I recently got a question from one of my subscribers who wants to start her own clothing brand. She was planning to bulk import products from Aliexpress or Alibaba and then sell them on her own website, while having her own stock of products at home.
However, she was scared that she would run out of stock too soon and reordering products from China takes around 30 days.
She was also afraid to invest so much money upfront without knowing for sure that she will be able to sell the products. Buying 200 products at let’s say $10 each, would be an upfront investment of $2,000.
If she can’t sell those products, she looses $2,000.
Plus she’ll be sitting on a bunch of jeans, pullovers and t-shirts that that will be lying around in her apartment. So her concerns are totally legitimate and it’s smart not to blindly invest a bunch of money upfront without knowing for your you’ll be able to break even or make a profit.
What I’ recommend doing in this situation is starting with a drop shipping fulfilment model to test the waters and then gradually transition to having your own stock if things turn out well.
This way there’s no upfront investment needed.
Instead, you can test the waters and see if your plan works out for you in real-life. If you’re able to generate consistent sales on your store with a drop shipping model, then you can safely transition to having your own stock without any risk or upfront investment.
You’ll also have a general feeling for the demand you’re going to need to fulfil, so you can order and import the right amount of products.
There’s many e-commerce businesses that started as simple drop shipping businesses. I even have friends who launched successful drop shipping businesses and transitioned to having their own stock after a few months. The key is to first get your proof of concept, and only then invest a bunch of money and bulk import the products.
So that’s my advice for pretty much anyone who wants to start with e-commerce: Use the drop shipping fulfilment model before getting your own stock to reduce risk, save money and safely test the waters.
And once you hit a home run, import as much as you want.
From that point on, creating your own brand is going to be easy since you already have a store that’s generating traffic and sales for you.
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