My first business project: Late 2014, I started a cleaning/janitorial service. I partnered up with a contractor who had all his own equipment and experience in this field. We agreed I would handle the sales, business, and accounting part of it and he would handle the production part of it. Split 70/30 his way. We got a few jobs mostly from people that I already new. Growing the business proved to be tricky since I have a full time job and doing sales for the cleaning company requires me to make apointments and site surveys. None the less we currently have 1 contract and I have money coming in each month without much effort than sending an invoice each month. And checking in with the client.
Obstacle: To get fast and major growth I would need to quit my day time job and devote most of my time to this. Which would be fine if I was single but I'm the breadwinner and responsible for my wife and son so I can't take leaps and risks like this. So for now the business is on auto pilot.
Second project: Mid 2015 I came up with a product to sell on online markets and local shops. It's a holster for pens and knifes. This idea was birthed as a personal necessity and figured more people would be needing something like this.
Obstacle: I hit a wall when I looked at what it would cost to manufacture it, so I put it aside for about 5 months. Then after giving it more thought I decided to contact a leather craftsmen to have one made. It was a functioning product but I wasn't too happy with it. I'm currently in the process of getting a second one made by a different craftsman who is willing to work with me on building this product to my desired spec. Once I get it to to the desired model I will start advertising it and selling them online and doing presales.
Third attempt September 2015: an Online business. With the work schedule that I carry I figured that ecommerce would be the best option because of the flexibility it offers. I can build a website and post products on my own time and they would sell overnight while I slept. Funny how this worked out but while I was looking for the perfect nitch my wife was already selling her unwanted clothes on Facebook. Via our neighborhoods' buy and sell page. I would come home and she had bags laid out with people's names on them already sold and waiting for pick up. That's when the idea hit me. I spoke to my wife and presented her with the idea of starting an online resale shop, where people could buy and sell clothes. She liked it, and we decided to move forward. I began to do some market research wrote up a business plan and built a website and set up social sites. We did some shopping at thrift stores to build up an inventory. Started making a few sales via eBay and Facebook. Sales were slow first couple of months. Then we found out what types/brands of clothes sell better and began focusing our buying on that. The business has been growing little by little we now average 2 sales a day and we've even had 2 International sales. Margins range widely from 50% to 90%. By mid February we broke even on start up costs and inventory costs then started gaining profit. We closed out the month of February with 1600 in revenue and a little over 500 of net income. Not anything impressive but for us it's very exciting to see this money being created and growing. We are now looking at how we can double that amount this month.
Up to this point I've been tracking all our financials with a Numbers spreadsheet that I created. Also keeping record of our customers. My wife and I agreed that once we made enough money to pay for an LLC we would do that this is were we are now. Once we do this well be able to open up business checking accounts and keep our earning separate from our personal bank account.
Our goal for this year is to earn enough to open up up a store front. We would still sell online but I believe that having a physical store would also do really well for the local market and if successful we could open up more or grow in this way. Also we are seeing how selling online is made up of a lot of processes and if we want to scale we are gonna have to systematize our buying and selling process so that we can hire out.
Thank you for reading, I am open to suggestions and advise.
I will keep posting whenever there is something to report.
At the moment I'm looking for information related to increasing our inventory without having to spend a fortune up front(example: drop shipping) and driving traffic to our site(more eyeballs on our products)
Hiring a virtual assistant to post/manage new clothes that gets added to all the online markets.
Obstacle: To get fast and major growth I would need to quit my day time job and devote most of my time to this. Which would be fine if I was single but I'm the breadwinner and responsible for my wife and son so I can't take leaps and risks like this. So for now the business is on auto pilot.
Second project: Mid 2015 I came up with a product to sell on online markets and local shops. It's a holster for pens and knifes. This idea was birthed as a personal necessity and figured more people would be needing something like this.
Obstacle: I hit a wall when I looked at what it would cost to manufacture it, so I put it aside for about 5 months. Then after giving it more thought I decided to contact a leather craftsmen to have one made. It was a functioning product but I wasn't too happy with it. I'm currently in the process of getting a second one made by a different craftsman who is willing to work with me on building this product to my desired spec. Once I get it to to the desired model I will start advertising it and selling them online and doing presales.
Third attempt September 2015: an Online business. With the work schedule that I carry I figured that ecommerce would be the best option because of the flexibility it offers. I can build a website and post products on my own time and they would sell overnight while I slept. Funny how this worked out but while I was looking for the perfect nitch my wife was already selling her unwanted clothes on Facebook. Via our neighborhoods' buy and sell page. I would come home and she had bags laid out with people's names on them already sold and waiting for pick up. That's when the idea hit me. I spoke to my wife and presented her with the idea of starting an online resale shop, where people could buy and sell clothes. She liked it, and we decided to move forward. I began to do some market research wrote up a business plan and built a website and set up social sites. We did some shopping at thrift stores to build up an inventory. Started making a few sales via eBay and Facebook. Sales were slow first couple of months. Then we found out what types/brands of clothes sell better and began focusing our buying on that. The business has been growing little by little we now average 2 sales a day and we've even had 2 International sales. Margins range widely from 50% to 90%. By mid February we broke even on start up costs and inventory costs then started gaining profit. We closed out the month of February with 1600 in revenue and a little over 500 of net income. Not anything impressive but for us it's very exciting to see this money being created and growing. We are now looking at how we can double that amount this month.
Up to this point I've been tracking all our financials with a Numbers spreadsheet that I created. Also keeping record of our customers. My wife and I agreed that once we made enough money to pay for an LLC we would do that this is were we are now. Once we do this well be able to open up business checking accounts and keep our earning separate from our personal bank account.
Our goal for this year is to earn enough to open up up a store front. We would still sell online but I believe that having a physical store would also do really well for the local market and if successful we could open up more or grow in this way. Also we are seeing how selling online is made up of a lot of processes and if we want to scale we are gonna have to systematize our buying and selling process so that we can hire out.
Thank you for reading, I am open to suggestions and advise.
I will keep posting whenever there is something to report.
At the moment I'm looking for information related to increasing our inventory without having to spend a fortune up front(example: drop shipping) and driving traffic to our site(more eyeballs on our products)
Hiring a virtual assistant to post/manage new clothes that gets added to all the online markets.
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