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To: H James Morris who wrote (125323)	5/20/2001 10:13:45 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

James, I have been thinking. No decision as of yet but you once said to me that I should focus on my business and not on the market because that is what got me where I am. Those may not be the exact words but they are close. I look at the losses this year, the losses for shorting in 1998 and 1999, the gains in 2000 (first year I had gain in a long time) and I wonder why I place any resources in an area I clearly do not do well. The jewelry demand was softer for March and April. I decided to see if I could make a presence on Ebay in addition to my on-line store presence. It was more experimentation that a belief in any major success in a "flea market." The feedback does not refect the actualy results well yet for two reasons. One is inititally I had no feedback so I was new to the community. There are thousands of people selling jewelry of various types (I don't meant various types lightly either) on Ebay. Whay would one want to buy from an unkown such as me. Well, in four weeks we developed some feedback. There is a lot more to come due to the fact some people to not provide any feedback and many people that won auctions during the last week or so have not received their product due to the time needed to collect money and to ship. However, I am not selling the "junk" as a general rule as many do on Ebay. We are averaging a closing of about 25 auctions daily now and that would surely increase as our feedback number increase. I was playing with the numbers today looking at gross margins for the auction taking into account the auctions that sold below cost, etc. There has been no increase in payroll this time of year due to my staff being adequate to handle a lot of the work unless it is computer technical. This no increase in payroll would not be the case during the holiday season. Anyhow, Ebay's bill was $2500 for the last thirty days. That with the expenses taken by Paypal, Billpoint, my own processing firm and my toll free number I put in place, net profits were about $9K. That is nothing to get excited about but doubling the volume would be very easy so let's look at $20K a month bottom line profit. The catch here is depth of inventory compared to breath. My focus and it still is in my local markets in breath because it is a small market and the consumer does not want to own the same piece of jewelry as their friend, etc. Ebay becomes profitable more so when a ductch auction occurs so if I place some financial resources into depth of the merchandise types that sell well there, I would increase Ebay profits further although I using capital to do so. I have to be out of my mind trying to figure out if the stock market will go up or down and worse yet, figure which stocks will participate when I can focus on something I know is a sure thing. Random thoughts is all. I just believe in my industry line I understand it well. I am the only Ebay seller that placed a large variety of toe rings on auction three weeks ago. They were only 10K gold and interestingly enough open in the back so adjustable. People that put rings on their toes do not want an expensive piece. People where sandles in the summer months so it was the perfect product. We have sold every one I bought and I tried to get more from the factory and have now cleaned them out. Toe ring season will end in two weeks. However, there are more birthdays in July than in any other month in this country. So ruby of decent quality is next. The quality on Ebay is difficult to describe so we are not talking top end Burma rubies on the other hand, the low end junk that is sold does not make the customer happy when it arrives. Something in the order of a Madagascar orgin with a decent color but a liveable cost should do well.