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AAPK Member Store Seller Requirements

AAPK's policies & procedures require all sellers to be approved by an administrator before they can gain access to the member store platform.  Details about the qualifying criteria used to grant approval are outlined below.


Sellers must meet one or more of the following qualifying criteria to sell on AAPK:

  • Be a member in good standings with at least 100 posts on the AAPK forums. view details.
  • Demonstrate a good reputation at one or more online retail venues other than AAPK.  This could be at sites like eBay, Etsy, or a personal website. view details.
  • Demonstrate a good reputation at one or more traditional retail venues.  This could include places like knife shows, flee markets, or your own brick & mortar store. view details..
  • Have a referral from a long standing AAPK member, an AAPK moderator, or an AAPK administrator. view details.

Reasoning For The Qualifications

The main objective of our member store program is to make selling knives & knife related items on AAPK  as easy & affordable as possible while simultaneously keeping our buyers protected from scammers, spammers & other nefarious characters.

In an effort to accomplish this objective, we  have developed an evolving set of policies & procedures for accepting new sellers onto our platform.  The AAPK team feels that seller privileges should not be granted based solely on the information collected from members during standard registration.  We need more than just an email & street address.  We need to know a bit more about new sellers so that we can ensure all member store participants are individuals with  high integrity.

We know that our methods are not perfect & our policies must be flexible & open to change.  For this reason, suggestions for improvements are highly encouraged so that we can continuously  refine our services to best suite our shared interests.


 

Qualifying Criteria Expounded:



Forum membership & post count:

Approval for selling on the AAPK member store platform can be granted based on participation on the AAPK Knife forum.

The AAPK team believes that members who have 100 or more quality posts have displayed a level of commitment that demonstrates a high probability that the individual is not a here today and gone tomorrow type member.

The team also believes that a decent number of posts enable potential buyers to get an idea of the member's involvement at AAPK & can get a better idea of who exactly they are buying from.

We know that posting on forums is not everyone's cup of tea. For this reason, we have other means by which members can gain access to the store platform.

 

 

Online retail experience:

 Approval for selling on the AAPK member store platform can be granted based on your selling experience at online venues that are not affiliated with AAPK. If you have been selling on eBay, Etsy or any other retail platforms, you probably have sufficient sales activity that can be viewed to determine your trustworthiness. 

If you have online experience that you feel might be relevant and/or necessary in determining your approval status, you can forward that information to us  through the contact form or by adding it to the AAPK seller's account application.  Please be sure to include your AAPK username, the online retail venue and the username you use at that venue.

 


Offline retail experience:

Approval for selling on the AAPK member store platform can be granted based on your offline retail experience. If you have a brick & mortar store, or if you currently sell at knife shows, flee markets or other venues that are not online, you probably have sufficient retail experience to gain approval for selling at AAPK.

If you have sales experience that you feel might be relevant and/or necessary in determining your approval status, you can forward that information to us  through the contact form or by adding it to the AAPK seller's account application.  Please be sure to include the names & locations of the venues where you sell.


 


AAPK member referrals:

Approval for selling on the AAPK member store platform can be granted through third party member referrals. If you are not an active member, and do not have an adequate online or offline retail reputation that we can use to approve your account, you may still qualify by way of an existing member's referral.

If you know a well known, respected & trusted friend of AAPK that will vouch for you, we will take this into consideration when determining your eligibility.

To gain seller status via this method of approval, you will need to have the referring member contact us directly.  They will need to use the contact form to include a message that states that they will vouch for your character.   A simple "Hi, this is Jane Doe.  I will vouch for John Doe" will do.  We will contact them to confirm that they sent it by way of their AAPK forum email address.