
How to start an e-commerce store that doesn’t dropship - kentf
https://medium.com/@kentf/how-to-start-an-e-commerce-store-that-doesnt-dropship-742adb1087f3
======
justboxing
Congrats on your launch and success, and thanks so much for sharing a lot of
useful info, apps, and stats! Appreciate it.

I'm about to launch my 1st Shopify store in a very niche market. Some
questions for you in that context...

1\. When you came up with the idea for selling your products -- and it looks
like you invested about 8K in initial inventory -- did you do any kind of
research to see if there might be a need and it would take off, or did you go
with "gut feeling" ?

2\. How many days from the site going live did you make your 1st, 10th and
50th sale?

3\. Did you spend any time at all "evaluating competitors" / existing
ecommerce sites that sell your product(s) or things close to your product(s)?

4\. Did you do any pre-launch marketing either offline (by way of flyers) or
online (by way of ads) before the day the site went live?

5\. Did you use any copy editor or stock images for your products, or did you
do both copy and images (photos) of the products on your own?

6\. How important is it to have a supporting blog / news section? Do you do it
to drive traffic?

7\. Any "hacks" you can share to acquire new customers and retain existing
customers? What worked for you, what didn't?

Thanks again!

EDIT: Needed to see this in your conclusion.

> On Instagram, you will see stories of millionaire dropshippers and other
> lies.

~~~
kentf
Congrats on getting started, few people actually do. It's a celebration
regardless of what happens. Now onto your questions.

1) I used the products myself and had friends asking me lots of questions.
Dogfooding at it's best.

2) 3 days after going live I got my first sale.

3) No, except when it came to free shipping.

4) No, all SEO and intentful Facebook Ads

5) No, I used Hubba for pictures and product descriptions. And Unsplash for
backgrounds. I am a software engineer that has been on the marketing side for
8+ years, so I know how to write good copy. But it's really not that
important. Your products, pictures, and prices do 90% of the selling.

6) If you have a product that people want, and can target them with SEO + ads,
you don't need content. I have two blog posts and definitely would love to do
more social + content but I limit myself to spending 2 / hour a day on this
per night. I am sure that if I invested in content, it would be a good
investment. Just need to prioritize based on my self-imposed restrictions at
the moment.

7) No hacks. Great products, hassle-free returns, fair prices and fast
shipping :)

~~~
justboxing
Thank you!

------
askaboutit
Might be worth staying that this is an AD you’ve built the store to advertise
Hubba wholesale service which you’re working for as “growth”. You didn’t start
a store to start a store. You started it to market Hubba.

~~~
kentf
I considered removing Hubba completely from the post but the truth is that I
use it. I work in marketing/growth and realized a year ago that I knew very
little about the retail world. I decided to spend my own money to learn the
business and bring those learnings back into my job. So in that sense, sure
this is an AD, if anything it's an AD for Shopify given how much I love their
software.

If you notice, there is no mention or link to my actual store that could drive
$$$ into my pocket directly. The point is not to market my store, but to show
you how easy it is, with the right tools, to break free from dropshipping.

It's too bad if that's all you take away from this post. The truth is that I
use Hubba on a weekly basis to find new products and I haven't been able to
find anything else to help me there. There are lots of marketplaces but most
are full of crap or only work with dropshippers. At least on Hubba, I know the
brands are being vetted by a team of humans for quality and integrity.

If you have a better alternative or another service I would be happy to
include it in here.

Appreciate the comment

~~~
subpixel
“If you notice, there is no mention or link to my actual store”

That’s the point — your blog post is work-product for your day job. That
should be made more readily apparent as a disclaimer, because your primary
motive here is to promote your employer’s product, full-stop.

------
someguy101010
One of the most annoying things about these kinds of posts is they always show
revenue and never profits. I can buy something at $1m and sell it for $1m
everyday and generate $1m in daily revenue but with no profits. Operating cost
on these kind of businesses seem like they can add up quickly not to mention
the time and effort.

That being said OP doesn't seem to be selling some sort of course on how to
get a lambo in just three months, so I don't think he is being malicious. In
fact the article seemed to be very well written from my skimming. Its just
something I think people should keep in mind.

------
kentf
Happy to answer any Qs. Retail is def more fun than dropshipping :)

~~~
aphextron
Are there any decent self hosted Shopify alternatives at this point? Last I
checked the best option was something old school like Magento.

~~~
kentf
Spree, it's a Rails Engine and def my fav for 3rd party hosting.

~~~
acconrad
How do you like that compared to something like Solidus?

[https://github.com/solidusio/solidus](https://github.com/solidusio/solidus)

Do you know anyone who is in the e-commerce space for marijuana/e-cigs/adult?
What are they using for payments?

~~~
kentf
PsiGate is the common gateway and Magento / custom builds are pretty much the
standard.

------
jaclaz
Not at all my business, of course, but having US$ 400-700 revenue per day is
(at least to me) meaningless metrics.

That is - I believe - revenue (amount of sales).

Let's go for average US$ 500/day. That is roughly 180,000 US$/year.

How much are expenses (for buying the goods that are resold)?

How much did you invest in storage/offices/whatever? (or rents you pay)

How much money do you have invested in the actual goods?

How much are costs for the receiving the goods, storing them, having
inventary, packing and shipping them?

How much are pay-processors fees?

How much are you paying for accountants and other needed professionals?

How many hours per day do you spend in managing the shop, the ads, the
reviews, the non-sewuitur e-mails, etc.?

How much are taxes (corporate)?

In other words, and of course only if you wish to share this piece of info,
how much do you make out of that shop, NET?

Or - it would be good as well - just state what percentage of your total
income comes from the shop earnings.

I know I sound critic/downputting/naysayer, but the whole thing sounds (or may
sound to an inexperienced reader) like "it's easy to make a successful online
shop, even if you have no experience whatsoever and you will make lots of
money".

~~~
justboxing
> "it's easy to make a successful online shop, even if you have no experience
> whatsoever and you will make lots of money".

(I think) you are reading this all wrong. I didn't see any place in the post
where the author seems to be suggesting this.

As a matter of the first 2 lines are literally the following.

> I started a e-commerce store in September 2017 that does about $400 a day in
> revenue. I get asked about the tools, systems and products I use often, in
> this post I will share what works for me.

> I don’t dropship, I buy, hold, and ship all inventory.

The rest of the post is about tools and services the author used, to achieve
the 400$ / day in revenue, and like he says, what worked for him. YMMV.

I found it very useful as I am about to launch a shopify based site, and I
wasn't aware of more than half the tools and services mentioned. You'll also
notice that the author has answered all questions here in great detail.

It is very difficult to make people part from their money for a product or
service. This post is not about what product or service to sell, it's about
how to go about getting revenues coming in once you have a product or service
that you want to sell.

Final note, 180,000 US$/year in REVENUE (not profits) is quite impressive.
Over 80% of startups don't even see that much revenue in their entire life-
cycle, stuggle for years to get people to pay for their product or service,
and then die.

~~~
jaclaz
>Final note, 180,000 US$/year in REVENUE (not profits) is quite impressive.
Over 80% of startups don't even see that much revenue in their entire life-
cycle, stuggle for years to get people to pay for their product or service,
and then die.

I am sorry for those startups, but if the gross margin is 30% it will likely
become 10-15% profit after expenses and taxes.

15% of US$ 180,000/year is 27,000 US$/year, if the Author worked 2,000 hours
in the year, he got net 13.50 US$/hour, which is not bad, but not something I
would call personally a successful shop/activity.

------
schappim
>> Shopify is the best

It depends on the size of your store. Once you get to a certain size (5-6M) it
makes sense to build your own that matches your company’s internal business
processes.

Shopify is also very US centric and most of the channels don’t work outside
the US. Eg eBay, Amazon, Twitter etc.

------
jerryuen
Do you have a open a LLC for it? If so, just one member? Did you get the EIN
from IRS? Sales tax?

~~~
kentf
I have a Canadian LLC and an American one too. Navigating the HST (Ontario
tax) has been tricky but I should be all squared away soon. Really need to
find a good accountant as doing that part myself is quite challenging.

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flagpack
Could you please describe how and why you use Hubba when you're not able to
buy there? Asking from Germany where I couldn't buy there, neither.

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tdiggity
Are you only accepting buyers with legitimate business licenses? The sign up
page seems to allude to that.can I register with my gmail address?

~~~
kentf
Anyone can join, but if you want to buy you need to get verified with a valid
US tax ID. We also review each account within 48 hours and if you are a drop
shipper or Amazon reseller, you are removed from the site.

