Posts Tagged ‘online’
How I Did It: Selling Wholesale Direct-to-Consumer
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Pablo “J.P.” Kochen created Wholesale Furniture Collections so that he could sell and ship to any customer, in any state. His main motivation: the stories he kept hearing from customers who attempted to purchase furniture online, only to see their checks disappear with the companies.
Kochen’s Florida-based company has since joined an increasing number of others that are selling wholesale direct-to-consumer. These wholesalers generally adjust from merely receiving orders to dealing directly with customers, then earning their trust. For Kochen, that meant teaching the basics of secure online purchasing.
Kochen first began selling furniture in 2005, to interior designers decorating model homes along Florida’s west coast. People who saw these model homes became some of the company’s first regular clients.
“We saw that potential going nationwide, not just locally,” he said.
Wholesale Furniture Collections now works with seven delivery companies to ship from manufacturers like Drexel Heritage, Lane Home Furnishings and Kincaid. Nowadays, as Kochen estimates, at least a fourth of company sales stem from word-of-mouth.
The majority of company sales are made online, through a Web site made shortly after the company’s founding. With this, most of the advertising efforts are also online, the latest being the use of advertising platform Google AdWords.
“We just keep trying to market ourselves better,” Kochen said, later adding, “What’s good for us is that now people are shopping around, so we’ve been getting a lot of those clients.”
But those clients are sometimes too tempted by low prices. Companies that sell for three times less than the retail price can get away with asking for full payments, only to never deliver the pieces of furniture, Kochen said.
“The problem is, there’s a lot of bad business out there. The consumer can get in trouble really easily.”
To build confidence in his company, Kochen explains to individual consumers – who he estimates make up 70 percent of sales – the basics of making a secure online purchase. For one, he encourages first-time customers to pay by credit card rather than by check, so the purchase can easily be tracked.
“I tell my clients, you gotta worry about how you pay for this,” Kochen said. “They come in wanting to pay with a check and I say, ‘Listen, I don’t want you to stress about this later. Pay with a credit card and then, send in an order with a check the second time you do business with us, after you get to trust us.’”
Also, rather than taking a payment in full, Wholesale Furniture Collections first accepts a 50 percent deposit, and then only takes the rest of the payment once a delivery is scheduled.
Up to 2,000 customers from the United States and Canada usually purchase from the company around this time of year – and Kochen is one of six in the company headquarters ready to address their needs.
Despite news of the economic environment, Wholesale Furniture Collections is still striving for a 30 percent year-to-year growth, Kochen said.
“For the bad economy, we’re doing okay.”
Tags: buying wholesale, christina lee, direct-to-consumer, Drexel Heritage, furniture, Kincaid, Lane Home Furnishings, online, Pablo "J.P." Kochen, Wholesale Furniture Collections
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Social Shopping Sites Bring More Opportunity to Small Businesses
Monday, March 31st, 2008
Interesting thing isn’t it? How the internet has completely replaced the need to leave your house to buy things. Shopping malls were once the great meccas of consumerism. What a shame….What’s that you say? They still are? Oh….how is that possible? The internet has EVERYTHING and you don’t even have to get off your duff to get it!
Sarcasm aside, in spite of the incredible convenience the internet affords, people are still flocking to malls around the world to find what they are looking for. So why is that? I thought the internet was supposed to make things easier?
The reason for this according to a recent Inc.com article, is that while shopping can be done individually, it is largely a social activity. We rely on recommendations from our friends and family to locate sources for certain products we may be interested in because we trust these people to give us good leads. In the internet world, all we’ve had to rely on are the search results Google and the like produce for us which, as we savvy internet users have come to find out, is based primarily on variables that do not have the consumer in mind, often producing the most prominent (read "well known") sites first.
We’re in luck though. Smart entrepreneurs have recognized this and are doing something about it. For the first time, we are starting to see websites dedicated to tailoring the online shopping experience directly towards the consumer. Sites such as ThisNext , Shoposphere and Kaboodle are what is called "social shopping" sites. And here’s what they do:
- Features recommendations by friends and like-minded shoppers
- Gives authority users based on quality recommendations
- Display a wider array of smaller (and arguably cooler) brands/businesses
As a small business marketer here’s how and why you can use these sites to grow your business:
- It’s zero cost if you do it right. For example, on ThisNext, if you fill out a "Shopcast" including one of your products, it will likely generate interest and click throughs to your website.
- Again, done correctly, you could also end up forming a mini army of volunteer brand evangelists. Word of mouth is still a very valuable marketing tool. The same applies for the internet.
- You will see not only a rise in web traffic but also in sales. Topo Ranch , a t-shirt company, stated that after posting their original Shopcast, their "daily Web traffic has increased by almost a third and sales have risen 165 percent." The numbers don’t lie.
Just remember to be a responsible member of these communities. Many of them self police anyway but you cannot approach it from a strict marketing standpoint. Don’t be intrusive and abuse the system. Merely develop good relationships and allow it to work for you.
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, Generating More Sales, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online, Rebecca Button, retail, shopping, small business, social networking, social shopping
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The Online Shoppers Cometh - Are You Ready(eth?)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Well friends, it’s finally happened. People are now officially computer savvy. Or at least according to a 2007 Forrester Research report almost 75% of us have learned how to successfully shop online and the the number of late comers to the internet party continues to dwindle each year. That’s great news for online businesses! But it’s also a bit of a double edged sword.
These findings indicate that more and more people are getting familiar with navigating the internet and therefore learning how different websites hinder or facilitate their online shopping experiences. And guess what that means? It means that on the whole, people’s expectations are much higher–and growing alongside their experience.
So what does this mean for you? Well, quite simply it means that your emphasis on getting customers to your site should now be shifting to retaining customers. People are now quite comfortable with turning to the internet to get whatever products they need so you know that the traffic is there. You must now "wow" these customers with your quality of service and streamlined shopping experience. If customers think, even for a split second, that it’s too difficult to find what they’re looking for on your site, they’ll be out of there faster than you can blink.
So do yourself a favor and invest a little time and money into making your website stellar! Visit our Ecommerce and Ebusines Articles for more advice, tips and info!
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, etailers, internet, online, online shopping, Rebecca Button, shopping, tips
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How eProcurement can Work for You: Sourcing Products and Supplies Online
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
As more and more people take advantage of the options that the Internet offers as far as business, new applications are developed. One of the very latest is the concept of e-procurement . This concept involves using software to source products and supplies online for businesses. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of this process.
The Biggest E-Procurement Advantage: Saving Time!
While it may be easier to conduct business today than it ever has been before, the old adage that ‘time is money’ still applies. You want to spend as little time as possible on the smaller details of running a business in order to maximize the time you spend actually making a profit (i.e., selling or producing).
Procuring supplies and products electronically will mean that you shave a lot of valuable time off of the procurement process. You will not have to look all over for sources of products and supplies; instead, the software will provide a list of reputable wholesalers who can make the supplies or products available to you. This can save a lot of time in the future.
For example, a wholesale company has access to your inventory as it is kept on a day to day basis. Instead of you having to call them and order a certain amount of product each time, you specify a level at which an amount of product or supplies will be shipped to you.
Saving Money
Time is money, so when you save time you save money, and using e-procurement means that you will be able to save some real cash. First of all, you will not have to worry about paying an employee or purchasing agent to secure products and supplies for you; the software takes care of this itself, effectively acting as the middleman between the wholesaler and you.
Second, you might find that as you sell more goods, you are offered better prices. Offloading goods is the goal for most wholesalers, so if they can count on your business to provide a steady stream of sales, it is more likely that they will be willing to offer your business discounts, bulk savings, and so on. Paying less means you make more when you sell.
Saving Hassle
There are a lot of considerations to take into account with a business, and using an e-procurement system will mean one less thing you have to think about or decide on in the course of a week. The automation of the supply chain process will allow you to make decisions about frequency of purchase and quantity once a month - or less! - instead of the frequent communication that must occur using a traditional procurement process.
In short, there are several advantages of using e-procurement to source products and supplies. In the end, the advantages all add up to money saved in some form or another, equaling great profits for your business.
Tags: advice, E-Commerce and E-Business, e-procurement, Leeia Ladipoh, online, Product Sourcing, source, sourcing products, tips, wholesale
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