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- Jun 29, 2011
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This thread is to document my journey of starting an ecommerce business with my own brand and product line. Big shout out to Vigilante and Biophase for giving me the knowledge necessary to get my feet wet, and to Snowbank, JackEdwards and Amail for inspiring me to think outside the box. I will be posting an INSIDERS thread next week revealing my product and asking for input.
In June, I knew absolutely NOTHING about importing and I have never made an ecommerce store in my life. I have never read an ecommerce book or an importing book. In fact, I have an importing book on my Kindle, but haven’t even looked at the cover. I don’t want it to slow me down. I started researching ideas sometime in mid July. Since then, I have even gone on a vacation to Disneyland.
I spent 6-8 hours over a two-day period researching products to import. I came up with 5-6 ideas and ran them past Vigilante. I got good feedback on two, and started pursuing one. The other one is in my back pocket, but may give it to someone else if this one goes the way I think it will. Since then, I have found two more, but those I will implement into this brand eventually.
I received my sample order from China at the beginning of the month. I had 13 designs, 10 colors and custom packaging made. I did some testing on the product to determine a few things that are important to people buying them. I gave a few of them away to people in my target market to get their feedback, and the response was great.
I had a logo made from a designer on Elance for $25. She does great work, and I can give you her contact info if you're interested. Turn around time is 3-5 days due to the time difference. I redesigned my packaging to match the logo and website colors using a trial of Adobe Illustrator. That was hard and I will outsource everything graphic from now on.
After determining which designs and colors to order, I placed an order of 2000 units last Friday. To begin, I will stock 12 designs in up to 6 colors for each design totaling 58 unique combinations. The shipment will arrive at my house next week.
Between receiving my samples and my order, I've been testing some ecommerce platforms. BigCommerce, Volusion, Shopify, CoreCommerce, and a few others. I ended up going with Volusion because of their integrated affiliate program, but really liked BigCommerce the most. After finding an acceptable 3rd party affiliate software program (iDevAffiliate), I finally just moved everything over to BigCommerce. Eventually, I will register with ShareASale and let them handle everything (thank you Lighthouse).
Registered for an account with UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, eBay, Buy.com, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+ and YouTube. I’ve yet to use any of them except UPS.
I have the website 90% complete. I'm only missing an 800 number, PO Box, USPS shipping integration, merchant account and the affiliate program back-end. I'm signing up for the merchant account today, and the rest should only take a few hours.
I have a product in mind that acts as an accessory to my product that I plan on selling as well. I'm contemplating importing that as well, but I may hold off until I see that there is demand for it as well. Minimum order would cost less than $100, but no need to waste money. I'll probably offer it for sale on the website, and then send an email notifying the customer that it is out of stock. If I get a lot of requests, I will place the order and expedite the shipping.
Lessons learned:
- UPS only ships express from China, and not UPS Standard or UPS Expedited (per UPS live chat). My sample order cost $50 more than I thought it would. Will research alternatives.
- Importing for the first time takes 2-3 longer than you expect. I planned on having the website up and running around the 6th, and it's going to be more like the 22nd.
- Hiring web guys is tougher than it seems. I hired three guys; first two never responded after being hired, and last one quoted me 18-25 hours for something I did myself in 2 hours. They aren't lawyers; they're not allowed to make up hours if they want to work for me.
- Every question you have takes 24 hours to answer due to time difference. I've stayed up very late some days to get some work done that had to be done. China starts working around 7pm and stops around 4-6 am. Smoother communication that way.
In June, I knew absolutely NOTHING about importing and I have never made an ecommerce store in my life. I have never read an ecommerce book or an importing book. In fact, I have an importing book on my Kindle, but haven’t even looked at the cover. I don’t want it to slow me down. I started researching ideas sometime in mid July. Since then, I have even gone on a vacation to Disneyland.
I spent 6-8 hours over a two-day period researching products to import. I came up with 5-6 ideas and ran them past Vigilante. I got good feedback on two, and started pursuing one. The other one is in my back pocket, but may give it to someone else if this one goes the way I think it will. Since then, I have found two more, but those I will implement into this brand eventually.
I received my sample order from China at the beginning of the month. I had 13 designs, 10 colors and custom packaging made. I did some testing on the product to determine a few things that are important to people buying them. I gave a few of them away to people in my target market to get their feedback, and the response was great.
I had a logo made from a designer on Elance for $25. She does great work, and I can give you her contact info if you're interested. Turn around time is 3-5 days due to the time difference. I redesigned my packaging to match the logo and website colors using a trial of Adobe Illustrator. That was hard and I will outsource everything graphic from now on.
After determining which designs and colors to order, I placed an order of 2000 units last Friday. To begin, I will stock 12 designs in up to 6 colors for each design totaling 58 unique combinations. The shipment will arrive at my house next week.
Between receiving my samples and my order, I've been testing some ecommerce platforms. BigCommerce, Volusion, Shopify, CoreCommerce, and a few others. I ended up going with Volusion because of their integrated affiliate program, but really liked BigCommerce the most. After finding an acceptable 3rd party affiliate software program (iDevAffiliate), I finally just moved everything over to BigCommerce. Eventually, I will register with ShareASale and let them handle everything (thank you Lighthouse).
Registered for an account with UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, eBay, Buy.com, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+ and YouTube. I’ve yet to use any of them except UPS.
I have the website 90% complete. I'm only missing an 800 number, PO Box, USPS shipping integration, merchant account and the affiliate program back-end. I'm signing up for the merchant account today, and the rest should only take a few hours.
I have a product in mind that acts as an accessory to my product that I plan on selling as well. I'm contemplating importing that as well, but I may hold off until I see that there is demand for it as well. Minimum order would cost less than $100, but no need to waste money. I'll probably offer it for sale on the website, and then send an email notifying the customer that it is out of stock. If I get a lot of requests, I will place the order and expedite the shipping.
Lessons learned:
- UPS only ships express from China, and not UPS Standard or UPS Expedited (per UPS live chat). My sample order cost $50 more than I thought it would. Will research alternatives.
- Importing for the first time takes 2-3 longer than you expect. I planned on having the website up and running around the 6th, and it's going to be more like the 22nd.
- Hiring web guys is tougher than it seems. I hired three guys; first two never responded after being hired, and last one quoted me 18-25 hours for something I did myself in 2 hours. They aren't lawyers; they're not allowed to make up hours if they want to work for me.
- Every question you have takes 24 hours to answer due to time difference. I've stayed up very late some days to get some work done that had to be done. China starts working around 7pm and stops around 4-6 am. Smoother communication that way.
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