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Diary of my online retail journey

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

MantisX

Contributor
User Power
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96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
Hi guys,
I am a salaried 9-5 worker in the tech industry. My ambition has been to start a business but I have never acted on it for years. Finally I am off my a$$ and working on it now thanks to reading some great threads in this forum. I am planning to start with eCommerce as it is the easiest to get set up with.

I am planning to start with an eCommerce business. I might diversify in the future, but this is a good place to start now.

Hustle
  • Goal: Understand how eCommerce works and try to soak up as much information as possible. Pay for this education by money I get from hustling and selling anything. At the end I will have to learn a lot about online selling and also hustle to break even.
  • Deadline: Feb 15, 2015

Crawl
  • Goal: Identify atleast 1 or two niche products that can be sourced and sold with a unique value proposition to generate profits. Income goals will be around 1000 a month.
  • Deadline: June 15, 2015

Walk
  • Goal: Think about scaling the business. Maybe identity more products, create a brand, diversify out of eCommerce etc. I think the options will narrow down once I am in the Crawl stage. Income goals will be around 3000 - 5000 a month
  • Deadline: December 31 2015

Run
  • Goal: Replace my full time job with my business
  • Deadline: December 31 2016
 
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MantisX

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
Here is what I have done for the past 15 days since I have started:
I believe that we should never re-invent the wheel and believe that learning from others mistakes is the best way to go fast. So I have invested in the following:
- Subscribed for fastlane INSIDERS membership 50$. Going to read every goldmine there is to be found
- Read Walter's book 45$

Business setup expenses
- Purchased a few domain names for my business 25$
- Created domain based email ids to get more responses in Alibaba - free

Practical learning and hustle
- I look around for things to sell wherever I go! Found 3 pieces of a product in the clearance section at the Homedepot which was selling for 5$ and retails for around 16-20 in ebay. Made my first ebay auction and sold the first one. My first sale in my entire life :) Will sell the other two in the coming days.
- Bought a bunch of video games from craigslist. Will list them and sell them off this week and see if I can make any profit

Expenses remaining
- Maybe subscribe to the proven Amazon selling course by Jim cokrum if I can make enough money out of my hustle to pay for it.
 

MantisX

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
Ok.. hustling and finding used stuff to sell was not my cup of tea. Did not achieve anything. So moved on. I also bought the PAC course and it does have a decent amount of information. Here is the updates from the past two weeks:

Lesson 1: I learnt that there are small fulfillment centers around everyarea who might be much better that the bigger fulfillment houses. They are cheaper, much better service etc. Also if they are a reasonably small business trying to expand just like yourself, they will be very, very glad to support you! Made a mental note if I decided to do bulky items in the future.

Lesson 2: This goes for all types of small businesses. They are very friendly and want to help you out, especially if you are a small business trying to start out.. All you need to do is to take the phone and start calling. I was talking to a freight forwarder the other day to get some ideas and it was awesome! I might use her in the future if I need assistance with freight
icon_smile.gif


Lesson 3: Move your a$$ and go through every video, every PDF, every gold thread available to you. Remember that most of these would not actually give you the direct steps you need. It is not a series of steps to success. You need to keep your eyes and ears wide open - you never know when you will hit upon an absolute gem that will give you ideas. Try taking notes of these - it might help you assimilate the information better.

Lesson 4: When starting out, coming up with good products is tough. If it were easy, everyone would be rich, right! For me, I had to work my a$$ off - non stop searching, non-stop thinking about this and sleepless nights. But that is what it takes.

Lesson 5: Mindset. For me, failure is scary. Always played safe my entire life. Had to change that mindset. Here is my approach to this: I have set aside 5000 as the seed money to start the business. This does not mean that I am going to spend 5000 today! 2500 of this will go into experimentation. The goal is to try out as many product ideas as I can within 2500$ - not wild ideas, atleast one of them has to look like it might be successful. If I can find such a product(s), the next 2500 will go into getting more stock of those product(s) and getting back the 2500 initially spent. Basically, the idea is try out a bunch of ideas but fail fast if they dont succeed. Stick with the ones that succeed and try to optimize that.

[5000 is a hugeeee amount. Had to do a lot to convince the wife! Here is how I look at it. If I lose the entire 5000, all that will happen is that I and my wife will become extremely sad and heartbroken. But nothing catastrophic will happen as we are pretty okay financially. But if the 5000 succeeds, then ... ]

Update: I think I might have a product idea that might work. There is nothing like it in the market and there is some unique value I can bring in. Also, I can drastically improve the postings for this product idea. My gut feeling is that finally I have hit upon a product good enough to start getting my feet wet with importing.

Next week target: Identity suppliers for the product idea and negotiate samples. Ideally, I should have finalized this discussion next week and should be waiting for the samples the week after.
 
Last edited:

MantisX

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
Been a slow week so far. Most of the time was spent on the following:

FDA - was confused whether I needed FDA clearance for food contact substances like utensils. Called up the FDA, DHL and other sources and I am nearly sure that we dont need FDA clearance. But, will have to wait for the items to come in before I know for sure. Fingers crossed.

Patents - Some of the items I wanted had patents in the US. Good thing I found this out before I ordered! Now, whenever I get a gut feel that there might be a patent, I immediately do a patent search. scholar.google.com is great for this stuff.

This week's update - Very close to placing an order. Gonna use courier to ship the samples. I am going for 3 items in the first round (10 samples each). I want to evaluate the quality myself and also by some others before I sell my products. One goal that I set for myself - never sell anything that I would not use myself. Lets see how it goes. Next week might be exciting.
 
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Birdie

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
69%
Dec 24, 2014
52
36
34
Miami, FL
Hi ajaydarez,

Is this product completely new and unlisted anywhere? If so, you will need to take pictures of the product. Either have someone do it for you, or take the pictures yourself. There are tons of YouTube videos explaining how to do great product photography.

Remember that it might not come in appealing packaging. You can use simple bags like Amazon does. Check their videos for Amazon sellers on how they pack products for storing on their warehouse. It is very important when you have inventory to protect it against spoilage. Protect it at least with a plastic bag, and make sure it is accounted for using a spreadsheet and labels. Nothing is worse than losing items because of poor organization.

Will you fulfill the orders yourself? Remember to include a thank you note and a coupon/advertisement to have repeat business.

We are basically on the same boat where we are learning how to grow our business. We've spent 4 months organizing inventory, taking product photos and setting up our website. In the end, I highly recommend not making that initial investment on a store unless you have sales on other channels (eBay, Amazon).

Good luck and keep us updated.
 

MantisX

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
Thanks. I am actually trying out three products. Variations of them do exist in the market but I plan on providing some unique value to the customer. That will be my distinguishing factor. I am planning to do fulfillment by Amazon to start with. If things go well, I will plan other things. Keeping it simple and thinking only the next step right now. I would be excited to see your updates too. Have you guys started selling stuff ? Amazon or eBay? Would like to have some friendly competition for some motivation :)
 

krtw

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Read Fastlane!
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80%
Jan 19, 2015
5
4
Madrid
Thank you for creating this thread, some really interesting and highly motivating stuff. I am also doing some planning to start my own importing business. I am only at research stage at the moment, learning all I can before I order my first samples. Thanks again :)
 
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MantisX

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Dec 22, 2014
27
26
OK. It's been a year so far and I have not updated this thread. I saw the update from Alexander on another thread and thought I owe an update too. So here is what happened so far in a very brief fashion

I spent about 5000 dollars on various products and all of them flunked. Total loss. The wife lost interest in this idea as a whole.

I convinced her to bankroll me with another 1000. Luckily I hit the right product. Converted it into 2000$ re invested and kept growing. Now I have 4 products of which two are successful. I hit about 15000-20000 in sales a month.

The niche is competitive. I hope to be aggressive this year, make as much money as possible and once the competition becomes too intense next year, I will sell at cost, recuperate all my money and move on to the next product.

Fingers crossed !

Sent from my MT2L03 using Tapatalk
 

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