Delcampe Quo Vadis?

DC has truly made significant accomplishments as an auction platform for collectibles, and it's commendable to see what has been achieved over the years. However, it's undeniable that the market landscape and regulatory environment have become more challenging.

Regarding some recent developments:

Mangopay: DC seems to have taken a page from eBay's book by introducing its own payment system. This move enhances cash flow and potentially generates interest rates.

New Membership System: This initiative not only adds to the revenue stream but also, by improving this system, can be interpreted as a response to declining sales revenue.

Regarding DC's official stance on these changes:

While regulations certainly play a role, there's more to the story. DC appears to lack transparency and courage in sharing additional insights. It's reasonable to speculate that user numbers and revenue might be on the decline, yet DC remains silent on these matters.

Roll out of changes
This is definitely a huge challenge for any platform. Implementation is made gradually, and from my view, without significant errors.

Outlook
I read/hear a lot of input from unsatisfied sellers (mainly pro-sellers). Cost explosion, much lower sales, partly payment issues. DC is a European platform and that's the target group. (Remember, several US states are banned by DC due to tax regulation issues)

DC, established as a private enterprise in 2000, touts a workforce of approximately 34 individuals. Being a private entity, they aren't mandated to disclose financial details such as revenue or profit. Nevertheless, sharing current user metrics and select website statistics could serve as a gesture to foster trust among the user base.

As of 2022, DC disclosed having 1 million active daily users and receiving 150,000 new items daily. It's uncertain whether these figures have experienced any significant increase by 2024.

Only time will tell whether the significant changes will revitalize the platform or signal its demise.


Your thoughts?

A bit of an essay on how the changes have affected me!

As an existing pro stamp seller on the larger site, what attracted me to the platform initially? Three things : the ablity to list low value items, lower fees and EU regulatory compliance. The lower value items were shortly marred by the seller item fee, but bringing up my minimum item value covered this (with a drop in saes on these items). I continued to list definitive stamps individually, and sets of commoratives

In time I was not listing as much due to personal reasons and closed the store on the larger site even though listings there sold quicker than listings here. There is a lot less pressure to dispatch immdeiately (although I have kept that up mainly) and I've tended to get more multiple orders here. For a few years I kept this going, listing when I could.

Once I was able to start listing again regularly last year I repopened my store on the larger site, I started listing higher value lots (for me at least) first on the other site, along with duplicated of medium value lots, which continued to be listed here first.

The payments system change bypassed me as I was only accepting those payment types anyway. I did experiment with cheques/bank transfers etc. These took too much time and buyers made too many mistakes with currency exchange etc when I did accept them. The only mistake I saw here was the rebranding, why not just keep it hidden in plain sight as before (unless there was a sweetener from mangopay that made it worthwhile).

The March fee increase has impacted my sales and listing patterns significantly though. All my previous lots were discounted by the old fees.

Going forward for new lots, I've reduced my minimum price to 10p again, and discount lots by 10% to accommodate the FVF. Buyers are not going to accommodate nearly 75% fees as much on a 10p lot that is now 38p with fees. For definitives I'm selling part sets of stamps valued individually at less than £9, (those above are listed individually). As I'm listing new items I'm removing my older individual definitive listings on this site.

The increase in fees makes selling here a lot less attractive as they are now only just less than the other site, with a far lower sell through. It makes a lot more sense to list on the site where it is more likely to sell 5 times as fast or greater. Once a lot is complete, medium and higher valued lots are listed on the other site, with a duplicate lot (often with less values in) is listed here. Net result is my store here is going to be a lot weaker in the long term, but my sales will increase across both sites.

A final note on the new fees, as a pro seller even with all these changes I'd like to continue listing here. The one thing that my prevent me doing that is the reporting and invoicing of the new systems. Sellers need to be able to show their gross income to their account and then declare deductions to satisfy tax authorities, and Ideally this needs to be done in a clear statements and invoices to back up this declaration.

- the new payment system does not have a statement system, and I now need to print out the 'detail' of each transaction (previously there was a arrow to add the detail just below the item line) to get any deductions shown (delcampe pay fees etc), rather than a 5 page statement I'm now giving the accountant 100+ pages of detail that I have to index by hand. Not fun.

- payment received into my account include the buyers fees, which are then deducted (in paypal at least - mangopay's accounting is too poor to tell). This means I need to account for the deduction, and delcampe is not providing an invoice to back it up. Without this I'm going to be paying tax on 38p of income where I only receive 10p on my lowest value lots, theoretically I could be losing money on most of my lots. Unless this is sorted fast I'm going to have to shut up shop entirely.

Going forward, assuming that the above issue are fixed and sales stabilise I can see myself keeping around 8k lots on delcampe (down from just over 10k) so I will be able to accommodate the store size charge. If the changes increase sell through rates significantly (or fees lower - Im not holding my breath on that though) I'd like to move more listings back here in future.

Thank you for sharing your experience as a pro seller.
I am not, but I do track the number of sold vintage passports for each month, for over a year now. As these items are my desire. It will be interesting to see how they perform after various platform changes.

I wish to see some statement of statistics from DC - if they are transparent and brave enough to do so.

Link (https)