From Sacramento to Australia, New eBay Drop-off Stores Open

With no sign of slowing down, the eBay drop-off store trend is in full force this week with several announcements of new store openings.

QuikDrop Enters Long Island, New York
QuikDrop International, eBay drop-off store franchise, announced Monday that Roger and Stephen Preuss have been granted the area development rights to open 17 QuikDrop stores in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The first Long Island location will open in August. According to QuikDrop, both men are successful entrepreneurs with long established trucking businesses and Quiznos Sub restaurants in New York. The Long Island QuikDrop stores join other QuikDrop locations opening in New York City. QuikDrop has seven locations in five states, with four more locations opening in the next 30 days. Franchise contracts are in place to open an additional 250 stores in the United States and 75 stores internationally.

http://www.quikdrop.com

iSold It Franchise to Enter Ten New States by September
iSold It, the eBay drop-off store, announced it is now registered to sell franchises in 43 states and plans to enter new markets in ten states by the end of summer. In addition to previously announced new stores in California and Texas, iSold It now plans to open franchise stores in Arizona, Washington, Michigan, Georgia, Florida, Minnesota, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and New York. Multiple franchise candidates have been identified in these ten markets, with franchise agreements and development timing being finalized over the next 30 days.

"When potential franchisees compare iSold It with other concepts, they quickly see the company's strength is in retail execution," says Richard Tjan, iSold It Franchisee in Rancho Cucamonga, California. "The iSold It team emphasizes marketing, store operations, and customer satisfaction. The result - busy, smooth running store - is very appealing to franchisees."

In preparation for its planned expansion, iSold It has moved into new corporate offices that include a fully-working store that serves as the franchise training facility. "Building a successful national chain requires a significant investment in infrastructure," said Elise Wetzel, Founder and President of iSold It.

The concept for iSold It was created by Elise Wetzel as she was helping to fundraise for a new playground at her children's school. Elise recognized that auctioning donated items on eBay could be a powerful fundraising tool, especially if there were a service that helped make it easy. iSold It, LLC is a privately held company funded in part by the founders of Wetzel's Pretzels, a chain of fresh baked pretzel stores with over 200 locations. iSold It is available for franchising nation-wide.

http://www.i-soldit.com

A7 Consignment Opens in Sacramento
A7 Consignment announced the grand opening of its retail store at 1008 1/2 10th Street in downtown Sacramento, California. A7 Consignment is currently open, and will hold a special open house Wednesday, April 28, from 5:30pm - 8:30pm. A7 Consignment is licensed by the Sacramento Police Department and the Department of Justice (3404-1364) and is insured through All-Cal Insurance Agency.

http://www.a7consignment.com

SoldSmart Runs Australian Drop-off Stores
SoldSmart International said it is the first eBay drop-off store to open in Australia. CEO Alex Popyrin said the business has two retail drop-off stores and two full-service business consignment hubs in Sydney and Perth. "We became one of the top 50 Australian PowerSellers in record time - less than 6 months achieved a Platinum PowerSeller status."

http://www.soldsmart.biz

Auction Frog Opens in Indianapolis
Auction Frog opened a drop-off store in Indianapolis owned and operated by Jamie Brown. Brown opened the first Auction Frog storefront last week in Zionsville’s Boone Village at the corner of 334 and Ford Road. He will to expand to Fishers and Carmel by the end of summer. Brown’s expertise in Web operations stems from his other business interests including co-ownership of Brown’s on Main (www.BrownsOn5th.com), one of the top online sellers of Vera Bradley products in the nation, and ownership of Lumasis, a business that develops ecommerce Web sites for corporate clients.

http://www.AuctionFrog.com

NuMarkets Releases Software, Announces 2000 Locations by 2008
eBay drop-off store NuMarkets has released its newest patent-pending version of Simple software and said it will rollout its franchise to 50 locations in 2004 and forecasts 2000 locations by 2008.

Simple Software enables NuMarkets Selling and Shipping Centers tools and processes to run a full eBay consignment business. Highlighted functionality includes Automated Image Capture, Bar Coded Inventory Management and warehousing, Production of Auction Listings, Autowriter Knowledge base for automated script generation, batch listings for multi locations, automated PayPal extraction to order fulfillment, consignor sales reporting and payment, financial and accounting reporting, productivity management tools and Centralized Commerce Support Services.

“The software solutions that are available today in the marketplace fall short on performance to run a full eBay consignment and shipping business and are designed to function as auction management software,” said Russ Grove President & CEO. Having franchise owners provide local in-store processing with NuMarkets’ centralized hub and spoke data transfer are key functions to position NuMarkets as the low cost producer in this exciting new space of eBay consignment selling. We have taken all the difficult and technology related functions out of the equation for the franchise owners and provide a NuMarkets Centralized Commerce Support Center that will allow the franchises to focus on their mission of providing outstanding service to it customers. “

NuMarkets is based in Etowah, Tennessee.

http://www.numarkets.com