April's Question Corner

What have you been up to besides running the Chop Shop and working your other job?

Hello, everyone!  I hope you are all well and will get to spend some of the holiday season doing the things you love with the people you hold dear.  As some of you know my father passed away last month so October was an odd blur of grief and reconnection with some family members I haven’t spoken with in a long time, but because of that my entire family kind of skipped Halloween this year.  We didn’t carve pumpkins or dress up or decorate the house like we usually do.  It was a bummer but it just would have been too insane to try to do stuff with everything going on.  Now life is getting a little bit more back to normal and we are all jumping into holiday mode hard core this year because the entire family needs some extra jolly.

 

Trav and I did get to attend Kumoricon and even got to attend a panel all about Nendoroids.  It was awesome to hear such enthusiasm about my very niche passion and it was also very cool to see how Nendoroid Dolls are really helping to open the hobby up to even more folks.  I cosplayed as Flick from Animal Crossing New Horizons and Dire Crowley (in his casual on Christmas vacation outfit).  Trav cosplayed as C.J.  We’ll share photos after we track them down.  I led a panel on Wholesome BL and Twisted Wonderland and helped out at another BL panel.  The convention was a lot of fun and the art in the Artist Alley was really, really good this year.  I also started watching V-tubers and have now acquired yet another type of otaku-speak to my vocabulary.  So for those of you in the know, my oshi is Alban Knox and I ship Psyborg.  TSKR! TSKR!

 

We also adopted a couple of new guinea pigs as our two older guinea pigs passed away this fall leaving us with one lonely guinea pig.  Evidently Abbygail was not the only one who needed more guineas around, as the new girls have definitely perked up the entire household.  We still haven’t gotten our Pui Pui Molcar Nendoroids yet, but I look forward to introducing them to the piggies when they arrive and I may even display them above the “Piggy Palace” Trav built.

 

We hear about the shop a lot from Trav but how do you feel about things?

 

A bit freaked out but ok!  Right now we aren’t exactly thriving, but we are hanging in there and that’s what’s most important to me.  Our biggest struggle besides changes in buying habits due to the downturn in the economy has been the INSANE slowness with which we get Nendoroid releases and rereleases from GSC’s licensed distributor.  Things are so far behind yet we have no control over it so somedays I feel like I’m spending half the day chanting parts of the serenity prayer to myself about having the sense to identify the things I cannot change and work on the things I can.  So, this is the list of stuff I feel I can change…

 

The things I can change and that I with the help of Trav are working on are:

• improving some of our listings on the website to make it easier for Dan when pulling orders to make sure he is grabbing the right product.  
• Replacing older, less professional looking photos
• Creating systems to make it easier for us to identify and liquidate product we are overstocked on
• Attempting to find more revenue streams to ensure the store’s financial stability
• Working to improve my work/life balance by unapologetically taking some days off
• Working with other Whatnot sellers to promote the platform

 

Why Whatnot of all platforms?

 

Doing live streams can be fun (when the tech is working right and not totally scuff) because we get to interact with real people in real time.  It feels way more personal than buying/selling from Ebay or Mercari.  As a collector who misses the thrill of pre-internet treasure hunting at the “Dirt Mall” (Kevin Smith slang for a flea market) it brings back that nostalgic vibe while embracing modern technology.  We sell items faster there than on any other platform and that helps us to keep cash flowing even when our current Nendoroid shipments are slow movers.

 

Will You Start Selling More Nendoroids on Whatnot?

 

Whatnot is great for items that sell for less than $30, at least for us.  It isn’t great for the kind of higher-end item that folks have to plan more to afford, like scale figures or more expensive figures like Nendoroids.  We do sell Nendoroids on the platform but usually only ones that we are overstocked on or have been sitting around in the shop for awhile, because in general we often take a loss on them when we sell them on Whatnot.