Job Opening: African Art E-Commerce Co Seeks Photographer/Administrator
We are an affirmative action employerand love having a diverse staff.
Africa Direct is a 28 year old home based business. (Deceptivebasement where the inventory is, is huge.) We have a staff of seven. We are eBay's biggest seller of African Art, ethnic jewelry, and trade beads. Our website is www.africadirect.com. We are great advocates of eBay Giving Works charity auctions, and have contributed more than $165,000 to African charities.
We have no “bricks and mortar” store. Our sales are virtually 100% internet based, and we sell all over the world. Our eBay feedback is more than 59,000. This is a fairly big little business. The art is fascinating and varied-masks, carvings, textiles, baskets, beadwork, clay, metal, beads, jewelry…). We buy from more than 100 African traders, who come to our driveway from both coasts.) We are one of the biggest eBay sellers in Colorado.
We are looking for a long term person who will be a joy to work with. Biggest responsibilities will be packing, photography, Adobe photoshop, listing, order pulling, customer service, plus a wide range of other duties requiring decent writing and computer skills. Full time, Tuesday through Saturday. Workweeks are generally 40 hours, but we need someone willing to work a bit more when we have a huge order to assemble, owners are traveling, containers arrive from Africa, or I buy 100 pieces in the driveway from an African collector at 4:00 and rain is threatening!
In a small company such as this, some of the division of work depends on the interests and skills of the people we hire. One former staff person (now finished with grad school in art in NY) spent some of her time here being second author on a book on Yoruba art which we published. Here are some of the things which need to be done each day, and get divided up depending on needs of the moment, phases of the moon, etc.
Order pulling
We ship up to forty orders a day. Accuracy is paramount. International shipping poses its own challenges, and our inventory of more than 20,000 items is daunting.
Physical labor!
Carvings, masks, etc need to be carried up and downstairs, the annual (ugh!) physical inventory involves loads of moving. It’s not unusual to be up and downstairs, carrying loads, ten times a day.
Invoicing
We use Quickbooks as well as eBay and Paypal software and our own proprietary software from the website. You won’t be doing this initially…but there is room to advance in this area.
Photography
We've come a long way from our first few years of using natural light on the dining room table. We have a studio (OK, it shares a room with inventory and the washer and dryer, but still) and generally "shoot" about 50 objects with 1-200 total images a day.
Adobe Photoshop
Images need to be cleaned, cropped, tweaked, uploaded, stored, with the right photo codes applied to labels on the objects and a final "quality control" done to ensure color match, etc.
Listingthe lifeblood of the business
We have templates for many objectsfor example, a Zulu beer basket ready to be listed needs dimensions and price and picture codes inserted and uploaded. Older used items require condition descriptions, damage disclosures, age estimates. Things are listed on the website, on ebay and Etsy, and moved between them.
HTML
We do monthly newsletter and frequent previews.
Packing
We do our own packing and things must arrive unbroken! We need detail-oriented “neatniks.”
Others: handling customer questions and orders, primarily by email but also phoneoccasional mending and restoration of objectscleaning inventory areasresearching a piece using our extensive library on African art, beads, and ethnic jewelry.sending reminders for paymentdriving orders to the shipperrestringing beads. Search engine optimization, computer maintenance, ebay advanced seminars
Sara and I are gone for 5-6 months each year. We need a staff which can keep sales up and customers happy while we are gone.
There is some room for advancement .There is also room for increase in pay, benefits, responsibility as the complex business is learned.
We work hard, but pressure is low. Most of the work is very detail oriented. Priorities change frequently, not because of disorganization but because we are "fast response" and the majority of our orders are shipped the day we get them.
Our politics are liberal. Dress code is casual. Lunch is generally a sandwich you bring, but if you prefer a real lunch hour, that's fine; just adjust your hours worked to allow for it. The workday is generally 7:00-3:00 M-f
Compensation: $20 per hour to start, , review within 8 months, health ins, vacation
If this sounds like something which you would like, please email me and tell me a bit about yourself.
Best,
Elizabeth Bennett