On the Paths - Interim Report

More than a year has passed since I had the courage to open my online store. During this time I have gained some experience. Life now and then threw surprises: both joy and grief. In one week, we had to work hard, in others - to rest and relax.

At the very beginning of my development in the country there was a crisis, but surprisingly to many of my friends, he did not touch me at all. And now I can say that my personal business, albeit slowly but surely, is gaining momentum, expanding both my horizons and the scope of activities.

In this topic, I will summarize some results, I will tell you what a shop on the Paths is after a year of work.
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Main stream

My favorite topic is traveling by car. Being in another city, or even in another country, I have many advantages over those who are deprived of riding an iron horse. I can stay at the place where the board is lower, where the owners are kinder, where there are more amenities. And at the same time I am not deprived of such pleasures as swimming in the sea, sightseeing. On the contrary, I can choose at my own will the place and time. Go to the sea in the bay where no man’s foot has gone. Tour all the markets, choosing goods and souvenirs. To go to a distant temple, not suffering from a bus ride and lack of air conditioning. Go to the quiet and forgotten lake to throw a fishing pole there.

But this kind of travel has an important feature: it is necessary to prepare for it. In general, if we compare the "hotel" tourism and the "survivalist" tourism, then automobile tourism is somewhere on the border between the two.

When traveling by car you need: firstly, equipment, secondly, experience.

I conceived my main site as a means to share experiences and acquire high-quality equipment. Subsequently, the site turned into something else: a mixture of personal blog and store. Perhaps because I did not have enough time to develop a forum on the site. I think that I will solve this problem as much as I can.

I select the equipment myself. It takes a lot of time. Far from all that is represented in the store, passed through my hands. But the general principle I try to keep is this: if I don’t like something, I remove it from the sale. If I like something, I lower the price for this product and start doing tests, I write reports.

This approach makes the reputation of the store. And reputation is very important. Most of my clients come on the advice of their friends and acquaintances who were once purchased from me. If I can have an interesting conversation with a person, discuss trips, gear and exchange experiences, then this is the most important client, the most beloved one.

I try to maintain one more rule: do not sell anything to a person who I don’t like: he is rude and unbecoming. With such a client you will not endure troubles in the future. And it is better to abandon the sale immediately to save your time and energy.

Since the income from the store is almost equal to my previous salary, I am not chasing sales. I try to do good to people. And it brings both profit and pleasure.

Delivery

Believe me, the main problem of the online store is not the delivery of goods, not defective goods and returns.

It is always possible to agree on supplies, find adequate suppliers, and provide convenient working conditions. A product with a large percentage of marriage can not sell at all. Returns can be avoided due to good customer relations, due to good service, due to the absence of marriage. For all the work I had only two returns: one through the fault of the EMS, which requested a huge and impossible amount from the client for the return mail order, the other through the fault of the client who did not close the tent entrance, and it was thoroughly broken by the wind. And then, in the second case, I could not make a return, but did for the sake of good relations with people.

The main problem is the delivery.

There are four common delivery methods: EMS, mail, trucking and courier delivery in Moscow.

I almost refused EMS . EMS did a few bad times. And I did not like their approach. I will tell you a little about how everything happens, and you will understand why EMS is bad.

First: you order a courier to the office to give him the parcel. The courier arrives only the next day, he is soaked up, he is paid only 30 rubles for leaving, he is in a hurry to drive around as many people as possible. He takes the goods from you, and you still can not be sure that all documents are executed correctly. The best way out: take the mobile phone number from the courier and pay him personally. When I need to send EMS, I call the courier, and he comes to me within a couple of hours.

Second: the parcel does not always come to the customer's home. In large cities, perhaps, they are delivered to the house and handed in hand. But in the towns and villages everything is different. Your client has to cut hundreds of kilometers to the post office in order to receive the goods. He will do the same in the case of delivery by mail. But by mail it will cost him less.

Third: on the EMS website it is indicated that they charge up to 10 percent for a reverse transfer of money. Impudent lie. I had cases when the percent for transfer reached 50 percent. And my client swore.

Mail works well if it works well with mail. Despite the abundance of post offices, they all die from queues. With a salary of 12-15 thousand rubles (and this is Moscow), post offices suffer from a lack of labor. There are two ways out: you can come to the post office at night when there is no one, and you can agree with the girl on the other side of the window. A girl can pick up your packages and arrange them yourself. Naturally, for some extra charge. And finally, all the papers can be formed on the computer. I can share this program. Here is the link . Initially, we found this program on the network, and it behaves a little strangely. Please note: because of the glitchiness of small-scale products, because of the fact that we did not finish the program to perfection, some pictures are moving down there. But everything is printed correctly, even if something is wrong on the computer screen.

Delivery in Moscow is easier to delegate. Now on the market there is a large set of companies that are engaged in delivery in Moscow, many of them offer quite pleasant working conditions. Some provide additional services, such as cash services. I personally like working with the Axiomus company. Thank you guys. With you comfortable. There are, however, several problems: Axiomus still lacks a software interface like SOAP or something like that; there is no branch in Izmailovo; There is no possibility to make delivery on the same day.

Own courier is now very necessary, but there is no pleasant person on the horizon who can be trusted with cargo, money and conversations. After going through a few candidates, I have not yet ventured to hire someone to deliver. Moreover, the load is quite heavy, and you need a man with a car.

Delivery in Russia is relatively safe with the company Autotrading . Other companies have a number of drawbacks: they do not work at night, they crumple parcels, lose goods. Some podvorovyvaet. With Auto Trading, I have not had any problems yet.

Shop in real

This spring I wanted to open a real store. With a counter, showcase, seller, etc. Everything turned a little different.

My hotel was like this: I need a room, there will be a seller, there must be a clearing in front of the shop in order to lay tents on it, show them to customers. In Izmailovo district it is quite possible.

However, I could not find such a room at an affordable price. Could not find an adequate seller. My product is quite specific, they need to be able to trade. In addition, you need to be responsible, to be able to bargain, to invest your soul in the sales process. This is a very large set of requirements. As I could not find myself a good courier, so I could not find a good seller.

Accumulated money I did not have enough to purchase the range. At first I thought that the store could trade in catalogs. Something is on the showcase, something is painted in the catalogs and comes under the order from the warehouse. But the store still has to be a store. The range should be wide enough so that a person can immediately equip for LDPE. This is quite difficult to provide. Here we need money.

It was thought to take someone into the business of fifty-fifi. This is quite an interesting thought, and I think of it. Sometimes I think. But not often.

I decided to start small: to provide at least a pickup point. I rented a small office in the basement of a former geological expedition. Twelve thousand rubles for 16 square meters, Internet, furniture, a clearing in front of the house. What more could you want? And the truth: the office pays for itself one hundred percent. It is conveniently located, quiet, calm. In the 30-degree heat is good enough and without air conditioning. The two-day search for the office on the Internet turned out to be a great success.

Now in the office, I am half the time. You know, I sometimes like to deliver goods on their own.

Wholesale

The fact that I can deliver goods in bulk, was discovered almost immediately after opening a business. But I started to form the right attitude towards wholesale deliveries only recently. The fact is that the wholesale scheme is very different from retail. The wholesale market has long been divided among several people, and it is quite difficult to enter it without proper preparation. Even with some savings, starting to trade in bulk is a serious step. We need a certain view on things.

First and foremost, an understanding of the wholesale approach is formed when you visit the shoes of a retailer. The retailer wants convenience and comfort in work. He has to provide not one or two orders per day, but about ten to twenty. You need to pick up the goods, collect the goods, arrange the goods and sell the goods. This is a whole scheme.

Gradually, of course, I got used to each of its suppliers. I found the means, often software, so that you can work comfortably and without problems. For example, I wrote under price lists of each supplier parsers of availability and price layouts.

But the convenience lies not only in this.

Availability and prices are changed at the wholesaler almost every day. A good wholesaler has a base, which is thrown off as an XLS file to you quite regularly and without special reminders. An excellent wholesaler has on the site either a summary table for each day, or a SOAP interface to the database, or it can provide some other solution. But in this sense I have not yet met any excellent wholesalers. Well, if there is xls.

Being a wholesaler, I developed fairly user-friendly interfaces to my database. Over time, I improve and refine them. I plan, for example, to make an XML-output of information from the database.

Selection of goods is the second task that I have yet to solve. At the moment I have almost completed the development of the interface for the selection of goods. It is assumed that wholesale buyers will independently form applications through this database, sorting the goods by virtual boxes - one for each of their customers. I will pack the goods in my warehouse, stick labels and give to the customer not one big jumble of boxes, but quality assembled boxes, on which it is already written, to whom and where they will go.

Assistance in the delivery is also necessary. And the solution to this problem is now also under development. Agree, it is much easier for me to ship thirty boxes with final addresses to Axiomus than to turn the “I - Retail - Delivery - Customer” scheme. Of course, in this case, as a wholesaler, I will take a certain amount from each order, but the retail store will not need to pick up the goods at all, neither sort them nor deliver them. By the way, you can stick a leaflet of a retail store on each box.

There are a lot of tasks similar to those described. But they are all solved. The main thing is to do good to people.

Production

This idea appeared six months ago when I began to cooperate with New Zealand, namely with the firm Kiwidition.

Tactical equipment in Russia is in rather great demand, but unfortunately there are very few quality items, and those that are, for example, staff uniforms, have a very high price.

Kiwidition produces very good backpacks and bags, it has a branch in Russia. And not to catch the wave would be for me just a crime against all airsoft and survivors. In principle, this topic is in demand in the IT environment. And, if you ask, somehow I will tell in detail the principles of selecting a convenient configuration of a backpack for an IT-maniac.

In short: a backpack is taken with a special MOLLE system, which allows you to fasten numerous pouches and organizers. The result is that a person, like a US soldier, can carry a large load, quickly configure a set of wearable things, it is convenient to use these things without even removing the backpack from the shoulders.

This is what caused my next breakthrough: at the moment I have taken on some of the tasks of Kiwidition: small wholesale trade, expansion of production, search for marketing routes further - to Europe.

For three days I made a small site http://kiwidition-opt.ru , where you can order products both wholesale and retail. The site will gradually be updated with new products, new articles and original solutions.

Now I am constantly in search of people, money, materials and machines. The head is spinning, but even stronger - from its own success.

I will tell you in more detail what production is, how to organize it, and what rakes I have come to later - when I can form the right words and phrases in my head.