investment, product, stock-options, e-commerce, online-storeI’m building a unique fashion brand. It will be an e-commerce product essentially selling clothes and accessories to women between ages 19-27. I am curious about a few things. I have created my categories such as Clothes, Tops, Pants etc.
Now I want to know some advice on buying my stock and merchandising. Do I buy massive amounts of quantity and open and launch my store; I don’t want people to see empty categories either and at the same time I don’t want to buy to much stock due to capital.
What can I do merchandise and buy controlled stock that will allow me to grow and not cost huge amounts of investment. Suppliers are all asking for high volume minimum orders and labeling and branding is expensive too
The one concept I’m aware of for starting out such a business is based on drop-shipping.
It basically works like this
This has the advantage that you don’t have stock.
I know of a fashion retailer that has chosen this path successfully (now shipping to multiple countries). Once they got this going they started to build up stock.
You might find good stuff for selling physical goods online in the TropicalMBA podcast.
Check out massdrop.com and their business model. I think it might help you. It is centered around communities of people are fans of certain types of products, and who want buying power to buy higher end products, cheaper. They offer incentives to people as they opt in, and the earlier you opt in, the cheaper price you get as other opt in (based on classes)
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