Online Shopping

The great thing about getting outside for a run is that it forces you to turn your mind off and get away from the business. Or in reality, it gives you some time to really think through and talk through - with your willing running partner - some of the problems, challenges, and thoughts you've had about the business. On one recent run my running partner (and business partner) and I talked about the pros and cons of adding a shopping cart to my company's site.

Originally the idea had been that my company would only do wholesale to retailers and let them do the selling directly to the customers. But given that we're about to launch a big PR campaign and wanting to avoid any issues like we had last time (where the retailer got all the leads and didn't pass them on to us), we realized it makes sense to add a shopping cart to our site. Not to mention, as my running partner pointed out, any sales that come through the shopping cart as opposed to from one of my retailers more then doubles my company's profit.

There are cerainly some cons to it - the main one being that retailers may get pissy. But I've checked out other "competitors" and they all seem to be doing it so I'm assuming I'm not doing anything that's totally out of the norm.

The other big con is that it then requires more packaging/shipping on my part. But, low and behold - it looks like the US Postal Service is coming to my rescue! Turns out that USPS has a "flat rate" shipping box that would be big enough to fit what I assume any one individual order would be and it will always cost me $8.95 to ship regardless of how much it weighs. And then it turns out that those flat rate boxes are free and will be dropped off at your house if you simply go online and order them! That makes figuring out shipping much simpler and cuts down on the potential cost of moving into the retail segment. Plus I can print out shipping labels from my home computer (once I get a new printer...desperately needed) and have the mailman pick any packages up on my front step. Seems like a no brainer to me!

So hopefully by the end of the month I'll have an online retail outlet.