Experts say shoppers will pamper Dad this year, and will spend more on him than they have in the past eight years. The top Father’s Day gift is expected to be a day out, but electronics, clothing, and tools and appliances are also among popular gift choices. In all, Americans will spend about $1.4 billion on gifts for Dad.

That got us thinking, what do dads at Auctiva want this year? We asked a few of them to find out. Let’s see what they said.

Rick Russell, a systems administrator at Auctiva, isn’t hoping for anything that will break the bank. He just wants a sunny Father’s Day. “It’s been raining a lot here in Chico,” he explains. “I’d hate to see this week be sunny and then for the weather to go back to rain again.”

New dad Mark Montgomery, a content writer on Auctiva’s Sourcing Team, totally agrees. He’s also wishing for sunshine, and a few other treats.

“I’m hoping for sunshine, beer and sleep,” he says. “I think I can get two out of those three.”

The gift of sleep was also on Communications Manager Robert Green’s wish list. “I’d like to sleep in, and for my family to wake me with blueberry pancakes and fresh OJ.”

Sales Manager Greg Fishback is hoping for something a little different. “I want my oldest son to show me his budget for the nine months he’ll be away from home at college. This way I can hold him accountable when he calls me for money,” he notes. “I want my youngest son, who’s going to be a freshman in high school, to organize/clean his room.”

Another new dad, Release Engineer Ryan Cox, isn’t quite sure what he wants, this being his first Father’s Day, and all. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he admits. “I reckon I’ll be happy if my wife lets me play games for the majority of the day.”

Auctiva Commerce product lead Chris Eckland knows exactly what he wants: “I’m hoping for a day at Disneyland with the kids—fun for all,” he says, though he admits the chances of that happening this weekend are slim.

But we’re sure that, above all, these dads just want what Customer Support Representative Jaime Raigoza wants: “I’d like the wisdom to be a good dad.” Well said, Jaime!

Here’s hoping that all dads get everything they want. Happy Father’s Day!

from Rebecca:

As the temperature starts heating up here in Chico, CA, so does the in-office competition for a friendly eBay sales challenge. It all started when Robert Green, our in-house “spokes model” (or communications manager, whatever you want to call him), successfully sold a few items on eBay this month. I was biding my time and hadn’t sold anything yet in June.

Mid-May to mid-June is a really busy time of year for me, with Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, graduations and several other important days all falling close together. So I rarely post eBay listings during these weeks.

But when Mr. Green started taunting me about how many sales he had already in June—a whopping four, woohoo!—I couldn’t just sit back and take his trash talk. It’s ironic how I use the word “trash,” considering what he sold: Used shoes and old phones. Hehe. He even went so far as to write the “score” on my whiteboard: “Robert 4, Rebecca 1.”

And this was after I generously lent him my shipping boxes, bubble wrap, adhesive labels, shipping scale, packing tape, etc. The nerve!

Foolish, foolish man. What can I say? I came back with a vengeance. The current score? Robert 4, Rebecca 8. I have hundreds of things I could list right now, but I don’t want to scar him for life. Or do I?

As my custom license plate frame says: “I don’t get mad, I get even.” Stay tuned to see how our “friendly” competition evolves. We’re doing this until the end of July. We’ll see who the winner is at the end of all of this. Get ready, Mr. Green.

from Robert:

So I just sat down to read Rebecca’s post, as I always do before we publish something to the Auctiva Blog. Had it not been written by her, I might have taken some of that personally. But those of us who’ve had the pleasure of working with Rebecca for some time now have learned to take her sense of humor with a grain of salt.

In truth, Rebecca is among the nicest and most generous people I’ve ever met, or worked with. Since her first day here, I was impressed with her utter willingness to help anyone who asks to learn to sell on eBay. Over the years, she’s accumulated a lot of knowledge and a few prized tricks of the trade, but none of these are off limits. Just ask and she’ll help, though she won’t do it for you.

Rebecca is an invaluable part of the Auctiva team. She’s an advocate for the user, constantly suggesting improvements or new features that often do get rolled into the software. She stays very busy around here, using our products, helping to design and document new features, monitoring the market, responding to users’ posts in our forums, co-hosting Webinars and so much more. The only trouble? There’s not always a lot of time left to focus on selling.

So sure, I might tease her a bit about her mounds of merchandise flooding two cubicles here (and who knows how many closets and garages at home), especially when we get to week two of a month and she’s yet to post anything to eBay.

So after I finally got some of my “Someday I’ll put this on eBay” items listed and sold last month, I might have mentioned I was the company’s leading seller for June. Well that didn’t last. Before I knew it, there was talk about a contest and the aforementioned whiteboard was updated almost daily as Rebecca’s sales dwarfed mine. Of course, I hadn’t accepted the challenge. But I think I will now.

It’s early July, and I’m ready. Sure she has hundreds of items to sell, but she won’t likely have time to list too many of them. Plus, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. I propose we track both total items sold in July as well as total selling price. We’ll keep you all updated on at least a weekly basis as this contest proceeds.

In the meantime, I’m curious to hear from you. What motivates you to sell? When do you feel a lull in enthusiasm and energy? What snaps you out of it?

Editor’s note: Rebecca and Robert will be updating this post every week during their Summer Selling Challenge to let you know how they’re doing. They’ll go back and forth to let you know what their strategies are and how they plan to win. Stay tuned.

Every spring, a storm begins a-brewin’ here at Auctiva. I like to refer to it as the battle of good and evil.

I’d compare it to King Leonidas vs. Xerxes, or Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker. I’m talking, of course, about the Oakland Athletics versus the San Francisco Giants. This past weekend was one of the interleague rivalry series, which meant the Giants made their way across the Bay to play the A’s.

The A’s swept the Giants, btw—something that made me very happy as a long-time A’s fanatic.

But Giants fans, no doubt, hated the loss. You see, when it comes to Major League Baseball, Northern California, where our Chico campus is located, has long been divided into two warring camps: Giants fans and A’s fans. Sure, some prefer other teams. For instance, our Communications Manager Robert Green is a Yankees fan and has a not-so-secret man crush on Derek Jeter. But most baseball lovers in our area consider themselves either A’s or Giants fans. You can see this division here in our Chico offices, too.

If you walk around, you’ll see plenty of Giants paraphernalia lying around. Just two desks behind me, one of our development managers has his Giants gear on hand. A few feet from me, our Auctiva EDU assistant editor flaunts bobble heads of Giants broadcasters, Kruk and Kuip, as well as other fan kitsch. Meanwhile, I proudly display my A’s bobblehead, Best of the Bay Coca-Cola bottle, Rickey Henderson flag and A’s beanie baby in my cubicle.

Out of curiosity, I recently polled the entire Chico staff on their MLB team loyalty. I was a little disappointed to find out just how few fellow A’s fans there are here at Auctiva. I knew I was in the minority, but it hurt to know just how small our numbers are. There’s me, and our No. 2, Kevin Kinell. That’s it!

Maybe there are a few others who just don’t want to admit their secret A’s fanhood, for whatever reason. I’m not sure.

But it makes me wonder, there must be team rivalries in every home and/or workplace. Is there one in yours? Are you a fan of the underdogs or the favorites? Tell us your stories. We’d love to hear them.

To enter Auctiva’s Twitter contest:

• Step 1: Follow Auctiva on Twitter
• Step 2: Tweet any message including “#Auctiva”

Example: “I’ve been using #Auctiva for 3 years!”

• Step 3: Re-enter the contest as many times as you wish, limiting your contest tweets to once a day

* Entrants must have an Auctiva account (this includes our Free Tools account), be active followers of Auctiva.com on Twitter and have a minimum of 5 followers to participate.

Auctiva’s Twitter contest runs from March 15 through April 12.

At least four first-place prize winners will be selected at random every Monday of the contest, i.e., March 22, March 29, April 5 and April 12. All participants will be eligible for the grand prize (6 months of free service on our Premium Plan). This winner will be selected on April 12 by random drawing from among qualifying entries submitted over the entire duration of the contest. Winners will be announced at noon PST.

The fine print

First-place winners will have their choice of an Auctiva-branded hat, mug, tank, T-shirt or tote bag, subject to availability. If the desired prize is not in stock or unavailable in the desired size, entrants will have to select another item.

The grand-prize winner will receive 6 months of free service on Auctiva’s Premium Plan, a prize valued at $119.70. This plan gives the winner access to unlimited listings, 1 GB of image hosting, an Auctiva Commerce Store, Sellathon Analytics, premium customer support and more. Optional incidental charges such as Auctiva Shipping Insurance purchases or plan overages will be the responsibility of the winner. There are no substitutions on awards.

During the first drawing, first-place prize winners will be selected from the pool of tweets since March 15. After that date, winners will be chosen among the entries tweeted since the previous drawing. However, all participants are eligible to win the grand prize, which will be selected on April 12 by random drawing from among all qualifying entries submitted over the duration of the contest.

Prize winners will be announced via tweet and direct messaged on the day of the drawing. Participants are eligible to win multiple times.

Auctiva employees and their families are not eligible to participate.

Winners are responsible for claiming their prizes by direct messaging Auctiva no more than 3 days after they are announced. Winners who do not claim their prizes by this time relinquish their awards. By entering this contest, participants acknowledge they have read and accept Auctiva’s contest rules, and will not hold Auctiva responsible for any actions Twitter may take against them.

Winners!

Congratulations to our Twitter contest winners.

March 22 winners:

1. angel_leigh
2. BobRess
3. primetime_og
4. tickets4profits

March 29 winners:

1. crystena
2. JJGlawe
3. webstoreprodux
4. beckerbuns

April 5 winners:

1. WillieSuarez
2. Naptownkid
3. devonellery
4. Impure

April 12 winners:

1. socaldebbie
2. devonellery
3. CANDIGLAZE
4. aolbites

Grand-Prize winner:

1. sandrahbee

Here at Auctiva, we work closely with eBay to make sure we stay in sync with its policies and features, while providing you with the best service we can. As part of this close relationship, eBay employees occasionally visit our Chico offices.

Anytime eBay makes the three-and-a-half-hour drive from San Jose to Chico, you can feel extra energy in the air. Usually we don’t get more than a day or two notice before our guests arrive—which doesn’t give me much time to organize my junk—I mean, inventory. I have a mountain of shoe boxes, bags of Webkinz and Club Penguin plush toys, and stacks of anything and everything in my two cubicles—all waiting to be listed.

eBay’s most recent visit was last week. Most of their time here was spent in meetings with our management team, but our visitors did find a few minutes before they left to swing by my workspace and ask me a few questions about selling. I took it as quite a compliment to be a stop on their tour of our offices. And to be perfectly honest, I was a little nervous, too.

To me, eBay is like a rock star. I’ve been selling on the site for more than a decade, so to get a personal visit from some of the eBay staff is always exciting.

This wasn’t the first time I had met with eBay, but this visit felt different. The last time we hosted an eBay group on our campus, there were two individuals. This time there were six to eight eBay employees around my desk. And our most recent guests mentioned that I had been a topic of discussion over lunch! Apparently, they had been talking about the Zu Zu Pets holiday craze, which I got in on—so they were eager to meet me before they headed back to San Jose. (I guess to them, I’m a rock star)!

As brief as the meeting was, I enjoyed having them here. Over the years, eBay has been good to me. Like many other sellers who are also parents, I credit eBay with giving me the opportunity to stay at home after the birth of my daughter. The extra income I made selling collectibles and various odds and ends helped us pay the bills and put aside a little cash for family outings. eBay was a godsend!

But most important, eBay has allowed me to have what I call my “dream job” here at Auctiva. I’m doing what I love, while getting to help make our eBay-related products easier to use and more efficient for our customers at the same time. Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I get busy and list a few items. Maybe it will help reduce my cleaning time the next time eBay visits our Chico campus.

What does it mean to be “green?”

As Kermit the Frog once sang, it’s not easy being green—or is it? Of course our favorite Muppet wasn’t referring to the same “being green” that’s become the mantra of the 21st century.

With eBay launching its Give. Good. Green. campaign this month, we thought about the ways Auctiva tries to be more environmentally friendly. We’ve had separate recycling bins for aluminum, paper and plastic in all of our offices for a very, very long time.

There are also bins for recycling batteries and we donate used computers and monitors to our local Computers for Classrooms program.

The printers in our many offices sit silent for most of the day. Instead, our staff communicates via e-mail, instant messaging, phone and in person, of course.

Our break room has a water filtration system, but no disposable cups—you’ve got to bring your own reusable cup or your favorite Kleen Kanteen (which, by the way, originated here in Chico, CA).

Even our campus is “green.” Rows of solar panels cover the rooftop of the building that houses our corporate offices. And large skylight tubes shine natural sunlight into our main engineering building.

One of the perks of working here is that all employees get an unlimited city-wide bus pass—which many employees use daily. And some even ride their bikes to work, rain or shine.

It might not be easy “being green,” but we’re trying to do our part.

What are some of the ways you try to be more “green” in your home or business? Let us know and read more about eBay’s Give. Good. Green. campaign here.