Setting up online shop business

pancake12

Hi,
I will be setting up an online shop (with about 100 items) and this will be my first try. Does anyone have a good advice on how to handle the shipping part? Advice from an experienced seller would be greatly appreciated.
My questions:
How do you handle the actual shipping? Buy stamps in bulk and post the items via letterbox as the orders come in, or go to the post office every time?
Also, how does one calculate the shipping charge? I am thinking of 4 different flat rates: 1. Ireland, 2. Europe, 3. USA and 4. rest of the world.
Thanks

_Brian

100 of the same item or 100 different items??
Will they all be the same size & weight for shipping ?

Help!!!!

depends on how big the items are that your selling
post for items sold in Ireland, a courier for everything outside Ireland

Ranjo

I am involved in a similar situation. Here is some advice.

Shipping. I would not receive a huge amount of orders so can manage ad hoc trips to the post office. An post do have a collection service if you ship significant volume, roughly 200 items per week. This is way beyond my levels.

I have been specific around which post office and time of day so reduce waiting time.

Shipping rates. I base off the an post standard chart (pasting the mobile version as I'm on my phone)

http://www.anpost.ie/AnPost/Mobile/PostalRates/Standard+Post.htm

Keep your weights down as much as possible to offer the best rates.

I use a web site service (weebly) which offer all of the commerce features I need. Shipping is built in as each item has a weight which refers against a chart I entered. It also has stock levels.

Good luck

jimmii

We limit the size and weight on our online shop so shipping is easier. We bull bought small boxes at around 36c each and then if you contact An Post you can buy packs of parcel post labels (20 labels) for €4.95+vat for that you can post up to 10kg and it has a tracking number which is always handy. There's no time limit on the labels so its a handy way to save money without having to commit to a certain number per week.

When you reach 100+ orders a week it gets a good bit cheaper.

sydneysports

Hi pancake12,

Are your products coming from different suppliers or just one?

If your products are coming from various supplier, you may want to check if they offer drop shipping.I think it will help you minimize expenses.

jimmii

Drop shipping definitely a good option if you can. Means you can save a lot of storage costs alright.

sydneysports

Such benefit will also help you spend more time on the marketing side because this is going to be a great battle as a start-up.

pancake12

Hi Everyone,
Thank you for the quick replies
Sorry i did not give much info in my post. I will be making very small items - so they would fit in a bubble envelope and in the post office letterbox. My biggest problem is that i have a full time job and i will not have time to go to the post office every day - or even once a week. I want to avoid going to the post office as much as possible. Now that I think about this, I have more and more questions, about the online shop business, but I assume this is normal for someone who has never done this before.
About the 100 items: what I meant first was that it will be a small stock (not the same size and weight) - just to see if it is working. I will be making these at home. And I dont want to panic when I have my first order. I want to be prepared.

sydneysports

In terms of the schedule, you can actually set some rules or policy and that should be clearly published on your website. For example, orders received from Monday to Wednesday shall be delivered by Thursday and set another schedule. If you decide, just 2 days per week.
Just be transparent to your customers and I think that will be okay.

jimmii

pancake12 wrote: »

Hi Everyone,
Thank you for the quick replies
Sorry i did not give much info in my post. I will be making very small items - so they would fit in a bubble envelope and in the post office letterbox. My biggest problem is that i have a full time job and i will not have time to go to the post office every day - or even once a week. I want to avoid going to the post office as much as possible. Now that I think about this, I have more and more questions, about the online shop business, but I assume this is normal for someone who has never done this before.
About the 100 items: what I meant first was that it will be a small stock (not the same size and weight) - just to see if it is working. I will be making these at home. And I dont want to panic when I have my first order. I want to be prepared.

Sounds like dropshipping is probably the best option then so you don't have to worry about that sort of thing. I assume your employer wouldn't be too happy having a courier collect your orders each day too!

Are you going to have time for customer service during the day? Are you going to have time to manage social media well? Our social media is almost a full time job now its amazing how much time it takes if you are going to do it properly. Scheduling posts is all well and good but you need to be interacting with customers too. It seems like running an online shop would be easy to do while working full time but it will take up almost all your free time I would imagine are you prepared for that?

pancake12

Yes, there are so many things i have not thought about. Regarding social media, do you think this whole thing would work without a FB page? - Yes, I i know that would take up a lot of my free time. I want to spend my free time actually producing the items that I will be selling. The interaction with the customers would be happening through the online shop website - via emails.

jimmii

pancake12 wrote: »

Yes, there are so many things i have not thought about. Regarding social media, do you think this whole thing would work without a FB page? - Yes, I i know that would take up a lot of my free time. I want to spend my free time actually producing the items that I will be selling. The interaction with the customers would be happening through the online shop website - via emails.

I would say over 90% of our customer interaction online is via Facebook or twitter I think its pretty important to have these days. If you are planning on making the things yourself then I would think you are going to be absolutely swamped while working full time. You also need to dedicate a good bit of time, at least initially, to AdWords and SEO or are you paying someone to build the website and run that side if things do you?

Ranjo

Ditto for facebook. Massive driver of business. Social is a must have! I see hit jump every time there's a facebook or twitter post.

Converting them to sales. That's another thing!

_Brian

jimmii wrote: »

We limit the size and weight on our online shop so shipping is easier. We bull bought small boxes at around 36c each and then if you contact An Post you can buy packs of parcel post labels (20 labels) for €4.95+vat for that you can post up to 10kg and it has a tracking number which is always handy. There's no time limit on the labels so its a handy way to save money without having to commit to a certain number per week.


When you reach 100+ orders a week it gets a good bit cheaper.

Hi jimmii
I contacted AnPost and they would only sell these in 100's which is too much for me.

Where did you contact to buy these ??

Thanks

jimmii

_Brian wrote: »

Hi jimmii
I contacted AnPost and they would only sell these in 100's which is too much for me.

Where did you contact to buy these ??

Thanks

Its Dublin only forgot to mention that sorry!

_Brian

jimmii wrote: »

Its Dublin only forgot to mention that sorry!

Available in Dublin only or sip to Dublin only??

jimmii

_Brian wrote: »

Available in Dublin only or sip to Dublin only??

You need to be based in Dublin.

http://www.anpost.ie/anpost/maincontent/business%20customers/sending%20parcels/less%20than%2030%20parcels%20dublin.htm

_Brian

jimmii wrote: »

You need to be based in Dublin.

http://www.anpost.ie/anpost/maincontent/business%20customers/sending%20parcels/less%20than%2030%20parcels%20dublin.htm

Cheers

guitarrrszz

drop shipping is always an option but extremely prickely when something does awry

sydneysports

Hi,

If I may add something with regards to social media and a little bit on how to promote it, the best thing to get started is using Facebook. SEO takes time and Adwords is a little bit expensive. It will also help to build your network first through the people who personally know you to establish credibility.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

pancake12 wrote: »

Hi Everyone,
I will be making very small items - so they would fit in a bubble envelope and in the post office letterbox. My biggest problem is that i have a full time job and i will not have time to go to the post office every day - or even once a week.
About the 100 items: what I meant first was that it will be a small stock (not the same size and weight) - just to see if it is working.

So when you are starting out get prepaid registered post labels and drop the items into the post box. As the business grows, assuming the items aren't custom made consider a fulfillment service - chances are it will end up being cheaper than the price you are paying for delivery while also including the pick and pack rate.

collegeme

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

So when you are starting out get prepaid registered post labels and drop the items into the post box. As the business grows, assuming the items aren't custom made consider a fulfillment service - chances are it will end up being cheaper than the price you are paying for delivery while also including the pick and pack rate.

Like amazon offer. Are they a good option?

To the OP, how are you planning to market the site? I think if they fit in a small bubble envelope, then stamps are the way to go unless the items are of high value.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

collegeme wrote: »

Like amazon offer. Are they a good option?

Depends on requirements, for example amazon dont warehouse in Ireland so you would pay international shipping rates and lead times to Ireland. Also there are other companies that do fulfillment that wont brand it in their companies boxes which can be important.

sydneysports wrote:

If I may add something with regards to social media and a little bit on how to promote it, the best thing to get started is using Facebook. SEO takes time and Adwords is a little bit expensive. It will also help to build your network first through the people who personally know you to establish credibility.

Respectfully would disagree with you there. This may work, but depends on the customers business which they haven't disclosed. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution in business.

For example, as some people will know on here I own several businesses one of which is TheMobilityShop.ie and to make an exaggerated point, if I was to try to sell incontinence wear and the other items we sell using your strategy - well that wouldn't work. No-one wants to like incontinence products on facebook, even for the biggest over sharers on fb thats one step to far. For that reason we dont have twitter and facebook pages for TheMobilityShop, yet are the biggest in that sector.

People sometimes think social media is "free" because they dont value their time. Facebook marketing doesn't work like it used to in the early days and statistically has a relatively low ROI, you'd need a minimum of 15k of Real followers. Don't be fooled by these brands and gurus who purchase likes and attention.

collegeme

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Depends on requirements, for example amazon dont warehouse in Ireland so you would pay international shipping rates and lead times to Ireland. Also there are other companies that do fulfillment that wont brand it in their companies boxes which can be important.



Respectfully would disagree with you there. This may work, but depends on the customers business which they haven't disclosed. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution in business.

For example, as some people will know on here I own several businesses one of which is TheMobilityShop.ie and to make an exaggerated point, if I was to try to sell incontinence wear and the other items we sell using your strategy - well that wouldn't work. No-one wants to like incontinence products on facebook, even for the biggest over sharers on fb thats one step to far. For that reason we dont have twitter and facebook pages for TheMobilityShop, yet are the biggest in that sector.

People sometimes think social media is "free" because they dont value their time. Facebook marketing doesn't work like it used to in the early days and statistically has a relatively low ROI, you'd need a minimum of 15k of Real followers. Don't be fooled by these brands and gurus who purchase likes and attention.

The free ride from facebook is well and truely over. I agree, it's not for every business. Even if it fits your business perfect, you really need to pay facebook for advertising your posts. Reach is at a shocking all time low since the new year and new rules.