The Easy Way To Sell On eBay

Linda Dela Cruz
Wednesday - August 16, 2006
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Tiffany Tanaka is eager to help you sell your stuff on eBay
Tiffany Tanaka is eager to help you sell your stuff on eBay

Tiffany Tanaka turns treasures and trash into cash. She puts up a virtual auction and garage sale in cyberspace with her company WeSellThings4U.

“For the pack rats out there, this is an easy way to clean,” says Tanaka. “It’s the wave of the future.”

She says her clients include folks young and old who don’t have time to post their items on eBay themselves. And a new market she says she hadn’t expected is businesses getting rid of some of their things.


People can bring their items down to her storefront in Kakaako, where she posts them on eBay and the customer keeps the cash. Tanaka gets a portion of the sale. Some of the most popular items selling are electronics and designer handbags.

The Punahou 1998 graduate had been selling things casually on the Internet while she was earning her degree in fashion design and graphic design at University of San Francisco. When she returned home in 2003, she took her self-described obsession with the Internet that was a hobby and turned it into a job, and a business.

The only daughter of two attorneys, her dad, Keith, owns the retail golf accessory store Roots N Relics in downtown Honolulu.

“My dad said in owning your own business, ‘It’s a lot of work. You have to work hard, and you always have to work smart,’” she explains.

One of the ways she works smart is to find solutions to some of her challenges.


“The struggle is inventory management,” she admits. “We don’t have enough space, but we’ve got another warehouse. Now we have a tracking system with bar code.”

Some more unusual items she’s been asked to store and post on eBay include a breast pump that sold for $800, and a 70-year-old Japanese yen that was signed by generals from World War II, which is up for bid at about $100,000.

Tanaka plans to celebrate her third anniversary in business in October with her clients. Her goals for the future include selling more high-end items in the fashion world and to expand to San Francisco or Los Angeles next year.

“There’s no limit to what we can do,” she says. “We’re excited to see where it’s going.”

WeSellThings4U is located at 839 Queen St. Hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call 589-1102 or log onto www.wesellthings4u.com

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