(above: Ernie Acosta with Keurig Shipment from our eCommerce Site)
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles (Habitat LA) opened a platform on eBay on April 5th. The online presence will allow us to reach the larger audience of consumers in addition to our three brick and mortar ReStore locations in Bellflower, Los Angeles and Torrance.
“The merchandise available online will be somewhat different than what’s available in the stores,” said Ernie Acosta III, Associate Director of Acquisitions and eCommerce. The eCommerce store will focus largely on items that require a very specific consumer. “Most of our e-commerce items will be smaller items or rare finds,” Acosta said. Customers also have the option of making their purchases online and picking up their items in one of the ReStores.
Currently, the eCommerce site is selling just a few items but hopes to have more than 1,000 items available online before the end of the year. Customer service and satisfaction will be the top priority for the site.
One hundred percent of the profits from the eCommerce store will go to Habitat LA’s mission of making sure everyone has a safe, decent, affordable place to live. “A major benefit of working with eBay is they don’t charge a fee or take a cut of anything we sell on their platform,” said Acosta.
eCommerce Tag for our eCommerce Site
Acosta joins the Habitat LA team after many years of retail experience and has been selling online since middle school, when he realized there was a demand for hard-to-find bicycle parts. As he got older, his passion for buying, refurbishing, and selling transitioned from bicycles to cars. His skill at providing buyers with exactly the parts they were looking for, and at maintaining excellent customer service enabled him to excel. He was so adept at customer service that he was able to help friends sell other kinds of merchandise online, even if he wasn’t familiar with their products. “Good customer service brings customers back,” he said.
