

Lessons learned while starting an online business - KatRid
http://www.grassweb.com.au/blog/3-key-lessons-learned-while-starting-an-online-business

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rnernento
Interesting and well written. I like that the author broke the process down
into what seems like something simple and repeatable. I would be interested to
see the specific price breakdown along with actual hours spent on each step.

Not sure why there's so much hate here, I don't know that selling animal
silicon bracelets is any less noble than most of the social startups out
there. At least the article wasn't about how he resold buyers shipping
information and product purchase history to Walmart...

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photorized
The best part about it was predicting demand for something that hasn't
plateaued in Australia yet, based on other, established, markets.

This is essentially how Rocket VC etc make their money.

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rcarrigan87
can you provide link to Rocket, not familiar..

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mhoad
[https://www.rocket-internet.com/](https://www.rocket-internet.com/)

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photorized
thanks - sorry I forgot to include the link.

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kcorbitt
> dealing with suppliers also only a couple of hours all up

I assume the extent of their product design involved shipping a couple of the
kits from the USA to the Chinese supplier and saying "make one of these." I
know that's not that uncommon, but still... it just feels a bit unsavory to
me. And of course opens them up to all kinds of legal liability with the USA
company over IP.

~~~
lukevdp
More likely, they were already being made in China, he just went on alibaba
and found them there

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chatmasta
I did a similar thing a few years ago. Anti snoring mouthpieces like this [0]
cost $1-3 on alibaba for 500 moq. They sell for $60-70 branded (just search
"anti snoring mouthpiece" and look at adwords results), but every product is
the exact same piece of moldable rubber. On ebay, generic versions sell for
$10-15. If you buy a branded version, you are getting ripped off in exchange
for a nice package, an expensive advertising campaign, and a fancy stick to
hold the mouthpiece in the boiling water.

I bought a bunch on alibaba, sold on ebay with a nice template, made a profit
($15 > $3). Easy $1k in a few months. Issue was slow velocity on ebay (~1 sale
per day).

I imagine this could be replicated in a lot of verticals. The only work it
required was printing out instructions, buying envelopes, and stuffing the
mouthpieces into the envelopes when I got a new order.

Here's a great forum thread on doing this. [1]

[0] [http://goo.gl/QiUgIA](http://goo.gl/QiUgIA)

[1] [http://www.wickedfire.com/products-and-
merchants/86310-guide...](http://www.wickedfire.com/products-and-
merchants/86310-guide-make-money-tangible-products-e-commerce.html)

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joshuaheard
I love stories like this. You can read similar tales in book form in "Four
Hour Work Week" with much more detail (including links) on setting up an
online business.

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jqm
So what happened with the unsold inventory?

Maybe you could donate it to a children's home or a school or something?

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darkFunction
To paraphrase:

\- I want to make money selling anything no matter how meaningless, animal
silicon bracelets will do, I really don't care.

\- Get a cheap supplier in China and pay a broke student to redesign the box.

\- Order thousands of said items and sell on eBay.

Did I miss anything?

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rcarrigan87
To come out profitable selling anything online is a lot harder than it looks.
Really don't appreciate this comment on HN.

