Week 1 Recap
This weekly recap is a part of the “Experiencing the Digital Marketplace” experiment involving creating and advertising for a dropshipping website for the duration of December 2020. If something you see piques your interest or if you want to learn more about what I accomplished, feel free to look around!
What I Did: Starting Wide but Finishing Small
Preparation
I decided to create a dropshipping website called The Brawned Don. After spending an hour figuring out what dropshipping was, what made it different from wholesaling, and how to do it, I created and filtered through a list of possible drop shipper and wholesale websites, sellers, and products. I first created this list in Evernote but switched to Google Docs because Evernote only opens website URLs in Safari and I use Chrome.
Finding a Supplier & a Store
After going through each and every one of these resources, I decided that I either didn’t want to use them or they focused on wholesale purchases. I decided to go through some websites I listed for informational purposes (such as learning what dropshipping is and different retailers). After looking over several options, I decided on Spocket.
Spocket is an online dropshipping supplier that connects sellers to buyers. It’s easy to use and focuses on the US, North American, and European sellers. I wanted to use only ‘Made in the USA’ products so this seemed more than ideal for me. Also, they provide a 2-week free trial for newcomers and provide you with several website integration options like Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and AliScraper.
I ended up choosing Shopify.
After choosing Shopify for my store and Spocket for my drop shipper, I combed through Spocket trying to find potential products for my shop.
Finding Products
My main focus was to find an area I’m somewhat knowledgeable about, safe products, and based and made in the USA companies. After thinking for a while I decided on Men’s self-care products primarily beard oil, balm, combs, soap, and candles.
Originally I wanted to carry less than 8 total products up found several products and companies I thought are unique. I now have 31 options (several products offer different sizes and scent variations). I have not used each brand’s products, yet, but I am looking into how to order samples.
I created a Google Sheet with each of the products I want to sell, the seller, the company, inventory quantity, the cost, shipping costs, and their recommended sale prices. This allows me to quickly see all the products I’ve selected thus far and determine whether I can offer a small discount to customers (most likely through a subscription landing page).
What I Still Need to Do
I still haven’t determined concretely who my target audience will be other than people with facial hair who want to support small US businesses that sell healthier products than those you find in a convenience store. I haven’t started my store webpage, but Spocket and Shopify allow you to use pre-made descriptions from the drop sellers and place them on your webpage.
I also need to create a company logo, company email, a Facebook page, and an Instagram page to look professional and start advertising using Facebook Ads.
Since I did not make the website or really anything outside of collecting data, I will not be posting a Loom for this week.
