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Crystal Thoughts - Product and Vendor Focus
As the owner of GiftsForYou.Biz, the following is an outline showing, in my own experience, why product focus is not only a good thing, but nearly essential.
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As the owner of GiftsForYou.Biz, the following is an outline showing, in my own experience, why product focus is not only a good thing, but nearly essential, especially for small businesses where vendors can be volatile.
When I began promoting products on the web in July 2002, I thought I would be the rare exception to the rule in that I did not feel I had to specialize in any one type of product. I signed up for a service that offered over 2,000 products, and my web development savvy and I set out to promote them all. And I did. I even created a way to check inventory on all these products. A system setup so well, others members paid a small fee for semi-weekly inventory lists. But alas, not only did my inventory system fall into the wind due to vendor policies, but the entire vendor fell into a tornado due to various negative factors. Luckily for me, I had already found two other vendors that I was able to lean on while breaking away from my initial vendor and all their calamities.
What is read here is, lucky for me I learned to focus on a particular product line. I took the time to figure out what I would like to represent, did some research on whether there was a market for it, and began my search for vendors selling such a product line. I got somewhat lucky in that the two vendors I did find, I found without having many requirements. They drop-shipped using my company name, so I signed up. Now down from 3 vendors to 2, it wasn't until one of those two remaining vendors actually went out of business, did I find myself trying to find another one to fill the void. I had already optimized and promoted that particular product catalog for a few years, so it was getting good traffic, and I really didn't want to lose that. But I found that finding a vendor wasn't as easy as it seemed to be when I first set out. Still not wanting to lose the web work I had put into my out-of-business vendor's product line, I left the catalog open and let my human visitors know that the search for a new vendor was underway (and that can be somewhat tricky, because you don't want your customers thinking you are going out of business too).
After that, the requirements I formed for inquiring about potential vendors led itself to quite a little list. Fortunately, I was able to find vendors that matched my criteria. Although, finding them didn't come without time consuming research and communication. The good ones though – they are typically quite friendly, somewhat responsive, and fairly informative/liberal with their responses to your questions. There is a key however, to inquiring on whether a company meets your criteria. If you ask too many questions, the vendor most likely, as many people will do, put it on their list of things to do because they know it'll take 15-30 minutes to reply. If you ask too few questions, you could end up bugging the living daylight out of them, only to find out 3 e-mails later that they're missing an essential factor.
What's my list of criteria for GiftsForYou.Biz? If "is it plugged in" is the first question for malfunctioning equipment, the first question for determining if a vendor is right for your business should have already been taken care of in your search: Do they provide the products you specialize in? In the case of GiftsForYou.Biz, that would be crystal. The second question is whether or not they drop-ship? Although storing inventory isn't an issue for me, going to the Post Office or UPS (or even having them pick up) isn't practical. So, I need for my vendor to be able to ship the product for me. The third question then falls into place with drop-shipping in whether they will ship using my company name. Other questions after those then fall in to more business policy type questions. For instance, which shipping methods do they use, what is their standard delivery time frames, do they ship internationally, do they ship to Canada, what type of shipping costs do they use, and what is their ordering process? What are their rush shipping options, or do they even provide rush shipping? What are their return and damaged product policies? Other questions might include how I might know when products are out of stock? How do they handle bulk orders? Do they provide note/gift cards or gift wrapping?
Some of the questions you might ask, and even perhaps all the questions you ask might be clearly outlined on their site, I have found it’s still better to ask, if for the very least to establish communication prior to signing up (which sometimes you can't avoid). Typically I will even pay for one or more small items (after establishing their usability) to get a feel for their product quality. In dealing with drop-shippers, your company reputation is largely in your vendor’s hands. Although you will maintain communication with your customers, a lot of times your communication is based on the information you get from your vendor. If they're unresponsive, you will find yourself stringing your customer along, thus losing their trust. That then leads to a downhill trend and the potential failure of all your hard-earned work.
Focusing on a specific product line will not only help to narrow your search for vendors, it will also help in your marketing efforts as well. You may find that if you carry more than one product line, you don’t really fit well when being “categorized” in and around the web. In addition, should your multi-product line vendor, for whatever reason, become unusable, you will find that finding a replacement vendor a bit easier for one product line, than finding a vendor that covers all the product lines you were promoting. Not to mention, these multi-product line companies, the good ones anyway, are few and far between. And we’ll save product saturation for another discussion.
Finding and choosing a good product line, along with finding and choosing a good vendor, are both as important as finding and choosing your web host, payment processor, online catalog, shopping cart, and other technological aspects of starting your online business. Information on these topics are covered more in my "Web Site Promotion Tips" article located at:
http://giftsforyou.biz/websitebuildingtips.shtml
Keith D Commiskey
http://kdcinfo.com
http://giftsforyou.biz - Crystal Figurines - Crystal Gifts
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