Why HipStamp Is About To Suffer A Huge Store Exodus.

Listing Count Updates
Currently, a Starter Store subscription allows for up to 100 listings, a Basic Store subscription allows for up to 10,000 listings, a Featured Store subscription allows for up to 100,000 listings, and a Premium Store subscription allows for up to 1,000,000 listings. Effective July 22, 2022, a Basic Store subscription will allow for up to 1,000 listings and a Featured Store subscription will allow for up to 10,000 listings.
Already have an Annual Store Subscription? Don't worry, you'll be grandfathered in at the old listing counts for the rest of your annual term. Currently on a Monthly Store Subscription? Now is the perfect time to switch to an Annual Store Subscription, and not only lock in our current rates and listing counts for the next 12 months but save up to 30% compared to a Monthly Store Subscription. To make the switch today, visit the Store Subscription page in the Members Area.
Price Changes
Currently, a Starter Store subscription is $2.95 per month, a Basic Store subscription is $6.95 per month, a Featured Store subscription is $19.95 per month, and a Premium Store subscription is $59.95 per month - all when on an annual subscription; or $3.95, $9.95, $24.95 and $74.95 per month respectively when not on an annual subscription. Effective July 22, 2022, a Starter Store subscription will be $3.95 per month, a Basic Store subscription will be $9.95 per month, a Featured Store subscription will be $26.95 per month, and a Premium Store subscription will be $79.95 per month - all when on an annual subscription; or $4.95, $13.95, $32.95 and $99.95 per month respectively when not on an annual subscription.
These changes represent our only fee increase since January 2020 and are necessary for us to continue key programs that are currently helping our Sellers to increase their sales each month, which are now approaching $3 Million per month across Hip eCommerce. This also includes a significant expansion of spending on marketing programs including paid media and new and exciting features such as the HipStamp App that can be installed on your phone or tablet, and our recently launched Live Bidding Rooms.


To put this into perspective:
Here's a breakdown of what a Basic Store is faced with...
Currently: $6.95/month for annual subscription, or $83.40/year, for 10,000 listings.
To maintain 10,000 listings, New fees require a Featured Store, at $26.95/month, or $323.40/year (an increase of $240 per year simply to maintain 10K in listings!).
Or...keep Basic Store at $9.95/month ($119.40/year), an increase of $36/year for 1/10th of the listings.

For those stores that opt to stay, prices will be increasing to cover these additional fees, and all during an inflationary cycle. Clearly, this move was well thought out by management...

Ugh - in same situation with a featured store, currently with around 15,000 listings. Just wrote an email to Hipstamp telling them my thoughts about this. Not happy to put it mildly. I would encourage anyone else affected to do the same.

~Greg

Putin's Price Hikes!

And speaking of inflation...
I do feel bad for small stamp dealers and sellers. There are significant costs involved with simply revaluing their stock to keep up with inflation, covering increased fees involved with storing inventory, and then dealing with the shipping and online venue price increases. If dealers have not already moved the prices up on their listings, they are already taking it on the chin.

Stamp collectors might feel good when they see prices go up on material they already own, but much of this is an illusion. Similar to the 1980s stamp market increases, much of the 'increase' is actually inflation lowering the underlying value of the currency.
Don

Rogdcam...Gotta love ya....

I have received a reply already, and in discussion - will update the thread with any useful info that comes out of it.

I get inflation is a reality, it's the subscription tier changes to max listings that really bites.

There are bulk update tools on Hipstamp & Delcampe (not sure about ebay) to allow for all listings, or a defined subset of them, to have a price increase (e.g. $0.25 or a %) applied to them - guess I'll need to do that at some point to offset increased costs coming from suppliers/platforms (although Hip's changes are the most egregious I've seen by far).

Once the two-way sync with ebay died and sank into the swamp, I abandonded Hipstamp. The tiny number of eyeballs that site generates just wasn't worth the expenese, let alone the hassle. If it's even possible, I have more of a problem with the way Hipstamp is (mis)managed than ebay. Not a chance in Hell I'd ever go back.

P.S. Did they ever start collecting and remitting sales tax on behalf of sellers as they are required by law?

Uhhhhhh...no...

hip who?

So.....

In 2020 Hip eCommerce (Hip) raised 5.3 million dollars in investment capital. Again, in March of this year Hip raised another 1 million dollars as part of a new round of funding with a goal of 3.5 million dollars. It is unclear if Hip received the other 2.5 million dollars as of this date. In March 2022 Hip CEO Rosenberg stated that Hip was seeing more than 2 million dollars in monthly sales across each of its collectible marketplaces . Apparently, according to Doc's shared email, that number shot up to 3 million in a matter of months but is that for all three marketplaces or 90% for comic books or.......?

My point in saying the above is that it seems as if Hip is seeing extremely healthy sales which in turn means in theory greater net income even without fee increases. Given the outside cash infusions AND the increasing fees one would think that Hip was all of that and a chocolate covered cherry with real whipped cream. I don't see it. So what is the end game.

Whatever it is suffice it to say that without the legions of small sellers using Hip's platform it does not exist. They have no real inventory other than their own seller account. You, the small seller ARE Hip and wield great power if you choose to flex your muscles. Buyer accounts mean nothing if there is nothing to buy.

This is all pretty obvious I realize but it is my "Gipper" speech.

Edit to add Investment Capital article link:

https://wraltechwire.com/2022/03/23...ollectibles/

Retire in 3 years, instead of 10 years.

Ding!!!! We have a winner!!!

Just got home late this afternoon from a quick trip from TN to northern MN to see my daughter and saw my email from HipStamp.

I have about 6,000 listings, and I picked Hip because it was more reasonable than ebay was. This really, really sucks.

So basically, my choice is to reduce to 1,000 listings (which really isn't a choice) or bite the bullet. My fee goes up almost 200%, and more if I don't pay it yearly.

I sell between $300-500 a month, and I'm only doing this to support my stamp purchasing addiction. Not many businesses can get away with a 200% price hike to their customers. HipStamp shouldn't get away with this either.

I hate this for the sellers and our hobby.

But in my opinion an online selling venue, whether it is ebay, HS or anyone else, is faced with similar business challenges. Their profitability is tied to metrics like 'cost per transaction' and 'cost per listing'. Building, maintaining, and supporting the infrastructure and other resources to host a worldwide selling venue is a huge cost. It makes sense that a tiny online venue like HS**, would be able to offer lower fees while staying small but would be forced to increase those fees if they are to grow.

Keep in mind that an online selling venue is a lot like a movie theater business, you need to be able to handle full capacity at peak times but at other times you are supporting much lower traffic. This is one of the reasons that 'cost per transaction' and 'cost per listing' are important parts of their fee calculations. You have to have both the IT and human resources available 24/7/365 even if it is not currently in use. Once an online selling venue approaches their traffic and support capacity, they have no choice but to spend significant amounts of money.

I assume that HS (and its sellers) want to the venue to grow, and the owners probably either would like to go public or get purchased at some point. Growth is not simply throwing some new servers online; it involves other significant costs such as routers, backup/redundancy equipment, power interruption hardware, software, and of course human resources to manage and support it all. The only way to prevent fees from increasing would be to prevent growth.

And in this time of significant inflation, we can expect fees and prices to jump up across the board.

Lastly it appears to me that our hobby desires an online selling venue which supports unlimited amounts of low value listings, has large amounts of world-wide buyers, supports the ability to relist huge amounts of unsold material over and over, has a simple interface, includes a stable and reliable infrastructure with fast upload times, and has the tax handling functionality for whatever the seller tax jurisdiction. As a business model, this kind of 'wish list' only makes sense if you can charge significant fees. The days of a tech start-up giving away their online services in order to build traffic appears to be coming to an end. Unfortunately, I think the chances of another ' ebay sized' online selling venue that allows our hobby to ride its early years, low-cost shirt tails is not something that is likely to happen again.
Don

** ebay's total sales in the first quarter of this year was $2.48 billion, that's about $27,000,000 in revenue per day. HS daily revenue is about $70,000 per day.

Appears that the fees for the Featured Store is going up 320% - 350% per listing if you base it on ability to currently list 100,000 vs. the 10,000 allowed after July 22.

Wow!