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Opening an Online Shop, Would this work?

Hi All,
This is the situation i'm interested in....

I work for a shop that sells cake specialist items and i was debating whether i should set up an online shop, so i buy the products from them and then sell them myself.

Do you think it would work if i was to put all of the items onto the online store and when someone buys it i then source the product and send them off?

Or is it best to have all of the products in hand to be able to send straight away?

I'm slightly confused as of what to do as i am limited with storage space and supplies....

Is it even worth selling online to make some sort of profit?

Any personal experience is welcomed as i am just curious as to how it all works. I don't really want to list on ebay it seems like a hassle...Not sure.

Reply 1

balotelli12

You'd only sell to people daft enough to not buy from your supplier!

Reply 2

russellsteapot

Ignoring the other issues with having an online shop, and focusing specifically on your supply chain, it depends how quickly you're able to source the product. You'll obviously carry less risk by not buying a stock of items you might never sell, but if you're not able to offer decent delivery times, nobody will want to buy from you anyway. Do you get bulk discounts for buying in advance, or anything like that?

It's worth doing, but it's much more difficult than just selling stuff on the Internet - you actually have to set yourself up, market it, get people visiting the website, offer a competitively-priced product, try to appear like a legitimate supplier, etc. The Internet is a big place, and it's entirely possible for a website with insufficient marketing to go unseen by anyone for months.

As it's clearly a first time experiment, maybe try it by advertising the items online and only sourcing when you receive orders; there's no point exposing yourself to risk if you're not sure how well it'll go, and you could always begin building a stock of items if it takes off.

Reply 3

455409

As with any internet based business you are better off offering something users can and want to view for free and earning your money off the ad revenue.