
Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month - patwalls
https://www.starterstory.com/stories/fridays-off-fabric-shop
======
fabricexpert
I run an almost identical fabric shop online. 20k/month revenue is great but
remember this is not a SaaS with unlimited scale and low costs. It's actually
a very traditional business model, and margins here are only going to about
20-30%, potentially a lot less if you have to pay for your storage space.

You buy the fabric, typically you'll double the price when selling to
customers. Then you take off additional postage fees/packaging (note the flat
fees on postage), payment fees (3-4%), discounts, returns, shopify monthly
fees, accounting software etc.

You'll spend about 50% of your day cutting & packing orders, taking them to
the post office etc. (or you can employ someone to help) and the rest of the
time taking shots for instagram, sourcing new suppliers, working on
SEO/blogging and doing admin.

If you're good at marketing you can shift quite a lot of fabric, but it will
take you about a year to get your stock levels up to a sustainable amount to
pay yourself a wage. If you want a real shop front you will generate most of
your profit from running classes as the costs for a high street store are
significantly higher than shopify and you gain little in terms of footfall vs
online traffic.

This isn't a get rich quick model but over time it works well and is
replicable at scale.

~~~
justaskin134
> If you're good at marketing you can shift quite a lot of fabric

For me marketing is always the toughest part .

How do you do your marketing ?

What tips can you offer us that save the most time and money spent ?

~~~
rhizome
tl;dr: Learn retail.

It's kind of funny that people will get advice to get CS degrees, take a boot
camp, learn a language, etc. to execute on an idea, but for soft skills you
never see classes for business or marketing recommended. People could take
2-3+ business/marketing classes in the time it takes to learn React from zero
Javascript knowledge. Instead, people are told to sign up to Stripe Atlas or
Shopify and Instagram. "...and then a miracle occurs."[1]

Imagine a bizdev person saying, "for me, programming is always the toughest
part, any tips?" and the response being, "Oh, you should definitely sign up
for Stack Overflow. Simplifies things quite a bit." This may reflect a conceit
on the part of programmers that it's soooo much more complicated and
important, and the business side is full of chads and beckys who talk too loud
on speakerphone (yes these people are a cancer, but that's beside my point).

Biz/Mark has its own, shall we say, "Data Structures and Algorithms" to it,
there's just no one set of books that everyone (...) agrees on. Even so,
people have been selling fabric for thousands of years, there's not much that
the internet changes about that, or many if not most other business
categories.

1\.
[https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4003/4633000725_8817dcedb9_b.j...](https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4003/4633000725_8817dcedb9_b.jpg)

~~~
Swizec
Look around for what I call The MicroConf Crowd. Practical advice on the
business part of business abounds. Books courses and more. Often targeted at
programmers.

The Independent Consulting Manual is a good place to start, then go down the
list of authors and read their other stuff.

They often do a christmas sale too.

Follow Patio11 on twitter, read his stuff. Follow Amy Hoy, do 30x500.

Then spread out from there.

If you’re funded, great! All the same advice applies, you just have more
gasoline to pour on the fire. Try things faster.

~~~
soulchild37
Ah yes this, I am lucky to discover the MicroConf Crowd early on in
HackerNews.

Patio11 taught me how to raise my salary in my full time job.

Amy Hoy got me off the couch and start building products (that user wants).

Not to forget advice from Rob Wailing, Kai Davis etc too.

------
codingdave
Note that she did something good from the very start - Solved a problem:
"People were tired of paying high shipping rates from online fabric shops in
the US and wanted to shop Canadian."

Find a problem. Build a solution. Market it. Listen to your customers. It is
fairly standard advice, but it works well.

------
fridaysoff
Hi! It's Alanna Banks, found of Fridays Off. Thank you for reading my story
and all the comments below. I haven't had a chance to read them yet, but I'm
going to run through them now. Please feel free to reach out to me with
questions. :)

~~~
ddevjani
Hey Alanna! LOVING your story. its so genuine and raw. it shows that it isn't
easy and persistence + constantly learning are key.

I'd love to host you on a podcast series I've started specifically focused on
bootstrapped founders, starting side-hustles, and their stories of the early
days.

Even though your post answers most of them, hearing them from you would be
fantastic.

let me know if that'd be of interest.

Sending lots of good vibes, and telling my north-of-the-border -mom-friends
about FridaysOff!

~~~
fridaysoff
Hi! Sure I would be happy to do an interview. :) And thanks for spreading the
word :)

------
Descartes1
I've always hated the concept of "revenues" in commerce. Honestly, who cares
what your revenues are? Profits are all that matters.

~~~
fabricexpert
Depends on scale and runway. If you have 200k/month in revenue you can easily
make (or lose) a boat load of money with a few small adjustments to your
margins.

~~~
fukuro
Every month I buy a Ferrari for 250,000 en sell it for 200,000. I can now make
a blogpost and say I have a revenue of 200,000/month.

Revenue alone is not a valid metric.

~~~
wordythebyrd
Genius, time to profit. /s

------
joelhaasnoot
My wife runs a small little shop in the creative space too: the margins can be
quite high for nice, high quality stuff and customers are easy to draw in for
multiple purchases.

(also it helps I do the tech side of things and there is so much open source,
free or cheap stuff available tech-wise)

~~~
bluedino
A friend of mine's wife started a very high margin business selling scrapbook
grabbags on eBay. She'd buy up clearance items and local craft/hobby stores,
and bundle them up to sell on eBay. She made enough money that after two
months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts, cutting her cashflow off,
effectively killing the business.

~~~
JackFr
> She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her
> accounts

What does that mean?

~~~
lobotryas
It means that PayPal (incorrectly) suspected her of fraud and took her money
(froze her accounts). If this all sounds weird to you then you should search
for more info because PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform.

Alternatively, she could have had a wrong account type (personal instead of
business), but my charitable assumption is that GP took care of that.

~~~
JackFr
> PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform

That makes no sense.

I think a more sensible take is that PayPal's AML/KYC process is a little too
coarse-grained and poorly implemented.

------
robertk
I am glad that the advice is not unusual and refers to the usual suspects:
judicious A/B testing of SEO keywords, personalized correspondence with early
customers, and leveraging media and coaches. It gives confidence that anyone
can do this.

~~~
fridaysoff
Thanks! I'm just a regular person trying to make a go at my own thing because
the corporate world just wasn't for me. My goal is to help people realize that
if they have a dream they should go for it, but also to realize that it
doesn't come easy. It's A LOT of work!!

------
emilfihlman
>After returning from a year long maternity leave I found it difficult to
juggle my new life as a mom working in the confines of a 9-5, I also came to
the realization that the corporate life just wasn’t for me and became very
unhappy. I was tired of faking it and really just wanted to follow my forever
dream of doing my own thing and being my own boss. So, I did what anyone would
do in that situation and got pregnant again ;) ... Knowing I had another year-
long maternity leave on the horizon, I started brainstorming e-comm business
ideas.

This doesn't sound good, basically kickstarting a company on another company's
money.

~~~
giarc
Maternity leave benefits in Canada are paid by the federal government through
Employment Insurance (EI) program. New parents get 12-18 months of EI
payments. Your employer is only required to hold a position for you, they are
not obligated to pay your wage.

~~~
emilfihlman
Ah, that's good to know because in Finland, your employer does pay it.

~~~
a_brawling_boo
Hey, serious question from an American. How does this policy not cause massive
hiring discrimination against young women, especially recently married women?
I asked my Canadian relatives this question, and their answers basically
boiled down to 'well that would be illegal'. But from what I can tell
enforcing anti discrimination in hiring is next to impossible, especially if
you interview and hire even a slightly more qualified candidate.

~~~
patmcc
A few things seems to help, although there certainly still is some
discrimination (in certain jobs especially).

1) All your competitors have to follow the law too, so it's just another cost
of doing business.

2) Women are having children later, generally, so employers will see a
25-year-old and think "eh, I probably have 5 years at least".

3) Men are starting to take more parental leave, and the law is mostly gender-
neutral (there is some amount of leave specifically for mothers who have given
birth, but most can be taken by either parent). In fact, both parents can take
the leave and have their jobs protected, although you can't double-dip on the
paid benefits. I took three weeks off at my daughter's birth and 3 months when
she was ~9 months old.

4) Maternity leave coverage is a great way to try out an employee for a year -
hire Jim to cover for Jane, if you like him keep him on after the year, if not
he disappears. (Part of this is Canada is more resistant to the
contractor/employee trend than the US).

5) The people doing the hiring are likely to either have children or will in
the future, so they feel like it's a reasonable/good policy.

Nothing blows my mind as much as hearing Americans talking about maternity
benefit. I was listening to a podcast and one person said "we were lucky to
have such good maternity benefits, I didn't have to go back to work for 6
weeks" and I was _floored_.

------
tomcam
Very cool story. One of my favorite stores is Britax in San Francisco, where
you can see fabrics going north of $1,000/yard. She doesn't seem to use
Pinterest, which seems like a natural fit.

~~~
fridaysoff
I know. I need to get moving on Pinterest. It's a total fit.

------
subpixel
“Knowing I had another year-long maternity leave on the horizon...” said no
American, ever.

~~~
JackFr
Is using a year long maternity leave to start a business an argument for
extended maternity leaves?

~~~
ggg9990
Not really, it’s an argument against. A government funded maternity leave is
for the benefit of the child. At the point you have enough time to start a
business you can support your own kid.

~~~
Pfhreak
Not necessarily. Time with a kid is not sliced in a way that supports a nine
to five, but could support an enterprising, driven person in the margins. You
can fully support the child and have some time to support your own interests.

------
mkirklions
Pat, you should be marking your topics as Show HN:

Promotion of your blog should be clear to readers.

~~~
chatmasta
So nobody can submit their own content unless it has a Show HN on it? Come on
that’s ridiculous.

Also, “Show HN” is specifically for products we can play with after clicking
the link. Please do not pollute Show HN with blogposts; I will flag them and
I’m sure others will too.

~~~
mkirklions
Maybe this is just spam then

~~~
patwalls
Why are you so adamant that my website is spam? You've made multiple comments
about it.

I spend a lot of time on it and it provides a lot of value to a lot of people.
Maybe the content is not super relevant to you and that's fine. You don't have
to read it.

Why are you leaving so many comments about this?

------
ed
Nice interview! FYI the learn more links at the bottom are broken.

~~~
patwalls
Thanks! Fixed.

------
Descartes1
Revenues are irrelevant. Profits aren't.

~~~
mikec3010
This is a really ignorant thing to say. If you have a hearty revenue stream
but no profit, you can tweak the model to make it profitable. Some profits
aren't possible at small scales, so having revenue proves you have demand and
can lead to safely risking big bucks to get to a profitable scale.

~~~
swalsh
Especially in the eCommerce business where you might have a deal with a
supplier. It's not unusual to be able to negotiate a higher margin the more
you sell. Any single financial metric alone cannot tell the whole story of a
business. Revenues are equally as important as profits.

------
profalseidol
This to me is almost not a hacker news.

------
_salmon

      What seems to work for me is getting the write keywords in my meta description
    

lel

~~~
snarf21
big funny, much laugh!

------
sdenton4
Beware. There's a whole lot of "start an e shop and get rich quick" bullshit
out there.

[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-
ex...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-expensive-
free-watch#episode-player)

~~~
toomanybeersies
I got down to where he said he paid $10 for shipping and instantly clicked
that it was a watch from Aliexpress and it was a classic dropshipping gig.

There were some people a few years ago that managed to sell off a few hundred
Hawaiian shirts that were most likely drop shipped from China by using some
well targeted FB (and probably Instagram) advertising, and giving the shirts
funny names (named after local alcoholic drinks). They were probably making
$20 or $30 per shirt.

An interesting take on the Aliexpress game is theive.co [1]. It's basically a
curated list of stuff on Aliexpress with referral links. Since I last looked
at the website they've apparently launched a product aimed at drop shippers,
where you can get market insights. Morally it's murky, but it's clever.

[1] [https://thieve.co/](https://thieve.co/)

~~~
chatmasta
> Morally it's murky, but it's clever.

No offense, but this is the kind of thinking that holds back people from
succeeding in business. I see it a lot from non-biz engineering types.

There is nothing, _nothing_ “morally wrong” with dropshipping. The main value
you provide is discoverability; if the customer finds a product through you
that they would not have found otherwise, then you added value. Also, you
provide customer service and return policies that the supplier may not.
Finally, you also provide value to the supplier by selling their merchandise
in channels they are unable or unwilling to reach.

In fact, all that really matters is that the customer made a voluntary
decision to purchase a product from you, and was not misinformed about the
terms of purchase or shipping.

You are under no obligation to inform the customer of your suppliers. If you
disagree morally with that, then feel free to link them to a site where they
can buy your product from someone else.

The idea that there is something “wrong” with selling a product for more than
you pay for it is ridiculous, at best. That is literally what business has
meant since the dawn of civilization.

~~~
stickfigure
Having been in the (software side of the) digital marketing business for a few
years, I generally agree with you.

On the other hand, there are some complaints you can level at the industry.
One is that they're exploiting an information asymmetry between the buyer and
the seller; buyers as of yet haven't realized just how cheap and available
things are on Aliexpress, and the sellers do their best to hide the source of
goods. I think this will resolve itself over time as buyers get more savvy.

There are also some questionable practices. "Free, you just pay [$10+]
shipping" seems aimed at some sort of psychological defect in the part of the
human brain that calculates value. And digital marketers often are often
rather indifferent to IP rights.

I guess my biggest complaint is that there are an awful lot of online
marketers that really just don't seem to care all that much about the
customer. They're often selling one-time impulse buys which are priced too low
to be worth the trouble to return and they don't expect a repeat customer,
ever. They've never even _seen_ the products they're selling. I guess I want a
little more value-add from my vendors - I've gone back to buying things
offline where I can.

(I'm sure the article author is in a very different category of seller, which
is heartwarming!)

------
NinaJZapala
This is so awesome!

