The Online Sports Memorabilia Industry (Part 1)

At 1SportsCollectibles, we get a ton of questions about Shipping, order, measuring a product's etc... Well, we usually explain how the sports memorabilia industry works.

Of course, every company works differently, but there are some consistencies. One industry-wide problem (with any 3rd party company, not with the manufacturers) is keeping accurate inventory levels. At 1SportsCollectibles, we don't hold the inventory in our warehouse. Have our items drop-shipped to customers. Our Drop Shipper has connections with sports collectibles 'manufacturers' i.e. Steiner Sports and Upper Deck.




Once someone places an order, we send it to the drop shipper and they get it from the 'manufacturer'. This system is very widely used in the memorabilia industry. The inventory issue happens because multiple drop-shippers and multiple sellers are all using the same inventory data.

At 1SportsCollectibles, we update our inventory constantly to make sure that this issue minimal. However, since the sports world is exciting and unexpected occurrences happen all the time (i.e. one great game, a great season, firings, news, crime, death, awards, playoffs etc...), that certain products based on teams or players will get sold on many different venues by dozens of sellers. The inventory (physical) is drawn from the same warehouse but the communication of the inventory levels may work differently with different distributors.

Also, another consideration is that if 10 orders come in from 10 distributors to Steiner Sports, since Steiner also sells his own inventory... he obviously gives preference to his own sales.

Distributors will also discontinue products if the players / teams are doing extremely well and they want to control selling the items. The problem is that on Monday we can get an order and have 48 'in stock' according to our distributor. We'll send the order in and our distributor says that the 'manufacturer' has the product and the order is processing but before the order gets fulfilled, the 'manufacturer' discontinues the product line. This is a huge problem which is why we keep our inventory as up-to-date as possible, but it's not perfect. We'll even update our inventory and then see the same products that were recently discontinued, for sale all over the web.

Well, that's it for part 1. We've gone over how parts of the industry work and some of the issues that we face working within it.

Still, the Sports Memorabilia industry is amazing. Providing people with great products at great prices that connect on a much more meaningful level then selling books or blenders is extremely gratifying. Think about your favorite player, or team. Maybe your collect Tiger Woods Memorabilia, or Michael Jordan Memorabilia, Boston Red Sox Memorabilia or New York Rangers Collectibles... it's a blast to honor your favorite teams and players. Check out our website, http://www.1sportscollectibles.com for the best prices on your favorite products.

If you're just interested in the industry, check us out in about a week when the next part of this Sports Memorabilia Industry series.