Starting Shopify Scarf Store

[Henry84]

Hello, all!

My name is Henry and my spouse and I work day jobs but are starting a Shopify Store selling scarves sourced from China. In the past I've run an eBay motors store selling car parts and a failed online medical equipment store.

I was hoping to provide regular updates about my progress, success,failures, etc in this thread.

So far we have:

1) Registered for shopify
2) Registered a domain (porcelainrabbit.com)
3) Picked a store name (Porcelain Rabbit)
4) Ordered a logo off fiverr
5) In the process of getting someone from fiverr to tell a story about our business for branding purposes.

When I have time I'm going through shopify's manuals pertaining to marketing and SEO

I'm open to any suggestions, comments, feedback, etc

Thanks guys! And I look for forward to sharing our journey here!

 

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[Henry84]

Today we finalized our logo and someone from fiverr is working on our storyline for our company. In about 2 weeks time we will be ordering our samples through alibaba. Meanwhile still reading shopify articles pertaining to seo.

 

[Henry84]

For our SEO we might be using fiverr yet again. There are gigs that are specifically for SEO for Shopify stores.

Meanwhile we are quite happy with our logo as it looks great, professional, and classy

 

[Walter Hay]

Hi Henry,

I like your logo and I hope you do well. I'm poking my nose in because I don't like to see people remaining unaware that there could be better places to buy than on Alibaba.

If you look through my AMA thread you will see why I suggest that you consider sites other than Alibaba. A major reason is that a very high % of suppliers advertising there as manufacturers are in fact traders. The traders buy from the manufacturers, add a big margin and sell to you.

You can bank that extra margin if you buy direct, and you can do it with small orders.

By the way, don't think that Gold Suppliers are any more reliable than ordinary verified suppliers. The only difference is that they are verified suppliers who have paid as little as $299, although the price is currently $699 for that badge that is designed to convince people that they are more reliable and trustworthy.

In case you didn't know, all that the verified supplier badge proves is that the business exists.

Walter

 

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[WestCoast]

That logo is very good, really really like it.

Looks timeless almost, very well done.

--
I imagine buying from a middle man as described above could be good to get started.
Buying stuff direct from China is nice, but you want to have more experience before going deep into that.

If the store works, if the concept works for you to sell these.... then remember, the margins can only get BETTER as you buy direct.
But if you can make it work now, it seems lower risk than buying pallets of scarves direct from a factory you've never been too...


Cool niche that I know nothing about, but, man, if the scarves are half as cool as the logo, you're going to make $$$$

 

[exclusives88]

What demographics are you targeting to?

while the logo is nice, it seems very Easter like and feminine. Just my opinion.

I like ratchet stuff so that logo won't fit in what I'm looking for lol

 

[Henry84]

Thanks for the feedback. We were thinking about getting samples of 5 scarves to test. Maybe getting 10-20 types of scarves. Direct from China. That's what we were planning

That logo is very good, really really like it.

Looks timeless almost, very well done.

--
I imagine buying from a middle man as described above could be good to get started.
Buying stuff direct from China is nice, but you want to have more experience before going deep into that.

If the store works, if the concept works for you to sell these.... then remember, the margins can only get BETTER as you buy direct.
But if you can make it work now, it seems lower risk than buying pallets of scarves direct from a factory you've never been too...


Cool niche that I know nothing about, but, man, if the scarves are half as cool as the logo, you're going to make $$$$

 

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[ZeroTo100]

What demographics are you targeting to?

while the logo is nice, it seems very Easter like and feminine. Just my opinion.

I like ratchet stuff so that logo won't fit in what I'm looking for lol

Very good point! OP should recognize its target demographic and build a brand around that. Also, I highly recommend NOT relying on fiverr (espicially not for SEO) and finding someone elsewhere. I've used 99 designs and maintained contacts with all those whom I've worked with.

 

[Motley crue]

Very interesting niche and I wish you the best of luck. I'm no ecommerce guru and I won't pretend to be but you might try looking into aliexpress in the very beginning of your ecommerce endeavor. What's attractive about aliexpress over alibaba is that they are (in my opinion) more customer friendly. They give you the price up front, they give you the cost of shipping up front (depending on the item it's often free) and there is usually no MOQ. As others have mentioned once you get going you can save a lot by going directly through the manufacturers once you get going, so I'm just suggesting aliexpress as a starting point. More importantly though if you haven't read ecom man's thread https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...porting-wholesaling-for-resale-on-ebay.51843/ I strongly suggest giving it a look. Almost everything you could ever want to know about ecommerce in there. Best of luck

 

[Henry84]

Demographics women 20+ who buy scarves and accessories.

What would you suggest for Seo ? Thanks for 99 designs suggestion

Very good point! OP should recognize its target demographic and build a brand around that. Also, I highly recommend NOT relying on fiverr (espicially not for SEO) and finding someone elsewhere. I've used 99 designs and maintained contacts with all those whom I've worked with.

 

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[texus2]

Very nice thread i like the logo and i'm intersted in you way

@Walter Hay If you don't like alibaba, what kind of website do you reccomend to buy for selling on ebay/amazon etc.?
Sorry for that question, i'm already reading your post of importing from china but there are so many pages left that i need to read. I don't know, if you answered my question in your thread anyway.

 

[ZeroTo100]

Demographics women 20+ who buy scarves and accessories.

What would you suggest for Seo ? Thanks for 99 designs suggestion

I've used 99 designs for logo work. For SEO, I do some on my own but I have my own freelancers. I have also connected with many other freelancers on ODesk and would recommend them. I have to be honest, I would be focusing on your product before anything. Do you think people will buy it? Have you tested it? Scarves are somewhat seasonal so I would suggest finding something else to bring to the table.

Why would anyone choose buying a scarf from you vs going into a department store to buy? Work on your product and planning before you worry about all this other stuff.

Remember this, slow and steady wins the race!

- Stevie

 

[SweetTooth]

Have you done any proof of concept tests? If not you should. Before you start dumping money on Fiverr to do your SEO and other tasks. You should be asking for preorders with a website funnel for people to opt in with their email.

 

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[Henry84]

I've used 99 designs for logo work. For SEO, I do some on my own but I have my own freelancers. I have also connected with many other freelancers on ODesk and would recommend them. I have to be honest, I would be focusing on your product before anything. Do you think people will buy it? Have you tested it? Scarves are somewhat seasonal so I would suggest finding something else to bring to the table.

Why would anyone choose buying a scarf from you vs going into a department store to buy? Work on your product and planning before you worry about all this other stuff.

Remember this, slow and steady wins the race!

- Stevie

We were planning on testing about 20 scarves (getting 5 of each) to see if people like them. My wife will be hand-picking them. In terms of seasonality, from what I understand they are light scarves that can also be worn during warmer months and serve more of an accessory rather than functional (although it does keep the wearer warm to a degree). We were also thinking of watches and other goods to add to our line.

In terms of why someone would buy from us vs going to a department store that's a great point. It would have to be the brand we are building around it. The "about us" section will tell a story of the Porcelain Rabbit and product descriptions will tell a story of how the Rabbit "made" that particular product. I'll be posting details as soon as our fiverr copywriter is done with the story.

Would love to stay in touch re: the SEO in the future.

 

[Henry84]

I've used 99 designs for logo work. For SEO, I do some on my own but I have my own freelancers. I have also connected with many other freelancers on ODesk and would recommend them. I have to be honest, I would be focusing on your product before anything. Do you think people will buy it? Have you tested it? Scarves are somewhat seasonal so I would suggest finding something else to bring to the table.

Why would anyone choose buying a scarf from you vs going into a department store to buy? Work on your product and planning before you worry about all this other stuff.

Remember this, slow and steady wins the race!

- Stevie

We were planning on testing about 20 scarves (getting 5 of each) to see if people like them. My wife will be hand-picking them. In terms of seasonality, from what I understand they are light scarves that can also be worn during warmer months and serve more of an accessory rather than functional (although it does keep the wearer warm to a degree). We were also thinking of watches and other goods to add to our line.

In terms of why someone would buy from us vs going to a department store that's a great point. It would have to be the brand we are building around it. The "about us" section will tell a story of the Porcelain Rabbit and product descriptions will tell a story of how the Rabbit "made" that particular product. I'll be posting details as soon as our fiverr copywriter is done with the story.

Would love to stay in touch re: the SEO in the future.

 

[Henry84]

Have you done any proof of concept tests? If not you should. Before you start dumping money on Fiverr to do your SEO and other tasks. You should be asking for preorders with a website funnel for people to opt in with their email.

Excellent suggestion! How would I go about setting that up? Would I use GoSpaces?

 

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[SweetTooth]

Excellent suggestion! How would I go about setting that up? Would I use GoSpaces?

Clickfunnels or LandingPages are both popular for creating funnel pages. They have everything in one spot (their software. For domains, website creation, how-to's). Click Funnels offers a 30 day trial period also.

Make a funnel page that basically asks for peoples emails to preorder. Once you've proven that there's a want for your scarves, then you can launch a shopify store. Send an email to all the people that opted in and make those sales.

 

[Walter Hay]

That logo is very good, really really like it.

Looks timeless almost, very well done.

I imagine buying from a middle man as described above could be good to get started.
Buying stuff direct from China is nice, but you want to have more experience before going deep into that.

If the store works, if the concept works for you to sell these.... then remember, the margins can only get BETTER as you buy direct.
But if you can make it work now, it seems lower risk than buying pallets of scarves direct from a factory you've never been too...

Cool niche that I know nothing about, but, man, if the scarves are half as cool as the logo, you're going to make $$$$

Experience can be a harsh teacher, particularly when you are likely to be dealing with seasoned exporters who may or may not be trustworthy. I have now taught thousands how to safely source products in China and other countries, and the great majority of them have been newbies.

The need to buy pallet loads in order to buy direct is a myth. I operated my own importing business from 1987 until I retired a few years ago, and I franchised that business in four countries. I, and later my franchisees, often placed small orders. It can be done while still buying at extremely profitable prices.

Although I personally visited China many times, only a handful of my franchisees ever visited China themselves. Under my unusual franchise system, they all ordered direct - not through me, but they found that by following my system and buying from manufacturers they had chosen (not chosen by me) it did not require them to ever meet the suppliers.

Walter

 

[Walter Hay]

Very interesting niche and I wish you the best of luck. I'm no ecommerce guru and I won't pretend to be but you might try looking into aliexpress in the very beginning of your ecommerce endeavor. What's attractive about aliexpress over alibaba is that they are (in my opinion) more customer friendly. They give you the price up front, they give you the cost of shipping up front (depending on the item it's often free) and there is usually no MOQ. As others have mentioned once you get going you can save a lot by going directly through the manufacturers once you get going, so I'm just suggesting aliexpress as a starting point. More importantly though if you haven't read ecom man's thread https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...porting-wholesaling-for-resale-on-ebay.51843/ I strongly suggest giving it a look. Almost everything you could ever want to know about ecommerce in there. Best of luck

When you start looking into Aliexpress, I suggest you start by looking here: Ripoff Report | aliexpressttp: Search of Complaints & Reviews Also check out http://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/www.aliexpress.com where there are 1400 reviews and 948 of them give a score of 1 out of 5. If that's not enough, look at https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.aliexpress.com where out of 1795 reviews there were 1189 that only gave 1 star.

If you buy through Aliexpress, you will almost certainly not be buying from a manufacturer. That means not only very much lower margins, but more importantly, when you want to scale up you will have no relationship established with the manufacturer. In fact you will have very little hope of finding the manufacturer who made the scarves you started your business selling.

Far better to start off building that all-important relationship with the manufacturer right from the beginning.

Walter

 

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[Walter Hay]

Very nice thread i like the logo and i'm intersted in you way

@Walter Hay If you don't like alibaba, what kind of website do you reccomend to buy for selling on ebay/amazon etc.?
Sorry for that question, i'm already reading your post of importing from china but there are so many pages left that i need to read. I don't know, if you answered my question in your thread anyway.

I have answered that question more than once in my AMA, but here is a post that you might find helpful to understand why I don't publish online details of the safe sites that I recommend in my book. Sharing my lifetime experience in export/import. Product sourcing specialist.

Walter

 

[WestCoast]

Experience can be a harsh teacher, particularly when you are likely to be dealing with seasoned exporters who may or may not be trustworthy.

The need to buy pallet loads in order to buy direct is a myth. I operated my own importing business from 1987 until I retired a few years ago, and I franchised that business in four countries. I, and later my franchisees, often placed small orders. It can be done while still buying at extremely profitable prices.

I'm sure you're more experienced than my staff at import, but, just so the OP is aware, I currently impart full and partial containers of goods from asia regularly.

Indonesia is big for us, got a can en route from Malaysia this week, China (shanghai mostly, some textiles further south).
We sell products from Qingdao and distribute/warehouse apparel made in Thailand. Currently negotiating to purchase the tooling of a US company that produces non-textile assemblies in Hangzhou.

So, my advice comes from years of experience in the industry.


--
It's a huge country, with many opportunities for success. My advice still stands: take small risks first, prove the concept, and expand deeper into the supply chain only as you get more comfortable.

 

[Walter Hay]

I'm sure you're more experienced than my staff at import, but, just so the OP is aware, I currently impart full and partial containers of goods from asia regularly.

Indonesia is big for us, got a can en route from Malaysia this week, China (shanghai mostly, some textiles further south).
We sell products from Qingdao and distribute/warehouse apparel made in Thailand. Currently negotiating to purchase the tooling of a US company that produces non-textile assemblies in Hangzhou.

So, my advice comes from years of experience in the industry.

It's a huge country, with many opportunities for success. My advice still stands: take small risks first, prove the concept, and expand deeper into the supply chain only as you get more comfortable.

I agree completely that it is not advisable to start off with big orders. It is better initially to buy as small as possible to minimize risk. It is not only to prove the concept, but also to test the supplier and to build experience.

I don't doubt your experience, but I would like all readers to know that I don't only have experience in importing. As I mentioned in my post that you quoted, from 1987 until I retired a few years ago I ran a highly successful importing business. It did so well that to scale up I franchised the business and I had a franchise network operating in four countries.

All but one of my franchisees made at least 6 figure incomes, so it is obvious that my methods for safe sourcing, importing, and marketing (mostly B2B) work in the real world. I can't resist mentioning that one of them wrote to me: "It's nice to make that occasional $50,000 for half a day's work." (Proof of any such quotes I ever publish is available for inspection by FTC or other Fair Trading authorities.)

That franchisee didn't have to outlay lots of cash to make his $50,000 profit. His landed cost was about $7,500, and by using the methods I taught him, he had already obtained a monthly account from his supplier, so he didn't even have to pay a deposit on the order. This only works when you are placing multiple orders every month.

I don't teach online marketing because most of my experience has been B2B.

Walter

 

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[NiteRider]

Curious why you've chosen to focus on SEO from the get go versus paid (PPC, Facebook etc.). Not judging, just curious.

That SEO gig from Fiverr actually might not be too bad of an idea. Your probably going to get pretty shitty backlinks from a bunch of spammy websites but I read on a pretty solid SEO website that since you can technically change your domain name for your Shopify store whenever you want, you could "technically" have a large number of low quality backlinks and rank pretty good until Google penalizes you. Once penalized you would change your domain name to something else and repeat.

That's if your willing to give up your domain name of course and constantly change it up. Not really worth it in my opinion. If your serious about SEO for your store I would highly advise against using Fiverr as another member has already suggested. If your simply talking about for on-page optimization then it probably wouldn't be to bad but as far as backlinking, definitely not.

 

[ZeroTo100]

Curious why you've chosen to focus on SEO from the get go versus paid (PPC, Facebook etc.). Not judging, just curious.

That SEO gig from Fiverr actually might not be too bad of an idea. Your probably going to get pretty shitty backlinks from a bunch of spammy websites but I read on a pretty solid SEO website that since you can technically change your domain name for your Shopify store whenever you want, you could "technically" have a large number of low quality backlinks and rank pretty good until Google penalizes you. Once penalized you would change your domain name to something else and repeat.

That's if your willing to give up your domain name of course and constantly change it up. Not really worth it in my opinion. If your serious about SEO for your store I would highly advise against using Fiverr as another member has already suggested. If your simply talking about for on-page optimization then it probably wouldn't be to bad but as far as backlinking, definitely not.

That doesn't help build your brand. I suggest you hire someone for outreach and build your backlink profile the right way. Do it once the right way! What happens when your repeat customers want to come back and buy scarves and they can't find you? Or they signup to your newsletter than don't recognize you. Bad idea- build a solid foundation and never worry.

Good luck with the scarves

Hey - I just hiked Machu Picchu mountain. They sell scarves out there made of alpaca wool because it's very warm and soft. Something to think about. Very expensive fabric too.

- Stevie

 

[NiteRider]

That doesn't help build your brand. I suggest you hire someone for outreach and build your backlink profile the right way. Do it once the right way! What happens when your repeat customers want to come back and buy scarves and they can't find you? Or they signup to your newsletter than don't recognize you. Bad idea- build a solid foundation and never worry.

Good luck with the scarves

Hey - I just hiked Machu Picchu mountain. They sell scarves out there made of alpaca wool because it's very warm and soft. Something to think about. Very expensive fabric too.

- Stevie

I agree 100%. I would never use Fiverr for SEO personally, as I said before. I was only mentioning a method I heard others using with Fiverr and Shopify. But I agree, if your trying to establish a brand or serious about your business doing it right the first time is the way to go.

 

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[Henry84]

Ok a recent update.

We've been searching on amazon and ebay for types of scarves that sell well. Oversized scarves with tartan patterns seems to sell quite well. We also need to be cautious as they are made for winter and spring is around the corner. So we will need to be cognizant of that fact.

Meanwhile, our fiverr story writer wasn't that great. We will rewrite the story and post it here later on.

 

[Motley crue]

Since scarves are seasonal and you might not have many sales late spring through summer, have you considered maybe doing a seasonal website? Maybe sell scarves during the fall and winter, and then sell something like bathing suits or sandals in the spring and summer. Just an idea to keep traffic and sales year round.

 

[Henry84]

Since scarves are seasonal and you might not have many sales late spring through summer, have you considered maybe doing a seasonal website? Maybe sell scarves during the fall and winter, and then sell something like bathing suits or sandals in the spring and summer. Just an idea to keep traffic and sales year round.

That's a great idea. Thanks for the suggestion

 

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[Henry84]

We have decided based on Motley Crue's suggestion to go for a seasonal store. So given that we are entering spring soon, our line will likely reflect swim wear, sandels, etc with some light scarves.

 

[Henry84]

An important update:

Based on Google Shopping Insights, scarves don't sell as well as jewelry (necklaces, engagement rings, etc). We are not against having a seasonal section in our store selling scarves, but our primary focus will be jewelery. My partner is now researching hot sellers online and finding corresponding suppliers from China