Which price ?

How much should it cost?

The decision is clear - product prices are in Lei. But how much? Fixed costs, one time costs, running costs ... And I am neither a bookkeeper nor a controller. I know that I have to take into account:
- purchase price
- delivery costs
- cost of packaging
- currency fluctuation
- ...and for sure some more, which I didn't

Can you imagine how much it takes to calculate the costs for all 500 different products. So, Gerda, keep it simple - I defined one formula for all the articles imported from abroad and one for those which I'm buying in the country. Sounds perhaps a little bit strange, but I didn't see any alternative.

For the products where I have competitors, I made comparisons - just to check if my price is a realistic one, and the conclusion: yes, but we are cheaper ;) I thought about this fact a couple of days, thinking if I should change my formula. And I didn't. Perhaps in half a year I will do it, but not now.

At the end of the year, I will know how wrong I calculated.

ToDo's:

• calculate fixcosts
• calculate running costs
• define product price

Conclusions:

• one person can not do everything
• one person is not specialist for everything

Which currency?

Euro or Lei or both?

Here in Romania, a lot of companies have the product prices in Euro. And makes sense ... you don't have risks regarding currency rate fluctuation. On the other hand, for me it's very strange to see and buy not in local currency.

It's clear, a lot of discussions followed to this topic, and a couple of ideas came up:
- to show both:  Euro and the calculated Lei price (on daily basis updated) for each article; meaning an extreme fluctuation in the local currency
- to show only Euro and only when ordering, the updated Lei price should appear
- to show only Lei - updated on daily basis
- to show only Lei, without daily update

I've chosen the last version. Reason: it's a romanian Online Shop and I don't agree with daily price changes  (that's nonsense from my point of view).

Now also my accountant is much more happy. It would not be very easy, if the products don't have a fix price for at  least half an year ;)

ToDo's:

• decide the currency 

Conclusions:

• it's a decision you can not change every day
• consult the accountant before deciding

List of Articles

How lucky - we have Excel !

The list whith the products planne for the OnlineShop, I have for a couple of time. Now I have to put into the Excel all other informations, which are needed, so that after the upload everything fits.  And it's a lot of work. A lot!! Days and nights I had to work on it, starting screaming because it didn't want to end. By the way, the upload of the articles and photos was part of the functionality requirements.

My Excelsheet for the upload of all articles, believe it or not, has 43 columns and 500 rows! Article number, product name, description, price, recommended products, category, subcategory, and so on and so on  .... and all these things have to be defined and written down. Why do I have so many products? Why did I chose all these stuff? Each piece needs to be weight (needed for the calculation of the delivery costs), supplier product number, different attributes (colour, length, width ...). And all the photos, photo 1, photo 2, decoration idea .... it took time, it took a lot of time to put everything in the Excel. And I got bored of it. Lucky that it's finished!

Then I presented it to CANDOO. They were almost shocked how many colums my sheet has. Meaning automatically a lot of time for the upload procedure. But, as you can imagine, we finally managed it. and all the informations are now in the system.

I didnt' like this part of the project at all. Boring work which has to be done :(

ToDo's:

• define all the informations for each article
• make photos for everything
• define recommended products

Conclusions:

• you can not have enough photos. Test photo size
• description must be short and very clear
• this task is completely underestimated

Storage place

Where to store? How?

When you start thinking of an OnlineShop, do you think immediately also of the storage place? Fantastic! I myself didn't. And if you've 500 different products you need a lot of place or you organize it perfect. I've chosen the second alternative.  To rent somewhere a place for the stock, was out of discussion.

We have a small mansarde using it for shoes, tools, hoover and things nobody needs - and this had to be changed. It had to be isolated (too cold), my husband build a lot of shelves and now each product has it's own place. Everything in apple-pie order, labels everywhere, and I can find immediately the WindowColor bottle, napkin, pearls, or ribbons. or  ...

For sure we have to rethink everything, if we start with a new handmade technique and with new products, but at the moment it's the best solution.

I have my own warehouse now. What I've forgotten to say, people higher than 1.60 have problems to stand up straight. As I said ... it's mine ;-)

ToDo's

• organize/build storage place

Conclusions:

• start early thinking about it

First stock order

Well stocked / Out of stock / Overstock

I know what to order, I know where to order, the BIGGEST question now: How much from each product? To be well stocked is the idea, not to run out of stock immediately but otherwise not to get an overstock, thinking also of the money I have to spend and the storage place, which exists.

How much Window Color do you order? 67 different colors, and each of them you should have on stock. How many napkins do you order? 270 different models planned to have at the beginning. Also a lot of accessories you can use in the different techniques. How much of each product? And the point is, you will never be sure that you do the right thing. You order to much or not enough. And no book tells you how to do it correct.

It took weeks until the decision has been taken. And I still have no idea how to do it better. There exists a lot of formulas for stock calculations, but in this case they were useless. I was feeling very insecure, but finally, listening to my husband : "Order what your sense and sensibility says. You can not do more.", I ordered. And I think it was not bad. We are well stocked, and not running out of stock to often.

ToDo's:

• place first order for all planned products

Conclusions:

• not insufficent and not to much. Find the balance
• don't hesitate, order early. You need the products for descriptions and pictures 

Blog versus Forum

Blog, Forum ... which one?

At this part of my famous project I felt out-dated. And I didn't like this feeling at all. Who likes it?

  

I had no blog and didn't read any blogs, so I've been automatically against an OnlineShop blog . I had "to fight" against all around me, people from the marketing company didn't accept my opinion and to cut a long story short, I lost the fight and we have a blog now. I even started writing one - as you can see/read ;-)

Regarding the Forum part, everybody was surprized, that I want to have one. "Forum's are out, are not used anymore". I didn't accept this statement. My idea/dream is a community of tinker fans, people who are publishing photos of their own tinkered things, a community of people with the same passion for doing yourself stuff. And that's why I wanted to have one.

If you take a look at my OnlineShop you will see that now we have both: Blog and Forum and everybody is happy. Now I need only the people to read, write and comment on it.

ToDo's:

• decision Blog or/and Forum
• define the recurrence of the posts

Conclusions:

• the administration of the Blog and of the Forum takes a lot of time

 

Distribution possibilities

How do I send the parcel?

Post, clear. But only with the post? No. Also with the courier service. Which one? 

Next investigation started. Which courier exists? Which is their delivery area? How expensive are they? Distance price, weight price, delivery time, reputation ... variables which I should take into account, and there are a lot of companies driving around. At least I've chosen one, NEMO Expres. 

One more contract to negociate and sign. And time keeps on slipping slipping slipping

Lucky that in the list of application functionalities these points were included: client possibility to chose from different delivery modalities,  delivery cost calculation depending of the delivery type, parcel weight and value.

ToDo's:

• define delivery modalities
• define the delivery cost calculation 
• contract with courier service

Conclusions:

• take client expectations and needs into account
• if no fix price defined, each product has to be weight. Takes time!