With eBay’s focus on preloved and refurbished goods, today we look at the story of PM Stores and how the business Paige and Will started in 2017 is leveraging eBay’s current promotional strategy.
PM Stores operate in the refurbished market and their timing couldn’t have been better for building a business just as consumer sentiment steps up on environmental issues. And that’s coupled with the more recent cost of living crisis forcing consumers to reconsider their shopping habits and opt for repairs or refurbished goods rather than send to landfill and replace with new.
PM Stores started with Paige leaving her job to focus full time on eBay while Will retained full time employment to make sure their bills were covered. As with many home grown businesses, they started by buying from carboot sales, job lots from eBay and local Auctions.
Will told me of their break through moment when they acquired returned and faulty wall paper strippers and started breaking them down for parts. Building a healthy business in consumer waste electricals, PM Stores enable consumers to maintain and extend the lifecycle of products they already own. Where they can, they repair as many products as possible, but if they can’t repair they will strip as many parts off as possible to give people the opportunity to repair their damaged items rather than throwing them away and buying new
The business proved such as success that as they accelerated operations, Will left his full time job and went part time around 2018.
Paige and Will started looking for more ways to source stock and managed to secure a local sports shop clearance. Before Covid hit the Sports shop had planned to shut down but didn’t manage to clear their stock at a reduced rate before the country went into a national lockdown. In two minds whether to go ahead with the purchase as they didn’t know how the pandemic would affect online sales, Paige and Will took a leap of faith and invested all of their savings to buy the stock. Fortunately it paid off.
The couple have constantly been looking for new ways to secure stock and have now secured a deal with a supplier which focuses on mainly preloved items, offering a steady stream of regular stock with which to refresh their store.
Since securing our supplier it’s really opened our eyes to how much consumer waste is destined for landfill and we are only seeing a very small percentage of this. Our core aim is to bring our customers quality preloved items at a great price.
We hope in the long term to work with more suppliers who match our ethos to offer more preloved items to help the environment and in turn helping our customers save money especially in the current climate.
We try to reduce our impact on the environment by reusing as much packaging as possible so sometimes our items maybe delivered in quirky packaging. We’ve even had feedback in the past regarding the lovely smell of our boxes (they came from a local soap company)
– Will Oaten, PM Stores
Will told us that they were in the right place at the right time as he feels consumers mindset are changing for the better as people seem more open to wanting to buy preloved and the stigma is slowly disappearing.
eBay are playing a massive role in this by only promoting preloved this Black Friday which hopefully benefit the smaller sellers on the platform like PM Stores and in turn give customers a great deal on preloved branded products.
What’s next for PM stores? They are looking for growth and new partners to work with, offering potential access to eBay Deals. If you have products and looking for a route to market, get in touch with Will.
One Response
That’s fantastic guys, well done