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Buying and selling pottery and porcelain There are two crucial areas of
difference between buying for oneself and buying to sell on (being a
business): the questions of profit and legal obligations. When buying items for resale, the business
seller will be aiming to make a profit and needs to bear this in mind when
deciding what price he / she should pay for an item. What may be an acceptable ‘buy’ for the
personal shopper may not be such for the business person. The business person also needs to bear in
mind their legal obligations with regard to tax and their dealings with their
customers. If he / she intends to sell
online, they should download and study the Office of Fair Trading’s
(OFT’s) guide for businesses on distance
selling which explains the requirements of the Distance Selling
Regulations (DSRs).
It is a good idea too for the online buyer to acquaint him or her self
with their rights under the DSRs. As to buying and selling online,
probably most people tend to think of eBay. There is
a lot to be said for it, huge choice for a start, but the newcomer to online
trading needs to be wary and make themselves
thoroughly familiar with the site before going beyond a little bit of trial
buying and selling. There are other
general auction sites such as eBid, which could be worth checking out, but for the
serious online buyer and seller of pottery and porcelain I would recommend
seeking out more specialized sites. CollectFair is a very good online
venue where a range of sellers of antiques and collectables have their online
‘stalls’. There are also many
individual sellers selling from their own websites; just Google in a search
like ‘buying pottery online’ and it will bring up a lot for you to choose
from. Studiopottery.co.uk now has a
section where members offer their work for sale. However, the serious dealer or
collector should not just confine themselves to online trading
activities. I do not think that it
would be possible for a serious business seller / dealer to acquire a good
range of stock for resale without spending a lot of time and effort visiting
‘real world’ sales venues. For the
collector / enthusiast, nothing beats the interest and excitement of
exploring charity shops, car boot sales, real life auctions etc. If you want
to explore car boot sales far and wide, a directory like www.yourbooty.co.uk or www.carboot.com would be useful. The online dealer in pottery and
porcelain may decide to trade from one of the online venues or he / she may
decide to go independent and trade from their own website. It need not be expensive to set up, unless
you want to go for a really expensive site designer, and it can be a lot of
fun. But be warned, it is also a lot
of hard work, I know – I have done it!
CollectFair, already mentioned above, offers an alternative for those
who want their own website; CollectFair stallholders can easily convert their
stalls into independent
websites which are quite easy to run.
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