretty reasonable. For example, most inexperienced growers may wonder why some leaves will drop in the fall. Someone like yourself who's worked with bamboo long enough should be better qualified to sell bamboos than most of the vendors that are currently out there. I've heard from customers many times about their previous purchase of rhizomes that never made shoots, and never got a refund, and that's one of the reasons why I'm hoping for more legitimate sellers to join eBay and make the good stuff available and affordable.

Here's the proof that at least in my experience, buyers have been reasonable: http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... world=true

Also a large flat rate box can ship up to most plants up to 6ft by 1/2 inch in diameter unless it it has brittle culms, and larger boxes can also be used through parcel post shipping if you have very big plants. It's also not very hard to create small plants, but if it is a rhizome division, or whip shoot, it just takes patience because it can sometimes take over a year for a small division to make it's shoots and fill up it's pot with rhizomes.


Also I like your idea of putting what they should expect as far as 1 year out, and 2 years out for each given climate zone.

[bamboothew]

Steve, thanks for the visual! I have been trying to work out my packing strategy and I like yours. So it looks like you basically stand the plants up in the box and press the culms down, curling them around the box, is that right? I've been trying to more like lay the plants down in the box, your method never occurred to me, will try it next time. I have received plants packaged so many ways I get confused

Fred, I have actually had mostly very good experiences with ebay, but mostly with smaller plants nowhere near the size of the ones you sell. It has been worth it for me to get some cheap plants along with cheap shipping from some ebayers, though they will take a while to size up. I do have a rule, though, that I have only bought from ebayers who have good prices, clearly state the size of the plant I will receive, show a picture of the actual plant I will receive, and at least SOUND like they know their plants (few and far between, admittedly). I long ago seem to have exhausted the possibilities on ebay, though, since I have most of the more common species now along with some pretty uncommon ones. Sadly, there are no local collectors like you around here to deal with in person, but hopefully someday I can be that local collector/supplier for some newbies

[stevelau1911]

Whenever I can, I usually do prefer having the plants upright in the box, and then twirling the culms around since they are compressible, and most pots from 1 gallon up to 7 gallon sizes are about the right height to use this method. I do this so I can eliminate air gaps within the box so I can squeeze in as much as possible since I am always making tiny divisions just for the purpose of filling gaps in a box since flat rate boxes are the same price to ship no matter how full they get stuffed. Another thing is that I prefer selling smaller divisions that are grown out for a longer period of time as long as I have it in that species so it is more likely to show results sooner as opposed to a fresh larger division which is more expensive to ship, and takes time to establish itself.
I'm already working on getting moso bicolor onto eBay for cheap, but I first need to let my grove expand just a bit so each division won't take that much energy away, and then I'll try to get the smallest viable divisions possible which may mean 5 gallon whip shoots since they produce such a huge rhizome. When these whip shoot divisions put out rhizomes, I can make those into 1-3 gallon whip shoot divisions instead of bothering the mother plant.

There's probably still room for improvement, but I've found out through experiments that it is OK to remove some soil from the root ball, and bend culms into an box with absolutely extra room, and in a few days, after replanting the culms generally straighten back up, and the plants look healthy.

Selling them locally is always easier, however at one time, I had over 300 moso seedlings, 1 gallon size & up, an many other non-hardy boos potted up that had to go somewhere they could hopefully thrive so I resorted to eBay. I have had a bid from Michigan which looked like zone 4b based on their zip code, and they still wanted the moso even after an email about how hard it is to grow in cooler climates, but being in zone denial myself, I'm not the person to discourage anyone from trying marginal species.

[Alan_L]

Some buyers will expect results to come almost immediately, and send me emails about it

Sounds like you need to give more information up front.

If I got a plant like that with all of those rhizome "stubs" I think I'd be pretty happy depending on the price I paid.

Do you inform each purchaser about rhizome pruning and other control methods? If you're not making it very clear that these plants can get out of hand if ignored, you may be contributing to bamboo's bad name as a "bad" plant that needs to be banned. You should consider putting an information sheet in with each order. I like what Lewis bamboo does (I think it was them): they put a "warning" notice about spreading and control on top of the box so you can't open the box without seeing the info.

[stevelau1911]

Yep, I always post pictures on exactly what it is, and send emails every single time someone buys or wins an auction on what may be expected because every individual climate may be different and I may try to discourage someone from paying for a plant if they are clearly pushing zones, but I've had emails about a plant, not getting there in 2 days, since priority mail is almost always 2 days delivering to Peurto Rico. Some people want their plants fast.

I've also heard of yellow leaves from a moso that was brought indoors I think back in November, but that's when I realized that I do need to inform them of things like natural leaf drop, when to expect shoots, hardiness, and spread. I also put my phone number and email out just in case there's any unforseen problems. I've been getting a lot of the same guys from sometimes even over a year ago bid on plants over and over so I really doubt there's been too many problems. The worst case situation was when a bamboo was lost in transit, sent back to me eventually half dead 3 weeks later, and I basically sent a better one than the posted picture of the same species, and that's why I give a timeline now of exactly when to expect it to arrive. It all worked out at the end and I got good feedback, but that was a mess.

I used to do the warning notice thing last year however I believe that people are more likely to look at direct emails so I switched to that instead. I prefer not no overload people with info that may be useless, for example, people don't need to know about over-wintering in zone 9. If you ever decide to try eBay out, I would discourage sending rhizome stubs because that's the type of bamboo that I've heard die on my customers before buying my stuff, so there must be a pretty high failure rate.

As far as my listings, I do try to put in just the essential information like size, spread, climate reqs, the plant itself, when it gets shipped, picture of exact plant, just like this for example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/150670436246?ss ... 1555.l2649

[Alan_L]

Posting info about spread is *not* the same as telling people that they will need to contain the spread, or giving specific examples (this plant can send out rhizomes 10'-20' in a single year). Your ebay listing should give this information.

[stevelau1911]

I said it seems to have the ability to run a good distance on this particular post because that can vary greatly from climate to climate, and I only know that henon runs about 3-4 feet per year which is a good distance for my climate, but it can translate to double that in your climate.

I do talk about containment in sending emails, but that might be very useful information on the listing itself since some people may still believe that it is impossible to contain bamboos given all the media which has created.

[Alan_L]

You're selling mainly to people who know very little or nothing about bamboo, so "it seems to have the ability to run a good distance" probably means nothing to them.

You need to be direct, and say something like "***This is a running bamboo that will spread, possibly 5'-10' or more a year. You will need to control it's spread by rhizome pruning or installing bamboo rhizome barrier.**" They need to know what is involved before they place a bid.

In my opinion if you don't do this you're in the group of "bad" bamboo sellers on eBay whether you want to be or not.

[Iowaboo]

I agree with Alan, that its best if the right people buy the bamboo, so less negative publicity is out there. Really depends what purposes you have when selling bamboo. If its solely about being a good salesman and making some income in these hard economic times, then yeah, telling all the negatives doesn't make a product sell faster.

[bamboothew]

I'm not quite sure where I fall on this, I mean, I have never once bought plants from ebay without pretty thoroughly researching the plants beforehand, so I guess I am a little biased on the side of shoppers needing to do research before buying. Actually, before I started collecting in earnest I poured over forum posts and gardening websites for about a year, since one simple google search put fear into me about growing running bamboo. It took going a little deeper to figure out that it is largely lazy gardening that results in out of control plants. If a shopper is already online shopping ebay, they obviously have access to search engines and all sorts of information pertaining to whatever plants they are interested in. It's very simple, really. That being said, it is never a bad idea to be completely above-board warning customers about potential outcomes before they buy, I would say. This discussion led me to look at my favorite ebay sellers again and I discovered that almost none of them really seem to be very forthright about the potential dangers of running bamboo in their product descriptions. Actually, out of all of them, Steve is probably one of the most so, the rest mostly seem to just present the maxium height, diameter of culms, hardiness, and sometimes mention that it is a running bamboo (better than nothing, I suppose). I guess I never noticed this before because I already know this information. The most shocking of statements to me is when a seller declares that nigra doesn't spread like other runners. I have two plantings of nigra that were short lengths of bare rhizome in winter 2010 and now have culms 6-7 feet tall and have spread as much as any of my other runners so far (I will need to mow over shoots or take divisions by next year or so to keep it in bounds), so a blanket statement that it doesn't spread much is patently false. Anyway, if selling on ebay I would want to provide as much helpful information as possible to help a customer make an informed buy. Still, though, there is nothing wrong with researching a plant before you buy it

[Alan_L]

Matthew: most people don't heavily research plants before buying, from eBay or the local garden center (I include myself in that category). Even if they do, they could Google "Phyllostachys nigra", get to the Bamboo Garden page for that species, see a beautiful plant, what low temps it can take, and how tall it can get. Does that page say anything about the spread of this species or running bamboo in general? Nope. It does say "initially slow to spread, but quite vigorous after that". What does that mean exactly? So they think they've "researched" the plant, but they didn't get the important info. Five years later there's bamboo in the neighbor's yard, and a couple of years later their town is banning bamboo. (Extreme example for illustration only.)

Also, just because all of the other eBay sellers of bamboo don't mention the spread and ways to control doesn't mean that nobody should. I know that's not what you were trying to say, but it almost came across that way.

[stevelau1911]

I think it may be OK to say the rhizome spread I see in zone 6 in the northeast however there are so many different factors out there that will alter the amount they spread so even giving certain estimates on how far they will run in a given zone can be misleading especially since I am not growing bamboo in several different zones/ climates. I've heard of bamboos in warmer zones that hardly run due to drought or the type of soil they have so that's why not even the commercial nurseries like bamboo garden can't give an estimate because If I tell them they'll get 2-3 feet of spread with moso in zone 8, and they only get inches, they may be disappointed, or be shocked if it goes farther. It is important to put it out plainly that it will run, if it's a running bamboo, but I don't want to put out information I don't know.

I might start putting in the information about bamboo control since there is the chance of people who happen to not read emails, or do any research on it, and a standardized instruction guide can be applied straight on the listing, but I'm also they type of person who has been gardening for many years before trying bamboo, and did lots of research before trying it out so I assumed other people do the same since bamboo is one of the less known and less common plants that are not sold regularly in gardening centers.

Planting, winter care, and other categories may be used as well, but in a different font just so people can recognize it is the growing instructions.

I might even put instructions on how to propagate it for that matter since I've been asked that multiple times as people who like to grow bamboo many times want to get it to their friends/ neighbors.