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Marie Senese is an eBay Powerseller and the highest rated seller on eBay along with her husband Jay Senese. They operate Marie's CDs And Online Auctions LLC selling under the eBay user ID JayandMarie (formerly onecentcds@aol.com). Marie was recently profiled in Business Week Online, and the couple is frequently profiled in the press. They will be auctioned off in a charity auction at a reception during the upcoming eBay Live user conference.
AuctionBytes: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What did you do before co-founding your eBay business?
Marie Senese: I was writing fiction and poetry, I have done that since college. And I'd worked in property management before for 5 years, and before that I worked for a law firm and did technical writing. Then I had my son and was taking time out. Then I started selling his collection of CDs over the Internet and message boards because we had a whole lot of them. That's how Jay and I met, we met in a record store shopping, and we have a love of music that goes back years and years, both of us. And so I started selling. You probably know the story of how Jay lost his job, and we ended up selling full time on message boards, and then we started selling on eBay.
AuctionBytes: So your background wasn't really in business, then?
Marie Senese: More art, I was in art and writing.
AuctionBytes: And so was that a big adjustment, having a business at home?
Marie Senese: Yes in a sense, but the things we were selling were things we liked. You had to learn the business end of things from the ground up, on how to run a business, gradually. And that was different, because I had worked in business, but hadn't started a business. I worked for companies where everything was in place, but not to create something from scratch, that was new.
AuctionBytes: Was it overwhelming, was it fun?
Marie Senese: I can't say it was overwhelming, because I just had to do it. I didn't think about it, I just did it. I never really expected to make a living in art/poetry. Unless you teach, and I didn't want to get into teaching. I just wanted to work and do writing on the side.
AuctionBytes: Have you been able to continue, throughout your whole eBay business span, have you been keeping up with the writing?
Marie Senese: Not too much lately. I've been more consumed with the business in the last few years. I've done some, but we've expanded and that's really taken a lot of time.
AuctionBytes: So how did you discover online auctions and eBay?
Marie Senese: We were selling on message boards, and we emailed back and forth between people we were selling to. But we started buying, and buying, and we were getting more things that we needed to sell, because we really don't keep an inventory. So we ended up trying eBay and using one cent as the marketing strategy. We just tried it, because we had so much to sell. And the emailing back and forth between people was so time-consuming, we had to try to turn these CDs over faster.
At first, we lost money on it, like anything else you're trying when you're starting a business. And then we eventually started making money on it. But it took a while. It was much faster, the turnover was much faster, instead of having to email and getting bogged down with those transactions, it was much quicker to do the auctions. So we ended up starting to do all auctions.
AuctionBytes: And you were operating under the name onecentcds@aol.com?
Marie Senese: Yes
AuctionBytes: What are some of your most memorable experiences in this industry?
Marie Senese: When we hit 100,000 in feedback, I think that was really memorable, and I got a call from Jeff Jordan [currently Senior Vice President and General Manager of eBay U.S.] and he congratulated me, and a lot of people from eBay we had been working with. And that was pretty exciting.
AuctionBytes: Were you the first ones to reach 100,000?
Marie Senese: Yes, we were. That was in 2002. We were featured that day on eBay, and it was pretty exciting. That was one of the most memorable days.
AuctionBytes: And you and Jay have a son. So he pretty much grew up with this business, he must just accept it as a fact of life?
Marie Senese: Yes, he does. He comes here and he's helped out by stuffing envelopes and helping with shipping and he loves music and he knows what DVDs have come out?
AuctionBytes: And do you pay him an allowance for this?
Marie Senese: Yes, he comes in and helps us out sometimes, but it's not like it's every day. We try to give him a good social life, and keep him very well rounded. We've tried very hard to make time for his interests and needs. This business has enabled us to do that, but it's very difficult on us to juggle everything. But we can come and go in this business according to his schedule, which has been really good. I do things late at night or during his school time. It's difficult sometimes, because you're still running a business, and even though you're taking the time out to take care of things for him, you still have to do this every day.
AuctionBytes: And you guys work 7 days a week?
Marie Senese: Yes.
AuctionBytes: How has the online-auction industry changed since you first became involved?
Marie Senese: In terms of selling, we've had a lot of changes to listing programs that we've used. It's gotten bigger, we've gotten bigger. We've had to accommodate for the change. It was pretty simple to list before, and now, it's become more complicated, and we've adjusted to that. But the adjustments have been a challenge. It sets us back every time we have to make those adjustments, like categories, Turbo Lister, uploading programs we use.
AuctionBytes: Would you say the changes are coming faster and more frequently than 4 or 5 years ago, or would you say it's been every once in a while there's a change?
Marie Senese: No, it's faster and more frequent. Because there are more sellers. And it's competitive now, there's a lot of people, many more sellers than when we started, and that's a factor in it.
AuctionBytes: Do you feel that online merchants are in a better position now than 4 or 5 years ago?
Marie Senese: I think it's difficult now, you always have to find product and maintain product, which is a challenge. We've worked on that for 5 years and gotten it down, but that's one of the major things about selling on eBay, is that you have to have the ability to buy consistently. And that's difficult for sellers to maintain. People ask, how do you sell on eBay, and you can tell them how to sell, but getting the product that you're selling is really one of the primary, basic things that you need to be able to get, and I think that that becomes more difficult when you're competing with a lot of people coming on.
AuctionBytes: What are the other challenges users are facing?
Marie Senese: I think finding better ways to transact your sales. You're competing with other sellers so you want your auctions to look good. Efficiency. You're trying to streamline your transactions, I think that's a challenge, the more and more you sell. You want to make sure everything's going to the right place, to the right people. Answering all your emails, being efficient and fast. We've done this every day, that's why you have to do it 7 days a week, you can't just let it go, you can't let things go. And life interrupts, and you have to take care of things, but we've tried to maintain our business as best as we can. And we really do try to do our best in terms of answering our emails, making sure our orders are going out right, and taking care of business in the day-to-day sense.
AuctionBytes: And in a family business, I think there are other challenges too, probably. Some people when I tell them I work from home with my husband, they say, oh I could never do that.
Marie Senese: Oh yes, that is true. And we have different ways of looking at things. We have a lot of lunch meetings talking about, "well, maybe we should do it this way," "No, I think we should do it that way," "No,.." And we go back and forth, that's absolutely true.
AuctionBytes: I guess everyone has their own methods of dealing with things, it's different with a family business than with a corporation where you have a president, there's always the boss. Do you and Jay have some kind of a way of dealing with decision-making?
Marie Senese: Yes. I do a lot of the office management and he's the primary buyer. And so we have our areas of expertise, and we consult with each other about what we want to do and our ideas. We do a lot of talking back and forth, though. We do come to the same conclusions about things, we talk things out and kind of convince each other. We have a good rapport in that sense. Good lunch meetings. It's good because we teach each other aspects about the business, because we can't cover everything. So we've taught each other because we've each had to learn the aspects of the business without each other. So we bring everything to the table and talk. And we do educate each other, that's been the best thing, I think, about working together.
AuctionBytes: So does your son ever sit at the dinner table and say, "Stop talking about the business?"
Marie Senese: We do. We realize when we start talking too much about it. He never really says it, he listens, he's kind of interested. But then we say, oh we're talking too much about this. We try to regulate that. There are other things in life, but selling on eBay is 7 days a week, but we have learned to stop and start, for him.
AuctionBytes: Can you share with us a tip or trick, or a tool that you use, that helps you sell on eBay more efficiently or makes you life easier? (It can be anything, it doesn't have to be software.)
Marie Senese: Timing, we're conscious about when we're putting things up and ending things. We recognize after doing this for awhile, are aware of what sells. We cut our losses pretty well. Even though we sell a lot, we're conscious of what sells and we try to keep on top of things.
I think that's what's really the key, is to keep a fresh interest and a fresh awareness of what you are selling. We read a lot about music. A good tip is to be invigorated by what you are selling. And to be interested in it, and we are. We're very interested in music, we're very interested in movies and DVDs. And we try to impart that to the people who work for us and the people we deal with. We stay very aware of our product. I think that's an important thing to selling on eBay.
AuctionBytes: I think your tip is very good about continuing to enjoy what you're doing. I know eBay selling can be monotonous, it's labor-intensive, it can be a grind. But the fact that you make an effort, and it really pays off, to know about what you are selling and keep that interest alive. I think that can be a potential hazard in this business,that burnout.
Marie Senese: I've seen people who have stores that get burned out. I think you need to maintain that enthusiasm, in order to sell it. People will recognize it when they look at the things that you have in your store or in your actions. They'll realize that they're mediocre, or they're not really they things that people are interested in. You want to keep them coming back to your site or to your store.
AuctionBytes: Where do you see the industry headed?
Marie Senese: Sellers are becoming more of a force on eBay as far as their concerns for the marketplace, and they want to bring their knowledge to eBay, the company itself, to give them ideas and to make it a sound marketplace for sellers. I think that's going to be one of the major things to happen in eBay. I think sellers will come and go, and some will stay, but I think they sellers want to reinforce eBay and help it to grow and help it to maintain a viable marketplace. I think that's going to be one of the next big things that will happen with eBay.
AuctionBytes: What are some of the biggest challenges facing online-auction sellers in the next 5 years?
Marie Senese: I'm going back to getting product. And competition. There are more people that will come on and sell. Competition and creating sources for your product.
AuctionBytes: Are you working on any projects for the future that you can talk about?
Marie Senese: We're expanding, we want to do fulfillment, we want to sell more CDs, we want to sell more DVDs. That's what we're working on at this point.
AuctionBytes: When did you start getting into DVDs?
Marie Senese: Last year. We've been pretty aggressive.
AuctionBytes: So you're continuing to expand. And where do you see JayandMarie in 5 years, JayandMarie the business?
Marie Senese: I don?t know, there's a lot of things we're looking at, it's kind of hard to say. I didn't know where we would be today 5 years ago. I see us viable, working with eBay, entrenched in this marketplace. It's a very interesting marketplace to be involved with. It's the most successful Internet company, and it's exciting to be a part of it. It's evolved and it's creating its own momentum. I think being a part of that is definitely where we'll be.
A lot of people ask, How do you sell on eBay. You go on and do it, you learn. It's a new experience.
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