Amazon. An online marketplace where you can buy and sell anything you can think of. Cars, comics, old furniture, or brand new TVs.
For the casual buyer, it’s a wonderland of deals to be made and treasures to be found. I’ve met quite a few people that find the bidding portion the most exciting, caring little for the actual item, and more excited about winning the bid and getting the thing for as little as possible.
Others I know like to “flip” items, buying for a low cost, repackaging it, and reselling for more. Profit. That’s how businesses work. For others, such as myself, Amazon was an opportunity.
I say “was,” but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve always had a very entrepreneurial mind. When I first came across Amazon, I too enjoyed buying things that caught my interest and savored the joy of getting something for great value.
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As I became more familiar with the site, I realized there was a chance for some money to be made. There were the casual buyer and seller, yes, but there were also professional markets in place selling quality items. They must’ve been making a killing! Amazon comes complete with a built-in audience. All I had to do was find what wasn’t being sold and fill that gap.
I found this very niche with Italian-made fashion accessories. Not only were there very few out selling the same thing at the time, but with little effort I was able to find a distributer straight from Italy willing to cut a deal wholesale.
Now, I’m not a fool. I followed all the proper procedures, licensed my business, and took care of all the fine print. The initial cost was higher than I would’ve liked at the time, but the potential was there. I believed in what I was doing, so sinking money into it was a necessity, not a loss.
Things started slow. It wasn’t just a matter of putting the items up for sale, but photos and descriptions. I needed to not only catch the eye, but capture interest. It took a few tries, but soon I had some items selling regularly. As I added more, received positive feedback, and found the “sweet-spot” with pricing, everything grew from there. Over the years, my reputation increased as a trustworthy seller. With every successful sale, my business grew. I had repeat business, and just through word-of-mouth my customer base increased farther than I could’ve hoped.
That is, until one customer claimed my merchandise was fake. They came up with one story, linked it to an internet article that was unrelated to my business, and that was it. Even with the proper invoices and paperwork, Amazon banned my account. The business I had worked so hard to achieve was gone. Literally overnight I went from everything, to nothing.
Since then I’ve tried making appeals, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Even following all of the rules, all it took was one bad review to bring it all crumbling down.
I still have the customers and the connections, so I may try to revive my business some other way, but for now, I’m just sad that years of work could be washed away by one stupid lie.
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