New Business - Need Help Plz

wba88

Hey Everyone,
So I want to set up my own online retail store in the coming months, but I have a lot of questions which needs answering (some of them in layman's terms). So ill get straight to the point;

Setting up Q's
1. How much will all the registering cost for a limited company?
2. Who is a good internet host for businesses online? (i would like a .ie and .com domain. I will need full control over the site as stock will change a lot)
3. How much will question 2 cost?

Selling Q's
4. Am I allowed to sell any products I want e.g. (Nike Clothes, Sony Memory Cards etc) and use thier official site pictures?
5. Am I allowed to display competitors prices next to mine?

6. Anything else I should know?

After I get these sorted I might put up a sample pricelist to get some feedback from everyone.

Thanks in advance.;)

misterq

no disrespect, but some of the questions you are asking beg the question as to whether or not you have enough knowledge to run your own business.

The first rule of business: Nobody is going to do anything for you, you will need to get it done yourself, one way or another.

Most of your questions can be answered by some simple Internet research.
For info on setting up in business, see http://www.basis.ie

wba88

I know the answer to some of them just want confirmation that I understand them correctly.

thanx for the link tho

DublinDilbert

What were you going to do for the web-shop? were you going to write it yourself? I would recommend looking at oscommerce, just google it and you'll find lots of links... Someone who knows what they are at can set it up quite quickly, there's also an admin interface to let you add/remove products...

wba88

Yeah i looked at them but it looks quite 'common'. I cant do it myself i would require someone to set it up for me then can add/remove products as I wish.

mneylon

1. Talk to an accountant and your bank manager
2 Depends on whether you register a business or go LTD.
3. There are plenty to choose from. I'm obviously biased

5 - depends on the products I suppose.

6 As far as I know you can, however it might not be wise initially

8 See my answer to 1

You might want to talk to your local enterprise board as well, as they can help you with a lot of the details

wba88

thanx blacknight, do you do discounts for boards members?

mneylon

wba88 wrote:

thanx blacknight, do you do discounts for boards members?

From time to time

wba88

is mid july a good time

EKRIUQ

wba88, business websites have a huge failure rate and are the same as ordinary shops in that it takes years to build up a customer base. You'll have to try hard to get website traffic to your website

Unless your going to be turning over a huge volume of business from day one there's no need to be a limited company. Just register your business name with the CRO and that entitles you to a .ie domain.

Have you considered even starting with ebay to give you a touch of what you'll have to do and from there you can get website traffic to your website. The ebays shops are easy to run and when you have enough volume then start using your own shop.

There are plenty of shopping hosts which will host your shop and all products with easy interfaces but they will have a monthly rent. Or if your more comfortable with code you can use the free alternatives ZEN CART or OSCommerence. I prefer zen cart because of the brilliant support forum.

Its okay to think big but the costs involved by your original post will run into large amounts of money. Accountants, and company formations cost money.

At the end of the day the best thing is do is plenty of research and getting advice from people

wba88 wrote:

Yeah i looked at them but it looks quite 'common'. I cant do it myself i would require someone to set it up for me then can add/remove products as I wish.

http://www.powerwebsites.com/ this website will do everything for you your hosting all products, inventory sales tracking you just set up categories and ad the products its a one stop shop instead of going to hosting company's and buying shop software

wba88

BingoBongo wrote:

wba88, business websites have a huge failure rate and are the same as ordinary shops in that it takes years to build up a customer base. You'll have to try hard to get website traffic to your website

Unless your going to be turning over a huge volume of business from day one there's no need to be a limited company. Just register your business name with the CRO and that entitles you to a .ie domain.

Have you considered even starting with ebay to give you a touch of what you'll have to do and from there you can get website traffic to your website. The ebays shops are easy to run and when you have enough volume then start using your own shop.

There are plenty of shopping hosts which will host your shop and all products with easy interfaces but they will have a monthly rent. Or if your more comfortable with code you can use the free alternatives ZEN CART or OSCommerence. I prefer zen cart because of the brilliant support forum.

Its okay to think big but the costs involved by your original post will run into large amounts of money. Accountants, and company formations cost money.

At the end of the day the best thing is do is plenty of research and getting advice from people



http://www.powerwebsites.com/ this website will do everything for you your hosting all products, inventory sales tracking you just set up categories and ad the products its a one stop shop instead of going to hosting company's and buying shop software

thanks for the advice

ballooba

I have formed the view that online stores operating out of Ireland are not viable. There are exceptions like shop4memory.com but we don't seem to be able to compete on price with UK, US and mainland europe Alternatives. Price is the only real differentiating factor in selling products online. Our infrastructure is also terrible in terms of Postal/Delivery Services and also Broadband. The delivery factor is a huge one. Services is a different story. Look at companies like StockByte.

Best of luck though. I hope you prove me wrong.

wba88

i do to ballooba. im pretty confident i can closely match or even beat some uk prices on my items but my only concern now is p&p delivery, its so expensive its pushing up my proposed prices for items. Do you have any solutions or know any cheap couriers? If you want I could pm you with a few price examples?

ballooba

You need to be confident that you can compete with the UK companies in terms of price and also in terms of how quickly you can deliver to them. Why would a UK customer choose an Irish supplier over a UK one? Ireland is too small a market to be concentrating on. You will never make real money.

There are discounts to be captured from the delivery firms. It all comes down to volume though. They are not going to give you discount for 3 packages a week. You need to build the volume first.

Trojan

I advise small businesses who are adding an online shop to their existing website, that if at all possible, offer FREE SHIPPING.

Even if you have to mark up the cost of the goods, you're establishing a single price and people know what the price is without taking their shopping cart all the way to the final screen. It might turn out that your good are more expensive than some competition, but the free shipping thing should be the clincher in a consumer deciding between you and the UK equivalent. YMMV.

TheWaterboy

some good advice there - alot of people buying online are doing so cos it is cheaper. If you are much more expensive than the UK online shops then you are going to find it difficult to compete. Ebay is a great place to start selling items. P+P can prove very expensive - so try to sell small products..Keeping costs down is a must.

wba88

If I set up an internet business for a month or so before registering are there any implications? besides I cannot register a .ie domain.

stepbar

TBH in the four days this thread has been alive you could have had your business name registered, a bank a/c opened and a domain name with splash page up and running. In fact you do the whole lot in a day. If you're going to be serious about this you need to do it ASAP!!!!!!

It sounds like you are unsure about going ahead with this. As mentioned, an online shop is too easy to setup. Every Tom Dick and Harry can do it. What you sell is critical, for an online shop to succeed you need to have the right products.

It would be nice to know what product(s) you plan to sell; I could go into more detail based on Porter's 5 Forces model - http://www.metrixmedia.com/images/Porter03.gif

wba88

stepbar wrote:

TBH in the four days this thread has been alive you could have had your business name registered, a bank a/c opened and a domain name with splash page up and running. In fact you do the whole lot in a day. If you're going to be serious about this you need to do it ASAP!!!!!!

It sounds like you are unsure about going ahead with this. As mentioned, an online shop is too easy to setup. Every Tom Dick and Harry can do it.

It would be nice to know what product you plan to sell; I could go into more detail based on Porter's 5 Forces model - http://www.metrixmedia.com/images/Porter03.gif

Im waiting on my finance to be sorted first so I CANT do any of those things yet!

so while i am waiting i am asking questions and emailing suppliers!

ballooba

wba88 wrote:

Im waiting on my finance to be sorted first so I CANT do any of those things yet!

Those things would cost max €500.

ballooba

wba88 wrote:

If I set up an internet business for a month or so before registering are there any implications? besides I cannot register a .ie domain.

Not really. You can register as your business name for 30 quid. Then you are operating as a soletrader with the registered business name of "X.com". You can use personal bank accounts etc. You don't need to pay VAT if you are not collecting it.

It's all very messy though. You shouldn't launch before you are ready. It does more harm than good. If you are ready to sell then do by all means get a phone number and a simple site up. You might make sales.