Hey Everyone,
I began a website last February selling aftermarket parts, accessories and apparel for recreational motorsports and things have been going well. I initially started the site with $400 and at the time did not need to stock anything as I could drop ship everything. I set my first year goal to do $200,000 in sales which I met and I feel this is very good since I have not paid for any advertising as of yet. Most of the items we sell average 10% profit margin and apparel gets us anywhere from 15%-40% depending on the item.
I have some questions because at this point, I am having issues fulfilling orders because I cannot stock enough merchandise due to my financial status (I am 25 and have bad credit from when I was 21) and I do not have any friends or family with the funds to help me expand and I cannot get a loan due to my personal credit. I could keep dropshipping things but I will never grow my sales because products are taking too long to ship. Right now, I have to wait 2 days until after a customer pays before I can order and ship their product from a distributor. The other problem with this is that if someone orders several items and they are from different distributors, it does not look professional to have 4 items on an order drop shipped from 4 different locations and arrive on 4 seperate days. Due to this, our shipping times are just not what they should be.
So in order for me to expand this, I at least need to have $x.xx on hand so I can drop ship items the same day an order is placed rather than having to wait 2 days to first order and ship a product or I need to stock items. And if I am going to stock items, then customers should be able to walk in to make a purchase. Some suppliers we would like to carry that we get product requests for, need photos etc of a retail location but since we are located close to some of these companies, they would also have reps coming in.
Basically, I would just like to know what your thoughts are on how I can do one of the above to expand this business into something more?
I began a website last February selling aftermarket parts, accessories and apparel for recreational motorsports and things have been going well. I initially started the site with $400 and at the time did not need to stock anything as I could drop ship everything. I set my first year goal to do $200,000 in sales which I met and I feel this is very good since I have not paid for any advertising as of yet. Most of the items we sell average 10% profit margin and apparel gets us anywhere from 15%-40% depending on the item.
I have some questions because at this point, I am having issues fulfilling orders because I cannot stock enough merchandise due to my financial status (I am 25 and have bad credit from when I was 21) and I do not have any friends or family with the funds to help me expand and I cannot get a loan due to my personal credit. I could keep dropshipping things but I will never grow my sales because products are taking too long to ship. Right now, I have to wait 2 days until after a customer pays before I can order and ship their product from a distributor. The other problem with this is that if someone orders several items and they are from different distributors, it does not look professional to have 4 items on an order drop shipped from 4 different locations and arrive on 4 seperate days. Due to this, our shipping times are just not what they should be.
So in order for me to expand this, I at least need to have $x.xx on hand so I can drop ship items the same day an order is placed rather than having to wait 2 days to first order and ship a product or I need to stock items. And if I am going to stock items, then customers should be able to walk in to make a purchase. Some suppliers we would like to carry that we get product requests for, need photos etc of a retail location but since we are located close to some of these companies, they would also have reps coming in.
Basically, I would just like to know what your thoughts are on how I can do one of the above to expand this business into something more?
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