Marcia Cooper and Harvey Levine hoped for a blissful retirement, until they both were laid off from their jobs. They hadn’t planned to quit working so soon and hadn’t saved enough. Feeling unprepared to compete with 20-year-olds in the traditional job market, the 60-something New Jersey couple turned to eBay Inc.
Cooper and Levine started small, standing in line to buy concert tickets for acts such as Phish and Bruce Springsteen and then reselling the tickets for a profit on eBay, the global Internet auction site. From there, they moved to selling wine glasses, antiques and more valuable items such as baseball memorabilia.
Those endeavors turned into a business the couple named General Enterprises. The average monthly sales this year: more than $10,000.
“It’s been a boon to us,” Cooper said of the business they started back in 2000. “We didn’t expect it to grow quite as fast, because at our stage in life it’s very, very difficult for somebody to enjoy what they’re doing and make money at it.”
Many people age 55 and older are turning to the online marketplace. For some retirees, eBay has become a financial lifeline, supplementing pension plans or savings that may not be sufficient. Others have uncovered a latent entrepreneurial streak in themselves or simply see eBay as a creative outlet.
“I spent the first 30 years of my life in corporate America, and I wish I had started my own business the first day I got out of school,” said Joe Marcinkowski, 64, who began an eBay business five years ago. “It’s never too late to start.”
An internal eBay study completed in the first quarter found that more than 22 percent of eBay users in the U.S. are 55 or older.
Cooper, now 70, said retirement arrived sooner than expected. The former marketing executive left her job as part of a corporate downsizing. Her fiance, Levine, now 66, an operations manager at a fine-art paper company, was also laid off. Cooper’s son, Rob, who had paid his mother to buy him some concert tickets, suggested she buy more tickets to sell on eBay.
He guided the couple through the entire process, telling them exactly which tickets to buy and coaching them through the process of posting their offerings on eBay’s Web site. At the end of their first week, Cooper and Levine had $1,000 in profit.
The couple were hooked. They started emptying their closets and trolling flea markets to unearth treasures to sell. Starting a business after age 55 was easier than it might have been in her 20s, Cooper said, because she didn’t have to worry about a family or saving for a house. EBay made it easy, too, she said; the only capitalization their business required was the cost of a computer.
The couple, who live in Fort Lee, N.J., soon turned to selling things such as collectible cars for other people, whom they charged a commission. One problem: They initially got carried away, saddling themselves with inexpensive flea-market finds that didn’t generate large enough commissions to justify the time required to market and sell them.
“We said, ‘Whoa, this isn’t the way to run a business’”, Cooper said. “Now we’re a lot more discriminating.” (Each item sold must now generate a minimum commission of $100.)
The pair also started training, for a fee, other would-be eBay sellers in how to navigate the auction site. They haven’t replaced the incomes they earned from their full-time jobs, but they cite the freedom in operating their business from anywhere and the flexibility in scheduling their days as two benefits of an Internet business.
Joe and Laura Marcinkowski started selling furniture on eBay after a fire destroyed all their belongings in 1998. The Nassau Bay, Texas, couple, who had lived overseas for 26 years when Marcinkowski worked for several oil companies, started buying furniture to replace an eclectic collection lost in the blaze. When their new house was ready, they had more furniture than they could use.
Marcinkowski immediately considered selling them on eBay. Those pieces generated a profit, prompting him to consider a business. In 2000, the couple formed Metro Retro Furniture to sell vintage 1940s and 1950s furniture and new reproductions. Laura Marcinkowski managed the accounting, while Joe Marcinkowski did the other tasks.
The company immediately generated strong monthly sales on eBay, shipping containers of furniture to Prague and Tokyo. The pair had tapped into a global market of designers and architects interested in vintage furniture from designers such as American office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller.
“When I realized I had to sell this, and I had this very niche product, I couldn’t get to my market in any other way but eBay,” Joe Marcinkowski said. “Nothing else would’ve worked.”
The couple acquired a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in September 2002. They also opened a Houston retail store in January 2004.
Operating a business dependent on eBay hasn’t been without its drawbacks. The San Jose, Calif., company has raised some fees for sellers, such as auction listings and store subscriptions, every year for the past five years. This year the monthly fee for an eBay store subscription rose 60 percent to $15.95, which affects store owners like the Marcinkowskis.
Joe Marcinkowski said he has run into problems using the company’s PayPal electronic-payment service for transactions involving buyers outside the U.S. When he calls PayPal for help, “it’s sometimes very hard to get the right person” who can resolve his problem, he said. A PayPal spokeswoman said that some transactions are delayed when the company tries to protect its customers against potential fraud, but that it tries to resolve matters in a timely manner.
Metro Retro generated 2004 sales of $900,000 and expects to generate sales of about $1.5 million this year. Most of those sales are online. The company employs 15 people, freeing the couple to focus on sales and learning about the furniture the company acquires through liquidation sales.
Some retirees find an eBay business gives them another hobby to fill their days.
Mark Goldberg, 58, is one such person. When he retired in December 1999 from running a rare-coin company, he spent much of his time golfing. Four months later, he found himself drawn back to his hobby of coin collecting through eBay, where he started trading coins with people as far away as Croatia and China. By the end of May 2000, he had sold everything he had owned in terms of coins and collectibles. He said he was “bitten with the craze” and began buying more merchandise to sell.
“It’s a lot of enjoyment for me,” said Goldberg, who lives in Marina del Rey, Calif.
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