New business tips
Discussion
Hi there,
Been lurking around here for months, it has provided me with a good read in work!
Thought i would get some peoples advice here,
Came up with a new business idea, selling products that i can obtain from china at wholesale prices.
The problem i have is that there are 350+ products on the china wholesale site which i plan to make a similair site based in UK selling the products they offer, with a markup obviously.
What advice do people have in terms of ordering stock, last thing i want to do is order too much and be left with products that don't sell as i couldn't make a great guess at how popular the products/website/business will be.
The items are priced in the £20-50 range so there's not too much of a outlay, which suits me currently being a student.
If anyone has been in a similar position and can offer some advice i would be grateful, thanks.
Been lurking around here for months, it has provided me with a good read in work!
Thought i would get some peoples advice here,
Came up with a new business idea, selling products that i can obtain from china at wholesale prices.
The problem i have is that there are 350+ products on the china wholesale site which i plan to make a similair site based in UK selling the products they offer, with a markup obviously.
What advice do people have in terms of ordering stock, last thing i want to do is order too much and be left with products that don't sell as i couldn't make a great guess at how popular the products/website/business will be.
The items are priced in the £20-50 range so there's not too much of a outlay, which suits me currently being a student.
If anyone has been in a similar position and can offer some advice i would be grateful, thanks.
Hi Maxell. Some questions for you to ponder if I may.
If you put a site on the internet that is only the beginning of a very long journey to good sales.
Business is a gamble. Its what separates the men from the boys
. Usually the amount of stock you can carry in the early days is limited to the amount of cash you have.
maxell said:
Came up with a new business idea, selling products that i can obtain from china at wholesale prices.
Hardly new... what makes you different? maxell said:
The problem i have is that there are 350+ products on the china wholesale site which i plan to make a similair site based in UK selling the products they offer, with a markup obviously.
Again, what makes you different? What would stop me going to the same supplier and competing at 10% less margin than you? How are you going to get hits to your site? Are you any good with SEO? How competitive are the keywords for your product? If you put a site on the internet that is only the beginning of a very long journey to good sales.
maxell said:
What advice do people have in terms of ordering stock, last thing i want to do is order too much and be left with products that don't sell as i couldn't make a great guess at how popular the products/website/business will be.
How could I guess how much of an unknown product you can sell to an unknown market? That is a question for your balls.Business is a gamble. Its what separates the men from the boys
. Usually the amount of stock you can carry in the early days is limited to the amount of cash you have. maxell said:
The items are priced in the £20-50 range so there's not too much of a outlay, which suits me currently being a student.
Are you ready to spend your life doing it? I wouldn’t want any sort of commitment such as studying if I were starting out again.ukvoyager.info said:
Hardly new... what makes you different?
Well having looked around, i have not found a website in the UK that offers all the products in the one place or in a good website layout that i was looking for. I came up with this idea as it was a website i was looking for personally and couldn't find anything that done the job well, its nothing revolutionary, just a online shop i reckon i would like to see myself, therefore giving it at least some demand from a customer point of view.ukvoyager.info said:
Again, what makes you different? What would stop me going to the same supplier and competing at 10% less margin than you? How are you going to get hits to your site? Are you any good with SEO? How competitive are the keywords for your product?
If you put a site on the internet that is only the beginning of a very long journey to good sales.
There is nothing to stop you going the same supplier, i guess this is a side effect of the fact that its going to be a relatively easy business to setup and run. I just need to make sure i have the upper hand on being knowledgeable about the products and having a well designed website.If you put a site on the internet that is only the beginning of a very long journey to good sales.
Since it is selling products to companies in the auto industry, i can find appropriate email address's to send price lists/info to relatively easily.
ukvoyager.info said:
How could I guess how much of an unknown product you can sell to an unknown market? That is a question for your balls.
Business is a gamble. Its what separates the men from the boys. Usually the amount of stock you can carry in the early days is limited to the amount of cash you have.
I am not asking you to guess this as it would be impossible, what i am asking is does anyone have any tips on how to get the right balance of not being under or overstocked when the demand is not known. Obviously for me to take orders i have to have the items in stock, it was more for opinions rather than a direct answer.Business is a gamble. Its what separates the men from the boys. Usually the amount of stock you can carry in the early days is limited to the amount of cash you have.
ukvoyager.info said:
Are you ready to spend your life doing it? I wouldn’t want any sort of commitment such as studying if I were starting out again.
I'm not looking for a business to commit my life to, yet. The idea is to setup a website (which i have done in the past for my dad who has built a tuning company that is doing well) in which takes orders and i just have to post the items and make sure i keep sufficient stock levels.I am not looking to have a full time business yet as i am at uni, but if i was to put in a month or two's work during the summer just now to get it all setup, so i have a small website that may make me 300-500 a month without too much work, meaning i wont have to have a part time job while studying. The initial outlay is going to be £500 max so its not going to be the be all and end all if it doesn't work out as planned.
The exact nature of your post suggests that you have in place onward distribution channels, storage, stock control, order processing, fulfilment, marketing strategies and advertising all sorted!
That being the case, you will no doubt also have undertaken an assessment of the market and have a good idea of the demand for the products and over what period of time orders will come in.
Therefore, you will have factored the stock cost into your cashflow funding and thus, know what you need to order in from China.
Bit of wild guess but given you are asking the question, I’m thinking that you haven’t really done much of the above. If not, start there.
Remember the basic business maxim…..make/buy what you sell. Don’t sell what you make/buy.
That being the case, you will no doubt also have undertaken an assessment of the market and have a good idea of the demand for the products and over what period of time orders will come in.
Therefore, you will have factored the stock cost into your cashflow funding and thus, know what you need to order in from China.
Bit of wild guess but given you are asking the question, I’m thinking that you haven’t really done much of the above. If not, start there.
Remember the basic business maxim…..make/buy what you sell. Don’t sell what you make/buy.
We import literally millions of items from China each year so have seen most of the Chinese "scams" etc.
Have you investigated shipping?
Do you kno wthat most suppliers will expect payment upfront for a FULL 40ft container?
How are you going to pay them?
What if they take your money and run?
Are the products safety approved to the relevant UK/EU standard(if any is required)?
Can you speak chinese for when it all goes horribly wrong?
Do they own the factory or are they a distributor (dont believe what they tell you)?
Could it be easier to buy directly from a factory?
I've just noticed you want to set it up for £500 - forget it. Landing a container in the UK costs around £1650 before you've bought the stock to fill it!
Have you investigated shipping?
Do you kno wthat most suppliers will expect payment upfront for a FULL 40ft container?
How are you going to pay them?
What if they take your money and run?
Are the products safety approved to the relevant UK/EU standard(if any is required)?
Can you speak chinese for when it all goes horribly wrong?
Do they own the factory or are they a distributor (dont believe what they tell you)?
Could it be easier to buy directly from a factory?
I've just noticed you want to set it up for £500 - forget it. Landing a container in the UK costs around £1650 before you've bought the stock to fill it!
Edited by Goochie on Friday 25th July 12:45
Hi Maxell. A follow up if I may...
If you are serious about being an entrepreneur then why not focus all your efforts in to it? Why waste time studying!
maxell said:
Well having looked around, i have not found a website in the UK that offers all the products in the one place or in a good website layout that i was looking for. I came up with this idea as it was a website i was looking for personally and couldn't find anything that done the job well, its nothing revolutionary, just a online shop i reckon i would like to see myself, therefore giving it at least some demand from a customer point of view.
Are you sure there is a market there? StevieBee has some good advice. ukvoyager.info said:
If you put a site on the internet that is only the beginning of a very long journey to good sales.
maxell said:
I just need to make sure i have the upper hand on being knowledgeable about the products and having a well designed website.
Good luck. Building a shop window for an existing business already trading word of mouth/advertising and gaining extra revenue is a bit different from launching www.bestshopintheworld.com, getting sales in to the tens of thousands a year and achieving £500p/m net profit. maxell said:
Since it is selling products to companies in the auto industry, i can find appropriate email address's to send price lists/info to relatively easily.
Again, I dont know the market but my guess is if you are selling low volume B2B, you need a direct sales force. I don’t think a "well designed web site" or some leaflets through the post will cut it tbh.maxell said:
does anyone have any tips on how to get the right balance of not being under or overstocked when the demand is not known.
Buy as many as you can sell. It is simple supply and demand. maxell said:
The initial outlay is going to be £500 max.
Good luck with that. If you are serious about being an entrepreneur then why not focus all your efforts in to it? Why waste time studying!
OK, with my serious hat on...
We went from 0 to 500k in 12 months with one site, working 14-17 hours per day, 7 days a week on SEO and site development. You need to be commited, you won't be ready this summer (the site might be, but that's the easy bit), you'll possibly get your best conversions through the emails, but you can't send the same ones every week, especially B2B, as all you'll end up doing is annoying your customers, so then what? Adwords? Big money if you're serious, and how do you know your site will work on adwords without the natural listing for backup or losing your £500 budget (and some) just on adwords in one day? Bear in mind the summer is a quiet time, especially now the schools are shut.
As for knowing which products you should be stocking and how many...we bought from UK suppliers, 1 maybe 2 of each at a time to see which sold and which were duds THEN went direct to suppliers/manufacturers to buy our best sellers in bulk - That is one solution, we developed our own stuff to tell us what was selling and when and to reflect this to our visitors too. You can buy the software to do this, but done properly might be more then £500.
So you get some orders, great. Have you the materials for despatch note printing? Packaging materials? Where is your stock stored? Who's packing if you're working on the site to get it to sell more? Credit card checking? How much postage will you charge, presuming automotive parts will be heavy, but different weights? Have you rung Royal Mail, TNT, Interlink for some quotes? If it's heavy you or your customers will have a shock! What about returns? Who's paying for that? the customer or you?
What's your customer service systems like? Do they get automatic postage tracking emails? Are you even going keep good records of postage and tracking numbers? (trust me, stuff will go missing), complaints, will it be a case of email us, or a full on case system?
I take your point about a pretty, easy to navigate site, but I've seen sites that are god awful and look crap make money and sites that were built like a dream and not make a bean! Basic factors are more important to people, like security, delivery times and costs, telephone numbers and addresses, etc etc
It's a LOT of work for one person, and like I said the web design part is probably the easiest bit, every man and his dog can do it to some degree these days, many try and not so many succeed at turning a website into a full on business.
We went from 0 to 500k in 12 months with one site, working 14-17 hours per day, 7 days a week on SEO and site development. You need to be commited, you won't be ready this summer (the site might be, but that's the easy bit), you'll possibly get your best conversions through the emails, but you can't send the same ones every week, especially B2B, as all you'll end up doing is annoying your customers, so then what? Adwords? Big money if you're serious, and how do you know your site will work on adwords without the natural listing for backup or losing your £500 budget (and some) just on adwords in one day? Bear in mind the summer is a quiet time, especially now the schools are shut.
As for knowing which products you should be stocking and how many...we bought from UK suppliers, 1 maybe 2 of each at a time to see which sold and which were duds THEN went direct to suppliers/manufacturers to buy our best sellers in bulk - That is one solution, we developed our own stuff to tell us what was selling and when and to reflect this to our visitors too. You can buy the software to do this, but done properly might be more then £500.
So you get some orders, great. Have you the materials for despatch note printing? Packaging materials? Where is your stock stored? Who's packing if you're working on the site to get it to sell more? Credit card checking? How much postage will you charge, presuming automotive parts will be heavy, but different weights? Have you rung Royal Mail, TNT, Interlink for some quotes? If it's heavy you or your customers will have a shock! What about returns? Who's paying for that? the customer or you?
What's your customer service systems like? Do they get automatic postage tracking emails? Are you even going keep good records of postage and tracking numbers? (trust me, stuff will go missing), complaints, will it be a case of email us, or a full on case system?
I take your point about a pretty, easy to navigate site, but I've seen sites that are god awful and look crap make money and sites that were built like a dream and not make a bean! Basic factors are more important to people, like security, delivery times and costs, telephone numbers and addresses, etc etc
It's a LOT of work for one person, and like I said the web design part is probably the easiest bit, every man and his dog can do it to some degree these days, many try and not so many succeed at turning a website into a full on business.
Given where you are at the moment, I'd say that you need to consider the slow burn option.
That's the one where you do stuff now, that does not make you money, but is a precursor to doing so. The alternative is the scammers entry, where you scam yourself up some cash (including venture capital), and use that to then operate honestly.
Just get some odd bits, and start trading on ebay. Figure out what's hot and what's not. Don't make a big deal out of it, or it might hurt. Set up a cheap small website, that sells you and your products.
That's the one where you do stuff now, that does not make you money, but is a precursor to doing so. The alternative is the scammers entry, where you scam yourself up some cash (including venture capital), and use that to then operate honestly.
Just get some odd bits, and start trading on ebay. Figure out what's hot and what's not. Don't make a big deal out of it, or it might hurt. Set up a cheap small website, that sells you and your products.
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