Breaks Feature for Sellers

Every second, a card is sold on Whatnot, and many of those cards are sold through Breaks. Breaks is a group buying activity in which a seller purchases a box or pack of cards and then invites others to purchase spots in the box, with each spot representing a specific portion of the cards being opened. Breaks have become a fun, engaging, and more equitable way for collectors to gain a piece of a box rather than buying a whole box for themselves. 

Our integrated breaking feature delivers a smoother, more intuitive, and fun way to connect with your audience and sell out those Break spots faster than ever. 

This feature offers 

• Streamlined Breaks creation: Say goodbye to tedious spot creation with our new tools. Batch-generate spots, copy/paste from your spreadsheets, and customize descriptions with ease. Create a Break with hundreds of spots in just seconds.
• Frictionless Breaks management: Take control with pinned spots, support for Pick-Your-Team and random formats, Buy-It-Nows and Auctions, and clear tracking of spot assignments so buyers always know what’s available.
• Built-in randomization: Automatic spot assignments with support for popular formats like stash-or-pass and pick-two-choose-one. Watch those Breaks fill in record time!
• Fulfillment made easy: Export spots and assignments directly to a spreadsheet and your packing slips.
• Seller Notes: You can now write notes (only visible to you) for different break spots that are sold on the Breaks Manager. They will appear on your csv reports, packing slips, and orders page.

These upgrades, plus a redesigned buyer experience, make Breaks on Whatnot a simpler, more exciting way to sell. Beta features are subject to change and may experience periods of downtime as we refine them. 

Key Things to Know About the Breaks Feature

• You must manage your break using a computer.  
  • You can still use your phone for video during the show,, but the break creation and break management tools can currently only be used from a computer.  
  • If you are streaming from your phone, you must have a computer on the side to manage the break.
• You must adhere to all card break rules when using the breaks feature.  Those rules can be found here.
• The breaks feature currently supports Pick Your Team breaks (Auctions or Buy it Nows) or random breaks (Auctions only)

Setting up a Break

1. Using a computer, create a show in a breaks category (e.g., Basketball Breaks), or using the breaks tag.
2. In the show, tap ‘add’ and then tap ‘create a break’

3. Pick your break type, break format, and give your break a name and description.  

4. You can select from a list of pre-set spots (e.g., NBA teams), or you can create a custom spot list.  
5. With custom spots, you can just copy and paste your own spot list directly into the integrated spreadsheet from Google Sheets or Excel, including spot names, prices, and descriptions
   1. You can paste up to 75 custom spots per break, which works really well for formats like Random Player breaks.

6. For Pick Your Team breaks, you can toggle on/off “Allow offers on break spots?”.  When enabled, this will allow you to accept offers on break spots.
7. For Random breaks, you can toggle on/off “Auto-Randomize”.  When enabled, this will automatically assign buyers to spots when they win auctions.
8. Once you are ready with your break settings, tap “Create Break”, which will create the break and all of the spots at once.

Managing a Break

When you’re running a break from your computer, you’ll see the Break Manager on the left side of the screen.  This will be your primary tool for managing all of the key actions during the break.

General Tips

• You can create as many breaks as you want for your show.  Each break will show up as a single tile in the “Breaks” tab of your store, which helps keep things really clean and organized for you and your buyers.
• While the break is filling, you can add/remove/rename spots, pin the break or individual spots, download a CSV with all of the buyer names and spot names, or delete the break 

Random Breaks

• Tap “Start Auction” to start auctioning off random spots.
  • If you have ‘auto-randomize’ enabled, these spots will be automatically assigned when a buyer wins the auction
  • If you have ‘auto-randomize’ disabled, you can tap ‘Randomize’ to manually trigger the randomizer, or ‘Assign Team’ if you want to use a physical randomizer like a deck of cards
• At any point, you can tap ‘Clear teams’ to remove the spot assignment from a particular buyer
• See the bottom of this article for tips on using the breaks feature for advanced formats like Stash or Pass, Pick 2 Choose 1, or Trades

Pick Your Team Breaks

• We recommend pinning the break using the pin icon at the top of the Break Manager.  This will allow buyers in your show to easily see prices, what spots are available, and other key info about the break.
  • Buyers can either tap “See Spots” or the pinned listing itself to pull up the spot list
  • Buyers can also get to the spot list by tapping the break in your store
  • Buyers can purchase spots directly from the spot list, as well as make offers if you toggled offers on when you created the break
• You can also pin each individual spot if you want to draw your buyers’ attention to a particular one, or you can run individual spots as auctions

Start Breaking

Once your break is filled and you’re ready to start breaking, just tap the “Start Breaking” button at the top of the screen.  This will send a notification to all of the buyers that the break is beginning, which they can tap the notification to hop back into the show.

After the Break

After the break is finished, tap the “Finish Breaking” button, which will mark the break as complete in your store.  Fulfillment is then really easy with:

• The ability to export a CSV with all the buyer names and spot assignments from the Break Manager or via Seller Hub
• Spot names printed on the packing slip for every buyer

Whatnot Break Feature - Advanced Formats 

Stash or Pass

1. Use the randomizer to select the buyer’s first team.
2. If the buyer decides to stash, no action is needed
3. If the buyer decides to pass:
   1. In the Break Manager, locate the spot that was assigned to the buyer
   2. Click “Randomize Again” and it will pick a new team for the buyer
      1. Note that if the buyer hits the same team again, you can re-randomize again.

Pick 2, Choose 1 (or Pick 3, Choose 2 etc)

1. Use the randomizer to select the buyer’s first team
2. Click “Randomize Again” and it will pick a new team for the buyer
3. If the buyer wants to keep their second team, no action is needed
4. If the buyer wants to keep the first team selected:
   1. Click “Clear Team” next to their spot
   2. Click “Assign Team” and select the appropriate team

Trades

1. In the Break Manager, locate the two spots of the buyers who want to trade
2. Click “Clear Team” next to their spots
3. Click “Assign Team” and select the appropriate team for both spots
   1. Note that you’ll need to finalize any trades prior to hitting “Start Breaking”