Do what you love. The money will follow. Well, bull frakin’ sheeeeet is my response to that old wives’ tale. Maybe in Paris Hilton’s world. You know she gets paid to party, right? Well, as I geared up to start my eshop, I fell for that bit of so called wisdom hook, line and sinker.
If I had $300 in my wallet to spend, I’d buy something for the house. A beautiful platter, a unique lamp, maybe a super-duper thread count sheet set. Clothes? Who needs clothes when your house looks awesome! What else would I possibly sell other than housewares? I should have thought more about those POSSIBLY scenarios. You should, too. Just because you love it, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to sell it. That is…
Lesson 2: What Are You Going to Sell?
The first flaw in my plan is that I didn’t narrow my niche enough. Housewares is a big, big category.
I was smart enough to rule out most breakables. Glass and ceramics were no-goes simply because of my experience selling vintiques on eBay. If it didn’t get broken in shipping, I’d nick it putting it on my inventory shelf. I also ruled out heavy items, again, because of experience as an eBay seller. I love cast iron do-dads but shipping is pricey — for you and your customer. Ditto for large, awkward sized things.
Other than that, I was open to just about anything that was special, cool, unique. Uh huh. Boy, was that a mistake.
Shopping a Wholesale Market
The first time I went to “market”, I was completely overwhelmed. OMG! I was in shoppers heaven! I found SO MANY beautiful things. I wanted to carry it ALL. Alas, I wasn’t JCPenney. I had no department store or warehouse space, nor the money to buy millions in inventory. I spent 3 days walking the acreage of the market, and looking and ooohhing and awwwing … and bought nothing. I wasted 3 days because I didn’t know what I wanted to buy. I did, however, drag home every catalog handed to me during the show.
Of course, I eventually found a few items to sell. I have to remind you, I’m sure, that I was on a tighter-than-tight shoe string budget. I tried to be very selective. If I’d seen an item in a store, I wouldn’t stock it in my eshop.
I Wanna Be Special
Don’t most businesses want to be special? We want to offer items so unique, customers will beat down our doors because they can’t find our stuff anywhere else. Which brings me to the second flaw in my plan: I didn’t have the buying power to be unique in the housewares market.
I will never forget that day as long as I live. It was one of my worst. I was tooling around in Hobby Lobby – getting some yarn and some holiday stuff to decorate my antique mall booth. Wheeled my cart through one of their housewares aisles headed for the checkout when I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks. There in front of me was a very “unique” item I had just posted in my eshop. Crap!!! I thought. Then, I looked at the Hobby Lobby price.
OMG! They were selling it for the same price I had paid WHOLESALE! My balloon had been popped, the air went out of my sails. My stomach felt all kinds of panic and despair. My shoe string budget busted in a dozen pieces.
Newsflash: Unless you’re manufacturing a product yourself or buying an entire manufacturing run (millions and millions of $$$$) … customers will be able to find it somewhere else. Count on it. Bet on it that it’ll be cheaper, too.
So, doing what I love — shopkeeping items I adored did not, I repeat DID NOT cause money to flow to me by some spiritual karma. Quite the opposite, really. Doing what I loved put me in financial straits. What I did next would make Suze Orman keel over dead.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The same advice is true for the booth, methinks. I’ve adopted a 30s-40s style to keep me focused.
And NEXT? Can’t wait to hear this! XOX
Yeah, I think so, too. A focused and specialized booth seems to do better in most cases.