Month: May 2021

Shopify Tutorial

What is Inventory Management? A Guide for Retailers

May 12, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/retail/inventory-management

I used to dread the word “inventory.” As a part-time cashier in high school, the word meant only one thing: lots and lots of counting. It’s common for businesses to reconcile their inventory at the end of the year by counting all their physical stock and making sure it matches what’s on the books. For big companies like the one I used to work for, this requires everyone’s help.

These days, I understand just how important solid inventory management is. Inventory is a placeholder for money. You paid money for your inventory, and you’ll get that money back (and then some) when you sell it.

Holding inventory ties up a lot of cash. That’s why effective inventory management is crucial for growing a company. Just like cash flow, it can make or break your business.

Table of Contents

  • What is inventory management?
  • Why is inventory management important?
  • Inventory management saves you money
  • Inventory management improves cash flow
  • 11 essential inventory management techniques
  • An inventory management system can work for a small business
  • Take control of your inventory
  • Inventory management FAQs

What is inventory management?

Inventory management is the act of keeping track of your ecommerce company’s stocked goods and monitoring their weight, dimensions, amounts, and location. The goal of inventory management is to minimize the cost of holding inventory by helping business owners know when it’s time to replenish products or buy more materials to manufacture them.

What is inventory control?

Inventory control can be used interchangeably with inventory management. Essentially, it refers to when you have control over your stock, typically due to effective inventory management processes. It’s much easier to maintain control of your inventory with centralized inventory management.

Why inventory management is important

Effective inventory management is essential for ensuring a business has enough stock on hand to meet customer demand. If inventory management is not handled properly it can result in a business either losing money on potential sales that can’t be filled or wasting money by stocking too much inventory. Inventory management also helps your business in a number of other ways.

Inventory management saves you money

1. Avoid spoilage

If you’re selling a product that has an expiry date, like food or makeup, there’s a very real chance it will go bad if you don’t sell it in time. Managing inventory effectively helps you avoid unnecessary spoilage.

2. Avoid dead stock

Dead stock is stock that can no longer be sold but not necessarily because it expired—it could have gone out of season, out of style, or otherwise become irrelevant. By adopting a diligent strategy, you can address this costly inventory mistake.

3. Save on storage costs

Warehousing is often a variable cost, meaning it fluctuates based on how much product you’re storing. When you store too much product at once or end up with a product that’s difficult to sell, your storage costs will go up. Avoiding this will save you money.

LEARN MORE: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fulfillment Services

Inventory management improves cash flow

Not only is good inventory management more cost-efficient, it improves cash flow in other ways too. Remember, inventory is product you’ve likely already paid for with cash (checks and electronic transfers included), and you’re going to sell it for cash, but while it’s sitting in your warehouse, it’s definitely not cash. Try paying your landlord in dog collars or phone cases.

This is why it’s important to factor inventory into your cash flow management. Inventory directly affects sales (by dictating how much you can sell) and expenses (by dictating what you have to buy). Both of these elements factor heavily into how much cash you have on hand. In short, better inventory management leads to better cash flow management.

When you have a solid inventory system you’ll know exactly how much product you have in real time, and based on sales you can project when you’ll run out so you can replace it before then. Not only does this help ensure you don’t lose sales (critical for cash flow), it also lets you plan ahead for buying more by ensuring you have enough cash set aside.

Money spent on inventory is money that is not spent on growth. Manage it wisely.

11 essential inventory management techniques

Inventory management is a highly customizable part of doing business. The optimal inventory control method is different for each company.

However, every business should strive to remove human error from inventory management as much as possible, which means taking advantage of inventory management software. If you run your business with Shopify, inventory management is already built in.

Regardless of the system you use, the following will improve your inventory management—and cash flow.

  • Set par levels
  • First in, first out (FIFO)
  • Manage relationships
  • Contingency planning
  • Regular auditing
  • Prioritize with ABC
  • Accurate forecasting
  • Last in, first out (LIFO)
  • Just-in-time (JIT)
  • Safety stock
  • Reorder point

1. Set par levels

Make inventory management easier by setting par levels for each of your products. Par levels are the minimum amount of product that must be on hand at all times. When your inventory dips below these predetermined levels, you know it’s time to order more.

Ideally, you’ll typically order the minimum quantity that will get you back above par. Par levels vary by product and are based on how quickly the item sells and how long it takes to get back in stock. Although setting par levels requires some upfront research and decision making, they’ll systemize the ordering process. Not only will it be easier for you to make decisions quickly, it will allow your staff to make decisions on your behalf.

Remember that conditions change over time. Check on par levels a few times throughout the year to confirm they still make sense. If something changes in the meantime, don’t be afraid to adjust your par levels up or down.

By using a smart third-party fulfillment provider, you can set these tripwires early and use them to build better demand forecasting and understand your seasonal inventory needs.

The Shopify Fulfillment Network offers smart inventory allocation across our warehouses, coupled with a Success Team to consult on your fulfillment strategy—ultimately helping you set par levels, manage the relationships with all warehousing partners, and spot check your product. Learn more about scaling with Shopify’s fulfillment solution.

2. First in, first out (FIFO)

First-in, first-out (FIFO) is an important principle of inventory management. It means your oldest stock (first in) gets sold first (first out), not your newest stock. This is especially important for perishable products so you don’t end up with unsellable spoilage.

It’s also a good idea to practice FIFO for non-perishable products. If the same boxes are always sitting at the back, they’re more likely to get worn out. Plus, packaging design and features often change over time. You don’t want to end up with something obsolete that you can’t sell.

In order to manage a FIFO system, you’ll need an organized warehouse. This typically means adding new products from the back or otherwise making sure old product stays at the front. If you’re working with a warehousing and fulfillment company, they probably do this already, but it’s a good idea to confirm. 

3. Manage relationships

Part of successful inventory management is being able to adapt quickly. Whether you need to return a slow-selling item to make room for a new product, restock a fast seller very quickly, troubleshoot manufacturing issues, or temporarily expand your storage space, it’s important to have a strong relationship with your suppliers. That way they’ll be more willing to work with you to solve problems.

In particular, having a good relationship with your product suppliers goes a long way. Minimum order quantities are often negotiable. Don’t be afraid to ask for a lower minimum so you don’t have to carry as much inventory.

A good relationship isn’t just about being friendly. It’s about clear, proactive communication. Let your supplier know when you’re expecting an increase in sales or generating a lot of purchase orders so they can adjust production. Ask them to notify you when a product is running behind schedule so you can pause promotions or look for a temporary substitute.

4. Contingency planning

A lot of issues can pop up related to inventory management. These types of problems can cripple unprepared businesses. For example:

  • Your sales spike unexpectedly and you oversell your stock.
  • You run into a cash flow shortfall and can’t pay for product you desperately need.
  • Your warehouse doesn’t have enough room to accommodate your seasonal spike in sales.
  • A miscalculation in inventory means you have less product than you thought.
  • A slow-moving product takes up all your storage space.
  • Your manufacturer runs out of your product and you have orders to fill.
  • Your manufacturer discontinues your product without warning.

It’s not a matter of if problems arise, but when. Figure out where your risks are and prepare a contingency plan. How will you react? What steps will you take to solve the problem? How will this impact other parts of your business? Remember that solid relationships go a long way here.

5. Regular auditing

Regular reconciliation is vital. In most cases, you’ll be relying on software and reports from your warehouse to know how much product you have in stock. However, it’s important to make sure the facts match up. There are several methods for doing this.

Physical inventory

A physical inventory, or stock take, is the practice of counting all your inventory at once. Many businesses do this at their year end because it ties in with accounting and filing income tax. Although physical inventories are typically only done once a year, it can be incredibly disruptive to the business, and believe me, it’s tedious. If you do find a discrepancy, it can be difficult to pinpoint the issue when you’re looking back at an entire year.

Spot checking

If you do a full physical inventory at the end of the year and you often run into problems, or you have a lot of products, you may want to start spot checking throughout the year. This simply means choosing a product, counting it, and comparing the number to what it’s supposed to be. This isn’t done on a schedule and is supplemental to physical inventory. In particular, you may want to spot check problematic or fast-moving products.

Cycle counting

Instead of doing a full physical inventory, some businesses use cycle counting to audit their inventory. Rather than a full count at year end, cycle counting spreads reconciliation throughout the year. Each day, week, or month a different product is checked on a rotating schedule. There are different methods of determining which items to count when but, generally speaking, higher-value items will be counted more frequently.

6. Prioritize with ABC

Some products drive more revenue than others. You can use an ABC analysis report to grade the value of your stock based on a percentage of your revenue:

  • A = % of stock that represents 80% of your revenue
  • B = % of stock that represents 15% of your revenue
  • C = % of stock that represents 5% of your revenue

Therefore, your A stock represents your most profitable and valuable products. You’ll want to make sure you always have these products on hand so you don’t miss out on future sales. Your C stock is your slow-moving or dead stock. This is stock you might want to sell at a discount, so you can get it off your shelves and free up cash from your inventory.

7. Accurate forecasting

A huge part of good inventory management comes down to accurately predicting demand. Make no mistake, this is incredibly hard to do. There are countless variables involved and you’ll never know for sure exactly what’s coming—but you can try to get close. Here are a few things to look at when projecting your future sales:

  • Trends in the market
  • Last year’s sales during the same week
  • This year’s growth rate
  • Guaranteed sales from contracts and subscriptions
  • Seasonality and the overall economy
  • Upcoming promotions
  • Planned ad spend

If there’s something else that will help you create a more accurate forecast, be sure to include it.

8. Last in, first out (LIFO)

The last in, first out, or LIFO, inventory management method assumes that the merchandise you acquired most recently was also sold first. The last to be bought is assumed to be the first to be sold. It’s essentially the opposite of FIFO.

This works under the assumption that prices are steadily rising, so the most recently purchased inventory will also be the highest cost. That means that higher costs will yield lower profits, and, therefore, lower taxable income—this is pretty much the only reason it makes sense to use LIFO.

In general, LIFO is a really difficult method to actually use to manage inventory. If you keep your oldest merchandise on the back of the shelf, it’s more likely to become obsolete and unsellable at a certain point. This rings true for both perishables and non-perishables. Items can get damaged, worn, and outdated.

9. Just-in-time (JIT)

Just-in-time, or JIT, inventory management is for the risk takers out there, though effective inventory management mitigates a lot of that risk. With JIT, you keep the lowest inventory levels possible to still meet demand and replenish before a product goes out of stock.

This requires careful and accurate planning and forecasting, but works well for rapidly growing brands with calculated launches and product line extensions.

 If you need to receive direct notifications of low stock levels, then install an inventory alert app from the Shopify App Store.

10. Safety stock

Safety stock is like an emergency fund—it’s basically inventory you “set aside” for use in case of emergency. It acts as more of a threshold for when you need to reorder merchandise before dipping into your emergency stock allocation.

Safety stock has a formula:

Safety Stock = (Maximum Daily Usage x Maximum Lead Time) – (Average Daily Usage x Average Lead Time)

It’s a good idea to work safety stock into your inventory management strategy in case your supply chain is disrupted, your merchandise is damaged, or some other unforeseen circumstance prevents your ability to receive or manage merchandise.

11. Reorder point

The reorder point tells you the level at which it’s time to replenish your stock. Once you know your safety stock level, you can consider lead time with your supply chain to determine the ideal point at which it’s time to place your order.

You can use the following formula to calculate the reorder point in your business: 

Reorder Point = Lead Time Demand + Safety Stock

Calculating reorder points is vital for effective stock management, but it can be incredibly time consuming when dealing with a large number of products. A powerful inventory management system makes it a lot easier.

An inventory management system can work for a small business

While many small businesses start out with the old-school pen-and-paper method, this gets unwieldy quick—especially if you have growth goals. Not to mention it makes you more vulnerable to human error, which can lead to costly business mistakes.

When you use a powerful inventory software to help you track stock, you get access to benefits like stock alerts, automated purchase orders, year-end inventory reporting, and user permissions and accounts. Combined, inventory tracking software features give you complete control and insight into your business and how inventory moves from suppliers to customers and everywhere in between.

An inventory management system like Stocky, Shopify’s inventory management solution for Shopify POS Pro, provides you these advanced inventory management features, and syncs with your Shopify store in real time. The best part is it grows with you—so you can scale your business with a tech stack capable of handling your inventory now and in the future.

Get more than just a point-of-sale

Shopify POS has the advanced inventory features and big picture analytics that you need to manage your business. All from one back office.

Take control of your inventory

Remember that with an effective inventory management system in place you can help reduce costs, keep your business profitable, analyze sales patterns and predict future sales, and prepare for the unexpected. With proper inventory management, a business has a better chance for profitability and survival.

It’s time to take control of your inventory management and stop losing money. Choose the right inventory management techniques for your business and start implementing them today.

Inventory management FAQs

What is the first step of inventory management?

If you’re ready to get started with solid stock inventory management for your business, the first step is to audit your current situation. Take note of where your business is currently and where you want it to be. Consider inventory challenges: Do you have a lot of stockouts? Are you catching a lot of inaccuracies? Are you struggling to keep up with new channels?

You’ll also want to think about your current tech stack. Do you already use a point of sale or ERP? Maybe they have an inventory tracking system you can use. Other considerations include how much inventory you have, the number of users you need, which channels you need to track, and even pricing.

What is a warehouse management system?

Much like an inventory management system monitors inventory, a warehouse management system (WMS) tracks what’s going on across multiple warehouses, regardless of their location. It allows you to control inventory and warehouse operations, like receiving, supply chain management, fulfillment, distribution, and more.

How to improve inventory management

To improve inventory management, you’ll want a system that centralizes all your data from all channels in real time, so you can make informed decisions at the snap of a finger. If you have a Shopify store, use Shopify Inventory Management. Shopify POS Pro customers can use the built in features to track stock, generate purchase orders, forecast demand, and more. Learn more about Shopify POS Pro.

Shopify Tutorial

Need a Roadmap? Here’s How to Write a Business Plan You’ll Actually Use

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/business-plan

There are many reasons to write a business plan—it’s not solely the domain of entrepreneurs who want to secure funding to start or grow their business.

A good business plan can help you clarify your strategy, identify potential roadblocks, decide what you’ll need in the way of resources, and evaluate the viability of your idea before you learn how to start a business.

Whatever your reason for writing a business plan, the task will probably still feel like a homework assignment. When you’re starting a new business, your to-do list is a mile long and filled with more immediately rewarding tasks, like taking product photos, creating ad campaigns, and opening social media accounts.

Not every successful business launches with a formal business plan, but many founders find value in taking time to step back, research their idea and the market they’re looking to enter, and understand the scope and the strategy behind their tactics. That’s where writing a business plan comes in.

Write your way to success ✍️

  • What is a business plan?
  • The importance of making a business plan
  • How to write a business plan, step by step
  • Why do business plans fail?
  • Tips for creating a small business plan
  • Business planning gives you a foundation for growth
  • Business plans FAQ

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a roadmap describing a business, its products or services, how it earns (or will earn) money, its leadership and staffing, its financing, its operations model, and many other details essential to its success.

The importance of making a business plan

Investors rely on business plans to evaluate the feasibility of a business before funding it, which is why business plans are commonly associated with getting a loan. But there are several compelling reasons to consider writing a business plan, even if you don’t need funding.

  • Planning. Writing out your plan is an invaluable exercise for clarifying your ideas and can help you understand the scope of your business, as well as the amount of time, money, and resources you’ll need to get started.
  • Evaluating ideas. If you’ve got multiple ideas in mind, a rough business plan for each can help you focus your time and energy on the ones with the highest chance of success.
  • Research. To write a business plan, you’ll need to research your ideal customer and your competitors—information that will help you make more strategic decisions.
  • Recruiting. Your business plan is one of the easiest ways to communicate your vision to potential new hires and can help build their confidence in the venture, especially if you’re in the early stages of growth.
  • Partnerships. If you plan to approach other companies to collaborate, having a clear overview of your vision, your audience, and your growth strategy will make it much easier for them to identify whether your business is a good fit for theirs—especially if they’re further along than you in their growth trajectory.
  • Competitions. There are many business plan competitions offering prizes such as mentorships, grants, or investment capital. To find relevant competitions in your industry and area, try Googling “business plan competition + [your location]” and “business plan competition + [your industry].”

If you’re looking for a structured way to lay out your thoughts and ideas, and to share those ideas with people who can have a big impact on your success, a business plan is an excellent starting point.

Here’s what a couple of entrepreneurs said when we asked them how useful writing a business plan was for their business.

“We had a marketing background, but not much experience in the other functions needed to run a fashion ecommerce business, like operations, finance, production, and tech. Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves.”

—Jordan Barnett, Kapow Meggings

“Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves.”

“We own a bricks-and-mortar and ecommerce jewelry business that moved from Magento over to Shopify. We created a business plan for the move, just as we did with our original website and ecommerce business. Our business plan included an overview of why we were making the move, the issues with the current business, the benefits of moving to a new platform, the potential issues during the move, the main task, added costs, and a timeline. It really covered everything we felt was the most important. This business plan was given to everyone working on the project, from the photographers to the marketing team to the developers. This way, we were all on the same page. It worked pretty well the first time and even better this time around.”

—Jeff Moriarty, Tanzanite Jewelry Designs

How to write a business plan, step by step 

Few things are more intimidating than a blank page. Starting your business plan with a structured outline and key details about what you’ll include in each section is the best first step you can take.

Since an outline is such an important step in the process of writing a business plan, we’ve put together a high-level overview you can copy into your blank document to get you started (and avoid the terror of facing a blank page).

Here’s what your standard table of contents looks like:

  • Executive summary
  • Company description
  • Market analysis
  • Management and organization
  • Products and services
  • Customer segmentation
  • Marketing plan
  • Logistics and operations plan
  • Financial plan

You can also start with a free business plan template and use it to inform the structure of your plan.

Now that you’ve got your business plan outline in place, it’s time to fill it in. We’ve broken it down by section to help you build your plan step by step.

Executive summary

A good executive summary is one of the most crucial sections of your plan—it’s also the last section you should write.

The executive summary’s purpose is to distill everything that follows and give time-crunched reviewers (e.g., potential investors and lenders) a high-level overview of your business that persuades them to read further. 

Again, it’s a summary, so highlight the key points you’ve uncovered while writing your plan. If you’re writing for your own planning purposes, you can skip the summary altogether—although you might want to give it a try anyway, just for practice.

An executive summary shouldn’t exceed one page. Admittedly, that space constraint can make squeezing in all of the salient information a bit stressful—but it’s not impossible. Here’s what your business plan’s executive summary should include:

  • Business concept. What does your business do?
  • Business goals and vision. What does your business want to do?
  • Product description and differentiation. What do you sell, and why is it different?
  • Target market. Who do you sell to?
  • Marketing strategy. How do you plan on reaching your customers?
  • Current financial state. What do you currently earn in revenue?
  • Projected financial state. What do you foresee earning in revenue?
  • The ask. How much money are you asking for?
  • The team. Who’s involved in the business?

Company description

This section of your business plan should answer two fundamental questions: who are you, and what do you plan to do? Answering these questions provides an introduction to why you’re in business, why you’re different, what you have going for you, and why you’re a good investment bet.

Clarifying these details is still a useful exercise, even if you’re the only person who’s going to see them. It’s an opportunity to put to paper some of the more intangible facets of your business, like your principles, ideals, and cultural philosophies. 

Here are some of the components you should include in your company overview:

  • Your business structure (are you a sole proprietorship, general partnership, limited partnership, or incorporated company?)
  • Your business model
  • Your industry
  • Your business’s vision and mission statement and value proposition 
  • Background information on your business or its history
  • Business objectives, both short and long term
  • Your team, including key personnel and their salaries

Some of these points are statements of fact, but others will require a bit more thought to define, especially when it comes to your business’s vision, mission, and values. This is where you start getting to the core of why your business exists, what you hope to accomplish, and what you stand for.

This is where you start getting to the core of why your business exists, what you hope to accomplish, and what you stand for.

To define your values, think about all the people your company is accountable to, including owners, employees, suppliers, customers, and investors. Now consider how you’d like to conduct business with each of them. As you make a list, your core values should start to emerge.

Once you know your values, you can pen a mission statement. Your statement should explain, in a convincing manner, why your business exists, and should be no longer than a single sentence.

As an example, Shopify’s mission statement is “Make commerce better for everyone.” It’s the “why” behind everything we do and clear enough that it needs no further explanation.

What impact do you envision your business having on the world once you’ve achieved your vision?

Next, craft your vision statement: what impact do you envision your business having on the world once you’ve achieved your vision? Phrase this impact as an assertion—begin the statement with “We will” and you’ll be off to a great start. Your vision statement, unlike your mission statement, can be longer than a single sentence, but try to keep it to three at most. The best vision statements are concise.

Finally, your company overview should include both short- and long-term goals. Short-term goals, generally, should be achievable within the next year, while one to five years is a good window for long-term goals. Make sure all your goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Market analysis

No matter what type of business you start, it’s no exaggeration to say your market can make or break it. Choose the right market for your products—one with plenty of customers who understand and need your product—and you’ll have a head start on success. If you choose the wrong market, or the right market at the wrong time, you may find yourself struggling for each sale.

Market analysis is a key section of your business plan, whether or not you ever intend for anyone else to read it.

This is why market research and analysis is a key section of your business plan, whether or not you ever intend for anyone else to read it. It should include an overview of how big you estimate the market is for your products, an analysis of your business’s position in the market, and an overview of the competitive landscape. Thorough research supporting your conclusions is important both to persuade investors and to validate your own assumptions as you work through your plan.

How big is your potential market?

The potential market is an estimate of how many people need your product. While it’s exciting to imagine sky-high sales figures, you’ll want to use as much relevant independent data as possible to validate your estimated potential market. 

Since this can be a daunting process, here are some general tips to help you begin your research:

  • Understand your ideal customer profile, especially as it relates to demographics. If you’re targeting millennial consumers in the US, you first can look for government data about the size of that group. You also could look at projected changes to the number of people in your target age range over the next few years.
  • Research relevant industry trends and trajectory. If your product serves retirees, try to find data about how many people will be retiring in the next five years, as well as any information you can find about consumption patterns among that group. If you’re selling fitness equipment, you could look at trends in gym memberships and overall health and fitness among your target audience or the population at large. Finally, look for information on whether your general industry is projected to grow or decline over the next few years.
  • Make informed guesses. You’ll never have perfect, complete information about the size of your total addressable market. Your goal is to base your estimates on as many verifiable data points as necessary for a confident guess.

Some sources to consult for market data include government statistics offices, industry associations, academic research, and respected news outlets covering your industry.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis looks at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What are the best things about your company? What are you not so good at? What market or industry shifts can you take advantage of and turn into opportunities? Are there external factors threatening your ability to succeed?

These breakdowns often are presented as a grid, with bullet points in each section breaking down the most relevant information—so you can probably skip writing full paragraphs here. Strengths and weaknesses—both internal company factors—are listed first, with opportunities and threats following in the next row. With this visual presentation, your reader can quickly see the factors that may impact your business and determine your competitive advantage in the market.

Here’s an example.

Competitive analysis

There are three overarching factors you can use to differentiate your business in the face of competition:

  • Cost leadership. You have the capacity to maximize profits by offering lower prices than the majority of your competitors. Examples include companies like Mejuri and Endy.
  • Differentiation. Your product or service offers something distinct from the current cost leaders in your industry and banks on standing out based on your uniqueness. Think of companies like Knix and Qalo.
  • Segmentation. You focus on a very specific, or niche, target market and focus on building traction with a smaller audience before moving on to a broader market. Companies like TomboyX and Heyday Footwear are great examples of this strategy.

To understand which is the best fit, you’ll need to understand your business as well as the competitive landscape.

You’ll always have competition in the market, even with an innovative product, so it’s important to include a competitive overview in your business plan. If you’re entering an established market, include a list of a few companies you consider direct competitors and explain how you plan to differentiate your products and business from theirs.

You’ll always have competition in the market, even with an innovative product.

For example, if you’re selling jewelry, your competitive differentiation could be that, unlike many high-end competitors, you donate a percentage of your profits to a notable charity or pass savings on to your customers.

If you’re entering a market where you can’t easily identify direct competitors, consider your indirect competitors—companies offering products that are substitutes for yours. For example, if you’re selling an innovative new piece of kitchen equipment, it’s too easy to say that because your product is new, you have no competition. Consider what your potential customers are doing to solve the same problems your product solves.

Management and organization

The management and organization section of your business plan should tell readers about who’s running your company. Detail the legal structure of your business. Communicate whether you’ll incorporate your business as an S corporation or create a limited partnership or sole proprietorship. 

If you have a management team, use an organizational chart to show your company’s internal structure, including the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between people in your chart. Communicate how each person will contribute to the success of your startup. 

Products and services

Your products or services will feature prominently in most areas of your business plan, but it’s important to provide a section that outlines key details about them for interested readers. 

If you sell many items, you can include more general information on each of your product lines; if you only sell a few, provide additional information on each. Describe new products you’ll launch in the near future and any intellectual property you own. Express how they’ll improve profitability. 

It’s also important to note where products are coming from—handmade crafts are sourced differently than trending products for a dropshipping business, for instance.

Customer segmentation

Your ideal customer, also known as your target market, is the foundation of your marketing plan, if not your business plan as a whole. You’ll want to keep this person in mind as you make strategic decisions, which is why an overview of who they are is important to understand and include in your plan.

To give a holistic overview of your ideal customer, describe a number of general and specific demographic characteristics. Customer segmentation often includes:

  • Where they live
  • Their age range
  • Their level of education
  • Some common behavior patterns
  • How they spend their free time
  • Where they work
  • What technology they use
  • How much they earn
  • Where they’re commonly employed
  • Their values, beliefs, or opinions

This information will vary based on what you’re selling, but you should be specific enough that it’s unquestionably clear who you’re trying to reach—and more importantly, why you’ve made the choices you have based on who your customers are and what they value.

For example, a college student has different interests, shopping habits, and pricing sensitivity than a 50-year old executive at a Fortune 500 company. Your business plan and decisions would look very different based on which one was your ideal customer.

Marketing plan

Your marketing efforts are directly informed by your ideal customer. Your plan should outline your current decisions and your future strategy, with a focus on how your ideas are a fit for that ideal customer. 

If you’re planning to invest heavily in Instagram marketing, for example, it might make sense to include whether Instagram is a leading platform for your audience—if it’s not, that might be a sign to rethink your marketing plan.

Most marketing plans include information on four key subjects. How much detail you present on each will depend on both your business and your plan’s audience.

  • Price. How much do your products cost, and why have you made that decision?
  • Product. What are you selling and how do you differentiate it in the market?
  • Promotion. How will you get your products in front of your ideal customer?
  • Place. Where will you sell your products?

Promotion may be the bulk of your plan since you can more readily dive into tactical details, but the other three areas should be covered at least briefly—each is an important strategic lever in your marketing mix.

Logistics and operations plan

Logistics and operations are the workflows you’ll implement to make your ideas a reality. If you’re writing a business plan for your own planning purposes, this is still an important section to consider, even though you might not need to include the same level of detail as if you were seeking investment.

Cover all parts of your planned operations, including:

  • Suppliers. Where do you get the raw materials you need for production, or where are your products produced? 
  • Production. Will you make, manufacture, wholesale or dropship your products? How long does it take to produce your products and get them shipped to you? How will you handle a busy season or an unexpected spike in demand?
  • Facilities. Where will you and any team members work? Do you plan to have a physical retail space? If yes, where?
  • Equipment. What tools and technology do you require to be up and running? This includes everything from computers to lightbulbs and everything in between.
  • Shipping and fulfillment. Will you be handling all the fulfillment tasks in-house, or will you use a third-party fulfillment partner?
  • Inventory. How much will you keep on hand, and where will it be stored? How will you ship it to partners if required, and how will you approach inventory management?

This section should signal to your reader that you’ve got a solid understanding of your supply chain and strong contingency plans in place to cover potential uncertainty. If your reader is you, it should give you a basis to make other important decisions, like how to price your products to cover your estimated costs, and at what point you plan to break even on your initial spending.

Financial plan

No matter how great your idea is, and regardless of the effort, time, and money you invest, a business lives or dies based on its financial health. At the end of the day, people want to work with a business they expect to be viable for the foreseeable future.

The level of detail required in your financial plan will depend on your audience and goals, but typically you’ll want to include three major views of your financials: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement. It also may be appropriate to include financial projections. 

Here’s a spreadsheet template that includes everything you’ll need to create an income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement, including some sample numbers. You can edit it to reflect projections if needed.

Income statement

Your income statement is designed to give readers a look at your revenue sources and expenses over a given time period. With those two pieces of information, they can see the all-important bottom line or the profit or loss your business experienced during that time. If you haven’t launched your business yet, you can put together a forecast of the same information.

Balance sheet

Your balance sheet offers a look at how much equity you have in your business. On one side, you list all your business assets (what you own), and on the other side, all your liabilities (what you owe). This provides a snapshot of your business’s shareholder equity, which is calculated as

Assets – Liabilities = Equity

Cash flow statement

Your cash flow statement is similar to your income statement, with one important difference: it takes into account when revenues are collected and when expenses are paid.

When the cash you have coming in is greater than the cash you have going out, your cash flow is positive. When the opposite scenario is true, your cash flow is negative. Ideally, your cash flow statement will help you see when cash is low, when you might have a surplus, and where you might need to have a contingency plan to access funding to keep your business solvent.

It can be especially helpful to forecast your cash-flow statement to identify gaps or negative cash flow and adjust operations as required. Here’s a full guide to working through cash-flow projections for your business.

Why do business plans fail?

Warning: Other articles on business plans would never tell you what we’re about to tell you. But your business plan can fail. The last thing you want is for time and effort to go down the drain. Avoid these common mistakes:

  • Bad business idea. Not every idea is going to win. Sometimes your idea may be too risky and you won’t be able to get funding for it. Other times it’s too expensive or there’s no market. Aim for low-investment business ideas you start with little money and bypass traditional startup costs. 
  • No exit strategy. Investors reading your business plan want to know one thing: will your venture make them money? If you don’t show an exit strategy, or a plan for them to leave the business with maximum profits, you’ll have little luck finding capital. 
  • Unbalanced teams. A great product is the cost of entry to starting a business. But an incredible team will take it to the top. Unfortunately, many business owners overlook a balanced team. They assume readers want to see potential profits, without worrying about how you’ll get it done. If you’re pitching a new software idea, it makes sense to have at least one developer or IT specialist on your team. 
  • Missing financial projections. Your numbers are the most interesting part for readers. Don’t leave out your balance sheet, cash flow statements, P&L statements, and income statements. Include your break-even analysis and return-on-investment calculations to create a successful business plan. Sometimes, a business loan may be essential to grow your business. Check our guide on how to get a business loan to understand if you need a business loan or what type of loan you need. 
  • Spelling and grammar errors. Some businesses think hiring a professional editor is overkill. The reality is, all the best organizations have an editor review their documents. If someone spots typos while reading your business plan, how can they believe you’ll run a successful company?

Tips for creating a small-business plan

There are a few key things to keep in mind to help you write an effective business plan. 

  • Know your audience. When you know who will be reading your plan—even if you’re just writing it for yourself to clarify your ideas—you can tailor the language and level of detail to them. This can also help you make sure you’re including the most relevant information and figure out when to omit sections that aren’t as impactful.
  • Have a clear goal. You’ll need to put in more work and deliver a more thorough plan if your goal is to secure funding for your business versus working through a plan for yourself or even your team.
  • Invest time in research. Sections of your business plan will primarily be informed by your ideas and vision, but some of the most crucial information you’ll need requires research from independent sources. This is where you can invest time in understanding who you’re selling to, whether there’s demand for your products, and who else is selling similar products or services.
  • Keep it short and to the point. No matter who you’re writing for, your business plan should be short and readable—generally no longer than 15 to 20 pages. If you do have additional documents you think may be valuable to your audience and your goals, consider adding them as appendices.
  • Keep the tone, style, and voice consistent. This is best managed by having a single person write the plan or allowing time for the plan to be properly edited before distributing it.

Business planning gives you a solid foundation for growth

A business plan can help you identify clear, deliberate next steps for your business, even if you never plan to pitch investors—and it can help you see gaps in your plan before they become issues.

Whether you’ve written a business plan for a new online business idea, a retail storefront, or growing your current company, you now have a comprehensive guide and the information you need to help you start working on the next phase of your own business.

Illustrations by Rachel Tunstall

Business plans FAQ

How do I write a business plan?

  • Executive summary
  • Company description
  • Market analysis 
  • Management and organization
  • Products and services
  • Customer segmentation
  • Marketing plan
  • Logistics and operations 
  • Financial plan

What is a good business plan?

A good business plan starts with a strong executive summary. It also adequately outlines idea feasibility, target market insights, and the competitive landscape, which we go over in this blog post.

What are the 3 main purposes of a business plan?

The three main purposes of a business plan are: (1) to clarify your plans for growth; (2) to understand your financial needs; and (3) to attract funding from investors, banks, and lenders.

What are the different types of business plans?

The types of business plans include startup, refocusing, internal, annual, strategic, feasibility, operations, growth, and scenario-based. Each type of business plan has a different purpose.

Shopify Tutorial

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Sales: How to Take Gorgeous Product Photos for Beginners

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/12206313-the-ultimate-diy-guide-to-beautiful-product-photography

The perceived value of your products and the trustworthiness of your brand are often judged based on the quality of your visual presentation. That means having high-end, beautiful product photography can go a long way.

However, not every online store owner can afford to invest in a professional photography studio when they’re just starting out. DIY product photography provides a great alternative, and as long as you know the proper tools and techniques, taking compelling product photos is well within your grasp.

Start your photoshoot today

  • At-home product photography studio—what you need
  • How to take professional product photos on a white background
  • Product photography tips
  • Using your product photos
  • Product photography FAQ

At-home product photography studio—what you need

Showcasing your ecommerce products with high-quality images can be the winning difference between a conversion and no sale at all. This is particularly true if you’re distributing your products on marketplace sites like Amazon, where they are displayed alongside those of your competitors, or on social media, where people interact with your brand.

The perceived value of your products is directly impacted by the quality of your product photography.

When you’re just starting out, getting your product images shot can be an intimidating prospect, because good ecommerce photography can be expensive. But there are hundreds of product photography tools to help you get the job done yourself.

As retailers with lean start-up roots, we understand this more than anyone, and as a company that works with small businesses everyday, we also know that sometimes the money’s just not there. If that’s you, and your budget is tight, have you thought about taking the DIY approach to taking your own images? It’s not as hard as you might think.

There are lots of techniques for shooting successful product photography, but the one I’m going to show you is commonly known as The Window Light Technique.

From someone who takes products photographs everyday, this tutorial has been specifically crafted for business owners on a budget, and it’s been designed to be simple, while producing excellent, professional product photography that gets results.

Gear is at the heart of photography and can be really exciting but, typically, it’s the aspect most people become confused about.

There’s no necessity to spend a large portion of your budget on high-tech equipment, so keep an open mind and try not to overspend on gadgets that do the same job lighting your product as a $5 piece of card can do. You can probably do this natural light setup for $20 or less if you already own a camera.

What you’re going to need:

  • A camera
  • A tripod
  • A white background
  • White bounce cards made of foam board
  • A table
  • Tape
  • The right room with a window

1. Camera

You don’t need a crazy full-frame DSLR camera system. While shooting images with a Nikon D810 (~$2K) sporting a 105-mm f/1.4 lens ($740) is awesome, it’s also totally unnecessary.

Still, if you’re feeling excited and have the budget to stretch for a new camera system for this project, I suggest reading a post I wrote on Quora, which offers tips to help you pick out a good camera for product photography. If all you have is your smartphone, that’s OK too: check out this helpful guide to smartphone product photography.

When I did the test images for this, I started with my older model (2008), beat-to-hell Canon G10 point-and-shoot. I love the Canon G series point-and-shoots because they can go full manual and they shoot a really nice raw file. I picked this camera because it’s definitely not top of the line anymore, allowing me to demonstrate that, with even modest equipment, good results are attainable.

So what’s the best camera for product photography? I would just start out with whatever you have handy and see what the results are. It’s a common myth that it’s the camera that takes the pictures. In reality, the camera is only one piece of the whole. A photograph is made up of a series of choices that incorporates lighting, exposure, styling, and post-processing decisions.

2. Tripod

Not to get too technical, but you’re going to set your camera to a very small aperture so you can have the most depth of field your camera is capable of.

The width of the depth of field defines the area of sharp focus, and to get to that you need the largest f-stop number your camera can obtain. Shutter speed and f-stop are related, and since a larger f-stop number like f/8 lets in less light, you’ll need to counter that by using a slower shutter speed to allow more light through.

When a camera has a slow shutter, you can’t hand hold it or the subject will be blurry—so a tripod is your answer. If you’re interested in learning more about the fundamentals of photography, check out this video I did with Harrington College of Design. I realize that most point and shoots may not allow you to choose your f-stop. That’s OK, and there are ways to get around this, which we’ll discuss in the step by step.

Again, you shouldn’t need to spend a whole lot of money on a tripod at this point in your adventure, and there are many, many options out there that cost less than $30. I did a quick search on Amazon and found something that would work for $20.

3. White background

There are lots of options for a white background, and if you’re going to be shooting a lot, you may want to get a white sweep from Amazon. I prefer a paper sweep because sweeps get dirty and you can cut off the dirty part and roll a new piece down.

A really cheap option is to go to your local drug store or art store and buy some poster board. I’ve seen it as low as $7 for 10 sheets. Remember to look for pure white, as off-white or cream will be more difficult to make pure white.

4. White bounce cards made of foam board

When you’re lighting with window light, there will be a bright side where the light is striking the product, and a shadow side. This shadow side will typically be too dark and so we use something white to reflect the light back into the shadows and brighten it up. Foam board makes a great bounce card, because it’s rigid and white.

Alternatively, you can use black foam board to make the shadows deeper. This is particularly helpful if you’re shooting a white product on a white background. Adding black foam board to the sides, just outside of the photo behind the product will create a dark edge on the white product. Combine a white bounce card on the front and black bounce cards behind the product for a more sophisticated lighting setup.

You can buy foam boards on Amazon or at a local drugstore. Keep in mind, this is just a white card, so you might be able to simply balance a sheet of white printer paper or use a piece of poster board.

5. Table

A standard folding table works best, and a width between 24 and 27 inches is ideal.

6. Tape

Depending on the table you end up with, you can use tape or clamps to secure down your board so it sweeps properly.

7. The right room

A room with windows next to a wall is perfect, and the bigger the window, the more light you’ll get in. Being closer to the window will create a softer light with darker, softer shadows. Being further away will give a more even light but with sharper, lighter shadows.

How to take professional product photos on a white background

The visual appearance of products is a key deciding factor for 93% of consumers. If customers can understand and envision the products you sell, they’ll feel more comfortable giving you their money. Let’s get into the step-by- step process for shooting your product photos.

  • Set up your table
  • Set your sweep
  • Adjust your camera
  • Set up your product
  • Set up your reflector card
  • Take the picture and evaluate
  • Retouch your pictures
  • Optimize images for your website

Step 1: Set up your table

Once you have collected your gear together, it’s time to set up your shooting area. Place your table as close to the window as possible without intersecting the shadow from the windowsill. You’ll want to start with the window 90 degrees to the right or left of your setup. The closer you are to the window and the larger the window, the softer the light will be.

Also, remember to turn off all other lights inside the room you’re shooting in, as other light will contaminate the set. This is very important and is the most common mistake.

You can try rotating the set so the window is at a 45-degree angle to the set, or try it with the window straight onto the set for a different style of natural lighting. Food photography is often shot with a window behind the setup and the camera shooting into the window for a more dramatic effect. Another variation is setting up in a garage with the door open—it will have the same qualities of light as a window, just without the glass.

You do not want direct sunlight hitting your set. Direct sunlight is harsh and looks bad on most people and products.

Step 2: Set your sweep

There are a lot of ways to do this, but the ultimate goal is to have your mat board sweep from being flat on your table to being vertical. You may need to roll up the board to help it reach that shape.


In my setup, we placed the table against the wall and taped the sweep to the wall and the table. If you don’t have a wall, you’re going to have to make something to secure the back of the sweep to. Some bricks or a wooden block would work well.

Place your product in the center on the flat part of the sweep and leave enough room to sneak your white reflector card in later. In this case, our product is a cool Skyrim and Doom toy available from Symbiote Studios. Thanks, guys!

Step 3: Adjust your camera

Every camera is a little different. Some cameras are fully auto and some have the ability to make adjustments. The beauty of this The Window Light setup is that you can set all camera settings to auto if you must and it will work.

1. Set Your white balance (WB) to Auto.

2. Turn your flash setting to Off.

3. Set your image settings to the highest quality. Most point-and-shoot cameras don’t have a raw setting, but if yours does, use it. Raw is the largest file a camera can shoot and utilizes the full bit depth of the camera. You will have to edit in software that reads raw imagery though, such as Photoshop, Bridge, Lightroom, or Aperture.

If you don’t have a raw setting, set it to the largest JPG setting you have. On my Canon there are two settings to look out for:

  • Size. Sometimes L (Large), M (Medium), or S (Small). Pick Large. This setting determines the file size, and you almost always want to shoot it at the largest size for optimal image quality. You can always shrink an image once it is taken, but you can’t make it larger.
  • Quality. S (Superfine), F (Fine), N (Normal). You should always set it to Superfine. This setting determines the number of pixels that are used on the camera sensor. Not using all the available pixels will render a lower quality image.

Set your ISO to 100. The ISO controls the sensitivity of the sensor. The higher the ISO the more noise there is. Typically, the lowest ISO you can set your camera to is ISO 100, so set it there if you can.

Exposure settings

Option A: Set your camera to Manual (M)
This is the best setting for this type of work because nothing will be moving or changing as you take your pictures. In manual, change your f-stop to the highest number, which will give you the greatest depth of field.

Preview the image on the back of the camera through liveview. Everything is probably pretty dark, which is OK. Now, switch to your shutter speed and rotate the dial to make it bright enough that the image is properly exposed. Your shutter number should be going up. For example, your number may go from 1/60th to ¼ . These are fractions of a second that your shutter will be open for, and as the number lowers it will let more light in. Adjust this number until the preview of the image is correct.

Option B: Use Aperture Priority (AV)

Your camera may not have this either, but if it does, change the f-stop to the highest number. This should automatically adjust the shutter to be what the camera thinks it should be. This may be wrong, and you may need to use the exposure compensation dial to add light.

Option C: Auto Exposure

If you’re stuck in the all-auto world, there may not be much you can do. Don’t fret, it’s not a big deal. If you have an exposure compensation dial, you will most likely need to add +1 or +1½ to get the correct exposure. If all you have is the running man images to choose from, try picking something like Sunset. With the iPhone, just tap the area you want exposed properly.

Use the histogram on the back of the camera. You’re looking for the slope to be closer to the right hand side, like in the image above.

Exposure Tip: Don’t trust the image on the back of the camera. Instead, pay attention to the histogram to know if your exposure is correct. The far right hand side is white, and left is black. In the example image there is a little gap on the right hand side, which means that there is no pure white. Adjust the exposure till the part of the curve representing the white background is touching the right edge without going over. In this example, you would probably need to add 1/3 of a stop, or one click, for more light.

Zoom In


Cameras typically have an optical zoom and a digital zoom. Don’t use the digital zoom, as this will lower the quality of the image—it’s essentially just cropping the digital image. If you have an optical zoom, try zooming in as far as you can without using the digital zoom. A longer zoom will remove distortion caused by a wide angle lens. Cellphones have a very wide angle lens, which is a common issue.

Step 4: Set up your product

Setting up your product is one of those things that seems simple but can take time to position correctly. If it’s a bottle, pay attention to keeping the label type centered. Many times there are lots of tiny movements needed to get everything lining up perfectly.

Step 5: Set up the reflector card

This simple white card is the single most important light modifier we have in our photo studio, and we use it with everything. The light will bounce off the card and fill in all the shadows. How you position this card is a matter of taste, so try it at different angles to the product.

Step 6: Take the picture and evaluate

Once you take the picture, take some time and really look at what you’ve created. This is where experience and education come into play—what’s working, what isn’t working, and what can you do to make it better. Experiment with different ways of making your image better, and over time your skills will improve naturally.

Upload your images onto your computer to get a better idea of how they look. The back of your camera is never very accurate. I suggest using Adobe Lightroom to organize all your images. It can be used to do almost all of your editing except very advanced processes. You’ll no doubt need to make some adjustments to the images to get them to look right.


Post-production software like Adobe Lightroom is very in-depth, and we don’t have time to go into the details of using it.

Step 7: Retouch your pictures

Once you’ve got a final image you’re happy with, it’s time to get it retouched. If you photographed your product correctly, the product should be exposed properly and your background a light grey. It should look something like the un-retouched image above, and comparing it to the retouched version shows you how important this step of the process actually is.

The retouching tasks associated with on-white photography, for someone without a lot of training, can be tricky, and tend to be the weak link for most people trying to photograph products themselves. So, instead of trying to teach you advanced Photoshop, I’m going to show you how to outsource it.

You’d be surprised how affordable this can be. From around $3–$5 an image, you can have a professional retouching company improve your images for you.

Finding a good company can be tough, but one company that works well for consumers, in my opinion, is Pixelz. Its software allows you to upload and manage your retouching from start to finish. Pricing starts at $1.45 per image, with a $25 minimum, but you get three free test photos.

source: Pixelz

Step 8: Optimize images for your website

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for all online sellers. One thing that is important is the load speed of your ecommerce website, and large images can really be a burden on this. There is a delicate balance between image quality and optimization, because if you over optimize, it destroys the image. As a rule of thumb, I try to make my images no larger than 200 KB, but shoot for the smallest image I can.

Resize your image for the container

The first way to optimize your image is to resize the height and width of the image. When you look at an image on a webpage you are actually looking at an HTML container with an image dynamically scaled to fit inside it. If the container on my website is a 648 px square and the actual image is 1500 px square, it will be displayed at 648 px, but the image it’s referencing will still load at 1500 px. That’s a lot of extra load time, especially if you have many images.

1. Figure out the HTML container size

You want to resize the actual image to fit the container before you upload it to your website. I usually resize my images 1.5x larger than the container so it looks good on a retina screen, which in this example would be 972 px square.

To discover the image container size, you will need to access your web browser’s Developer tools. Right click on the image and choose Inspect Element. On the sidebar it will show the pixel dimension of the container.

2. Resize the image

There are many free tools to help you resize your image. I recommend using Mac Preview or Microsoft Picture because they’re built in and easy to use.

After you’ve re-sized the image, export it and save it to the desktop as a jpeg at 100%.

3. Compress the image

Once you’ve saved the image at 100% quality in preview, you’ll notice that the file size is actually fairly large. This is because we don’t want Preview to compress the image, because we can’t see the results of moving the jpeg Compression slider. When we compress an image it actually removes data that’s not being used—compress it too much and the image starts to fall apart and it looks blotchy.

So instead, we want to compress the image smartly. In the past I used to recommend Adobe Photoshop’s Save For Web function, because as you lower the slider you get a preview. Recently, I discovered a software called JPEGmini that uses an algorithm to determine the best compression for your image. After running a couple thousand images through it, I’m impressed with how quick and easy it is.

Summary Recommendations

  • Image size: ~1 to 1.5x the HTML container the image is in
  • Format: jpeg
  • Colorspace: srgb
  • Compression: compressed using JPEGmini after export.

Product photography tips

Did you know that 22% of returns happen because a product looks different in person than in photos? It’s clear that high-quality images can not only increase revenue but also save you money on returns. Let’s look at a few tips to keep in mind when taking product photos.

Use window light vs. lightbox

The number one question I get is, Should I get a lightbox? Window light is easy because it is a one-light setup, plus it is cheap and easy to do. When shooting with a light tent, you enter into a multi-light setup, which adds a level of complexity, usually requiring education beyond a simple article. 

Multi-light setups introduce the following issues:

  • You have to buy lots of extra gear, which can get expensive. The cost of the lightbox and lighting can add up, possibly costing more than hiring a professional.
  • You’ll need to understand how to balance the exposure of the different lights and how to position them properly. Learning how f-stops and shutter speeds work in relation to lights can be challenging.
  • Color balancing lights become a concern, as each light source has a different color, which is called color temperature. Extreme color can greatly affect your image.
  • If you decide to use flash instead of continuous light, be prepared for a challenge beyond basic exposure. Flash exposure is determined by f-stop only, has limits on sync speed, and requires special equipment to trigger.
  • The quality of light from a light tent is very even and often shadowless. Shadows are important because they create the shape of a product and provide a sense of place. It is my personal opinion that the image resulting from window light is more dynamic and interesting than a light tent.

If you still find yourself wanting to purchase or build a light tent, be prepared to learn how f-stops, shutter speeds, ISO, and color balance are set on the camera and with individual lights.

Limitations with this setup

DIY window light setup vs. professional studio.

One issue people have with this setup is that their photos don’t look perfect. For example, some people have struggled with reflective products using this method because it reflects the background behind the camera, like in the examples below.

Only a professional on an advanced set can achieve perfect results.

Like anything, there are limitations to DIY without getting serious with education and investing in professional equipment. Most people can shoot great photos in a single-light shooting environment, like with the natural window light strategies discussed above. However, to photograph difficult products like clear and reflective products perfectly requires a multi-light studio setup and a deep technical knowledge of photography.

Learn basic photo editing techniques

Once you’ve got the hang of taking amazing product photography, it makes sense to learn photo editing to polish up your images. It’ll save you money because you won’t have to pay for a service or professional editor. And it gives you complete control over the look and style of your final image.

A good place to start would be Adobe Photoshop Tutorials. It has an emphasis on using Adobe products, but the lessons are easy to understand and you can apply them beyond using Adobe Photoshop.

After you learn the basics, choose a photo editing software for retouching your photos. This will help you prepare them for publishing on your website. You can also use a tool like Taler to make ads and social media content with your product photos. It offers tons of filters, overlays, and other editing features to create branded images for your marketing campaigns.

Shoot multiple angles

The point of shooting multiple angles is that it’s a change for shoppers to see products from different perspectives. Some shoppers may prefer close-up shots. Others may want to see items straight on. Everyone can envision themselves using your product in different ways, which can lead to more sales.

Some camera angles to try are:

  • Eye level, which shows your product as you’d see it straight on
  • High angle, which shows your product as if you’re looking down as it
  • Low angle, which shows your product as if you’re looking up at it
  • Bird’s eye, which shows your product as if you’re standing above it

Make sure to keep your camera and tripod in the same position during your shoot. Rotate the product if you want to change angles. If you rotate the product only, your final shots will have the same frame effect. This ensures consistency and reduces image editing after your photoshoot.

Try other types of product photography

You may want to try different types of product shots besides on the white background. There are many options available to you once you’re comfortable behind the camera. Let’s look at a few.

Lifestyle. Lifestyle shots help tell the story behind your product. They work for website content, but you can also use them for social media, blog posts, emails, and other channels to attract new customers.

Notice how Allbirds uses both white background and lifestyle photos on its product pages.

This gives shoppers context for where and how people actually use its products. If you sell hiking boots, you can show a scene of them on someone’s feet out on a beautiful hike. If you’re selling clothing, you might show your apparel on someone walking around town or at a classy event, depending on what you sell.

Learn more: Clothing Photography 101: How to Take Beautiful Apparel Product Photos

Detailed. Detailed images give shoppers a closer look at specific product features. Leather retailer hardgraft uses detailed shots to show zippers, handles, and other unique features of its goods on its product pages.

Group. These shots show products grouped together. You’ll want to use this style when offering kits. It’s a common tactic brands like Beardbrand use to showcase the variety of products offered in their bundles.

Hire help

If you’ve reached your limitations, you may want to consider hiring a professional photographer instead. The average cost of getting a professional white background photo is around $30–$40 per photo, and there are many options online. This could be a worthwhile investment, as better photos do sell more products online. Start by running a Google search for local product photography services.

Write good product descriptions

Lastly, make sure to write good product descriptions. Product photos and descriptions work together to help customers understand your products. They also help influence purchasing decisions to increase sales.

Your goal is to give as much information as possible so people are compelled to buy. New entrepreneurs often overlook product descriptions. But they are the backbone of a high-converting products page—along with beautiful photos, of course.

Learn more about product descriptions by reading 9 Ways to Write Product Descriptions that Inform and Persuade Your Customers.

Using your product photos

The best ecommerce sites have one thing in common: beautiful product photos. By following this DIY product photography tutorial, you too can produce amazing images for your website. As you get more comfortable behind the camera, you can branch out into different types of photography. You can get as creative as you want!

The best part? You’ll have full control over how you build your brand and showcase your products online. Done well, you’ll increase sales and conversions on your website and grow a successful online business.

Illustration by Gracia Lam

Product photography FAQ

What is product photography?

Product photography refers to using specific photography techniques to take accurate and attractive photos of your products. Your product photos influence shoppers’ purchasing decisions, which can increase conversion rates and sales for your business.

What do you need for product photography?

  • A camera
  • A tripod
  • A white background
  • White bounce cards
  • A table
  • Tape
  • The right room with window lighting

How can I shoot product photography at home?

  • Invest in gear and equipment
  • Set up your product photography studio
  • Take your product shots
  • White bounce cards
  • Edit your photos online
  • Add them to your website

How do you shoot product photos?

  • Set up your table
  • Build your sweep
  • Adjust your camera
  • Set up your product
  • Set up the reflector card
  • Take the picture and evaluate
  • Retouch your pictures
  • Optimize images for your website
Shopify Tutorial

12 Trending Products to Sell in 2021 (and Ideas for How to Market Them)

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/trending-products

To succeed in ecommerce, you need three things: in-demand products to sell, the skills to market them, and the drive to succeed.

You already have the winner’s mindset—you’re continually learning, researching, and preparing for success. But finding popular products to sell can be a challenge. That’s why we update this list every year to help you uncover new trending product ideas.

In this list, you’ll find trending products for 2021 that will (hopefully!) help you discover new business ideas—or maybe give you an idea for a great product to add to your existing online store. Since each niche product is meant for a distinct audience, we’re also sharing relevant marketing tips for reaching new customers.

The products on this list were the top trending product categories on the Shopify platform during July to December 2020.

Trending products to sell in 2021

Browse our list of trending products in 2021 you can use to start your online business.

  • Doormats
  • Household storage containers
  • Kitchen towels
  • Bike saddles
  • Handheld device accessories
  • Toy kitchens and play food
  • Motor vehicle carpet and upholstery
  • Bookcases and standing shelves
  • Bookends
  • Temporary tattoos
  • Needlecraft patterns
  • Hair styling tools and accessories

1. Doormats

Global order growth (YOY): 147.8%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 91.7%
Top country: Australia 

Like many home decor items, doormats have become one of the bestselling products online during the pandemic. The more people stay at home, the more inclined they are to spruce it up and create a comfortable atmosphere. Doormats are tougher than the average rug and help people keep dirt and grime out of their homes. 

According to a recent market forecast, there’s been high demand for fancy, trendy, and comfortable doormats. Doormats can also be sold by utility, length, material, and end use. For example, you could sell >150 cm rubber doormats to industrial companies or natural coir decorative doormats that match a farmhouse-styled home.

According to Keywords Everywhere, top doormat searches are:

  • Doormats: 246,000/mo
  • Funny doormats: 33,100/mo
  • Indoor doormats: 18,100 /mo
  • Outdoor doormats: 12,100/mo

Non-commercial doormat buyers are more focused on aesthetics than function. This makes them great for tapping into niche markets. You could run a pay-per-click ad campaign using Google Shopping ads and Facebook ads to attract new buyers. 

Since home goods may keep trending for a long time, you can also build a brand around your niche and optimize your product pages to rank on Google and bring in organic traffic. You can bundle together doormats with other trending products in your store or partner with micro-influencers on social media to target high-intent buyers and drive immediate sales. 

2. Household storage containers

Global order growth (YOY): 276.2%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 115.64%
Top country: United States

One recent trending product cropping up recently is household storage containers. Similar to other trending products in the home goods department, we’re probably seeing an increase due to the recent work-from-home trend. Storage containers help people organize out-of-season items or clothing. They can also be used as home decor, depending on the style and room you’re storing stuff in, or to store food and supplies.

The search term “storage containers” is generating 135,000 searches per month, with related terms “food storage containers” bringing in 74,000 searches per month and “storage bins” generating 135,000 searches per month, supporting that storage can be a profitable business to start online. There are also many storage container types available to sell, which gives you a lot of new product opportunities as you expand your line. 

Photo courtesy of: New York Times

Start by narrowing down what kind of containers you want to sell—fabric, metal, cubes, plastic, custom design, bins with lids, food containers, etc.—then promote your product on popular home organization and decor blogs. You can reach out to them online and ask them to link back to products on your website from round-up articles. (People are more likely to buy when they come to your site through an external blog post than an ad.) Then, to win back the sale, run retargeting ads to people who viewed the product but didn’t buy. 

Another option is partnering or collaborating with interior designers to help promote new products to their audiences. If a product recommendation comes from a trusted source, shoppers are more likely to buy. 

3. Kitchen towels

Global order growth (YOY): 192.1%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 109.7%
Top country: United States

Kitchen towels saw huge growth in the last half of 2020, and the new trend doesn’t look like it’s ending soon. The global kitchen towel market is expected to reach a value of $20.9 billion by 2026, according to the latest reports. This is not a trending product you want to miss out on. People can use kitchen towels to spot clean, dry hands, hold hot utensils, and much more. The towels are also extremely durable and can withstand repeat uses and washing.

Competition is high in this industry. Brands like Williams Sonoma, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Pier 1 take up significant market share. However, they all target a similar demographic: older consumers with more disposable income, which gives you a unique selling opportunity.

Dropshipping costs are often lower for kitchen supplies, which means you can charge less than big retailers. You can target younger, niche audiences that don’t want to overspend on items like kitchen towels. 

While cloth kitchen towels are the preferred product, research also shows that people are leaning more toward hand-knitted and crochet towels. They are also adopting towels with newer technologies like Through Air Drying (TAD), which are softer and more absorbent. You can upsell kitchen towels with other kitchen supplies, like aprons, placemats, table linens, and more. 

Photo courtesy of: Photo by: Michelle McSwain via The New York Times

You can market items like kitchen towels online through social media. You can target both older and younger audiences by running relevant campaigns. For example, targeting college students who just moved out of their parents house. Your success on social media depends on how you connect with each segment and create interesting content to attract buyers.

You can create video content to show off the benefits of your kitchen towels. And show other creative uses for them besides just cleaning spills. You can also run seasonal giveaways to promote new towels and bestsellers. For paid ads, Facebook will be your best bet, since you can use its behavioral targeting to find customers based on interests and shopping habits. 

4. Bike saddles

Global order growth (YOY): 115.4%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 76%
Top country: United States

Remember summer 2020, when bikes went out of stock? Well, it’s clear folks are looking for a new way of transportation, because the next trending product on this list is bike saddles. 

Bike saddles play a major role in a cyclists ride. They can be the difference between a comfortable trip or a miserable one and can even cause injury if you sit on the bike incorrectly. The perfect bike seat differs from person to person, depending on their anatomy, riding style, experience, and discipline. Helping people find the best saddle can be a lucrative product for an online cycling store.

Search volume for the term “bike saddles” is getting 22,200 searchs per month. People are also looking for more specific types, such as “comfortable bike saddles” (12,100/mo), “mountain bike saddles” (3,600/mo), and “road bike saddles” (4,400/mo). These terms indicate that you can sell an extensive inventory of various types of saddles to make sales. 

To market this product, you can build a cycling store designed to help cyclists ride more comfortably. You can target ads to customer groups across various disciplines, such as mountain biking or road biking. Create videos to show how your bike seats solve cyclists problems. Or reach out to influencers and have them promote products for you. 

5. Handheld device accessories

Global order growth (YOY): 370.8%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 143%
Top country: China

Handheld device accessories are one of those trending items with consistent high profit margins. The trend is hotter at some times than others, but people usually look for phone and tablet accessories and gadgets throughout the year. The market is also massive and is projected to reach $284.06 billion by 2026.

Search volume for the term “mobile accessories” gets around 49,500 searches per month, according to Keywords Everywhere. People are also searching for variant phrases like “phone accessories” and “cell phone accessories” which are getting 40,500 and 18,100 searches per month, respectively. These top trending products give you a ton of opportunities to target different customer segments based on their device type (Samsung, iPhone, LG, etc.) and to drive sales. 

Some items you can sell under this category are:

  • Batteries
  • Headphones
  • Portable Bluetooth speakers
  • Chargers
  • Cases
  • Screen guards
  • Selfie sticks

Promoting this trending product with Google Ads may be profitable. It can help you reach high-intent buyers and bring them into your store to purchase. Another option is using Facebook advertising to target specific groups based on your accessories’ design or functionality. People who hike may need durable phone cases, while others may just want a trendy-looking case. You’ll want to share product images on platforms like Instagram. There, you can partner up with micro-celebrities and influencers to get your products in front of established audiences. 

6. Toy kitchens and play food

Global order growth (YOY): 229.1%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 124.1%
Top country: Canada 

Toy kitchens have been a popular pastime activity for kids since the 1920s. They’re a great way to build fine motor skills, encourage imaginative play, and distract them for a bit while parents are working from home. Today, companies are exploring new and fun ways to reimagine the toy kitchen, from chic, non-binary setups to Alexa-powered kitchens with imaginary cooking tutorials.

With 90,500 average monthly searches for the term “toy kitchens,” it’s clear they are powering through 2021. 

Photo courtesy of: Delish

When it comes to promoting toy kitchens, think of the concept “friends trust friends.”. Marketing toys rely on recommendations from influencers and friends, so you’ll want to collaborate with nano-influencers and on social media. Customer reviews are always a smart move for selling items like toy kitchens and play food online. Testimonials can help shoppers decide if the product is perfect for them and encourage a sale. 

Create an organic social media strategy around kids using your toy kitchens. Show them in action with photo carousels and videos and include user-generated content from your followers’ accounts to build trust with potential buyers. If you have the budget, run a contest to give away free toy kitchens to grow your email or Messenger marketing subscriber lists. You can then create drip marketing campaigns that convert subscribers into customers over time. 

7. Motor vehicle carpet and upholstery

Global order growth (YOY): 106.7%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 85.6%
Top country: United States 

Over the past few months, we’ve seen car mats and upholstery sales drastically increase on the Shopify platform. This product trend continues to be popular as the demand for customized automotive interiors grows. The automotive upholstery market was valued at $7.63 billion in 2019 and is expected to rise 6.5% yearly until 2025.

There are 74,000 monthly searches for car mats, proving the industry’s popularity. Newer search interest is popping up for weathertech floor mats (135,000/mo), custom car mats (8,100/mo), and rubber car mats (8,100/mo). 

When marketing top-selling items like car carpets and mats, you really want to understand your target market. For example, if a customer is outdoorsy, they’ll likely want a durable, rubber mat to protect their floors. If they are big sports fans, a branded car carpet may be a great purchase.

You can promote items in a number of ways:

  • Create installation videos and live-action tips.
  • Start a car blog.
  • Sponsor a car build or car shows.
  • Offer a price match guarantee.
  • Cross-promote with another automotive company.

You’ll likely want to explore Facebook ads to send traffic to your website and drive sales throughout the year. If you want to expand your product line, you can easily find new car apparel accessories to sell using a product sourcing app.

8. Bookcases and standing shelves

Global order growth (YOY): 106.7%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 80.6%
Top country: United Kingdom 

There’s been a growing trend in sales for bookcases and standing shelves in recent months. People are spending more time at home and looking to spruce up their living spaces.

The term “bookcases” generates 301,100 searches per month, with related keywords like “bookcases with doors” and “solid wood bookcases” reaching 33,100 and 9,900 searches per month, respectively. 

While “standing shelves” generates only 12,100 searches per month, there are many variations you could also target with an SEO strategy, including:

  • Floating shelves: 550,000/mo
  • Ladder shelves: 165,000/mo
  • Standing shelves for bathroom: 2,900/mo

To market bookcases and shelves, you can create a blog with interior design tips and tricks with links back to your products. Then, run retargeting ads to your blog traffic on Facebook or Google. 

You’ll want to run Google Shopping ads for high intent keywords like “bookcases for sale.” When running ads, test targeting longer-tail keywords based on your product description, like “solid wood bookcases” or “oak bookcases,” to attract customers who already know what they want. If you show up in front of them, they’re more likely to buy from your ecommerce store. 

9. Bookends

Global order growth (YOY): 109.1%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 108.2%
Top country: United Kingdom 

Keeping up with our books theme, the next trending product on this list is bookends. Bookends are heavy objects used to hold a row of books in an upright position. They’re a great way for customers to spice up their home libraries and make their place a little more homey. 

Bookends come in all shapes and sizes:

  • Words and text
  • Mythical creatures
  • Structures and buildings
  • Large crystals
  • Abstract shapes
  • Sculptures

They also come in different types of materials, like stone, iron, metal, wood, and other heavy things. 

Photo courtesy of: eBook Friendly

From the seller’s standpoint, this leaves you with no lack of options for coming up with new designs—and no lack of customers looking to buy. The phrase “bookends” is receiving 135,000 monthly searches, with more specific terms like “decorative bookends” and “vintage bookends” receiving 2,400 and 1,900 monthly searches, respectively.

If you run a home decor shop, there are plenty of ways to market bookends:

  • Share “how it’s made” content on social media.
  • Partner up with popular home decor bloggers.
  • Use Instagram hashtags and stickers on Instagram Stories to let people buy easily.
  • Run Facebook ads to Messenger and show curated offerings.

Another focus is Google Search. With hundreds of thousands of people searching for these bestselling products online, you can target ads to high-intent shoppers and send them to your store to purchase.

10. Temporary tattoos

Global order growth (YOY): 26.9%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 93.4%
Top country: United Kingdom 

Temporary tattoos are decorative images you can apply to your skin for a short period of time. With the coronavirus pandemic closing many tattoo shops, people are turning to realistic henna-like ink as a new art form. 

The younger generation is driving this cultural change toward tattoos—they’re now becoming a fashionable asset for celebrities, creative directors, musicians, and artists. Their temporary counterparts give people a chance to see how tattoos match their style, without the lifelong commitment.

If you want to turn your temporary tattoos into bestsellers, market this trending product on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. You can find influencers to work with and collaborate on designs and run different social ads to different customer groups to drive sales. 

You could use Pinterest to create inspiration boards for different tattoos and trendy designs for potential shoppers. 

On Instagram, focus on publishing carousel posts, which work well for two reasons:

  • You can show off all the different designs in your store.
  • No matter what size following you have, carousel posts receive up to 5.13% higher engagement compared to regular posts, according to research from SocialInsider.

11. Needlecraft patterns

Global order growth (YOY): 94.3%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 74%
Top country: United Kingdom 

Needlecraft patterns are another one of the most popular products to sell in 2021. Needlecraft is a decorative sewing and textile art craft that includes embroidery, needlepoint, tatting, knitting, crocheting, etc. It helps reduce stress, keeps your mind active, and is a creative outlet for anyone from hard-working young 20somethings to elderly folks.

The term “needlecraft patterns” doesn’t get much search volume (est. 70 per month), however, there are more opportunities for terms like “embroidery patterns,” which receives 49,500 monthly searches. Selling in the needlecraft industry gives you plenty of opportunities to expand your product lines. You could sell needlecraft kits and tools for different techniques, like cross stitch or blackwork. 

To promote bestselling products like needlework patterns and kits online, become an active member of forums and Facebook groups to share your skills and insights. Building community in niche markets like these will help you reach your target audience faster and easier. You can sell a needlecraft pattern as a PDF download (not as a finished item) and send customers a tutorial on how to create it. 

If you want to run Facebook or Google Shopping ads, consider targeting audiences by interest, including arts and crafts, embroidery, needlepoint, and more. Use Facebook Audience Insights to find different demographics to target in countries where needlepoint is popular, like the US and the UK. 

12. Hair styling tools and accessories

Global Order Growth (YOY): 245.4%
Global shops growth selling this product (YOY): 110.5%
Top Country: United States 

Looking for a trending product to sell in the beauty industry? Hairstyling tools and accessories are seeing an increase in interest across Shopify, Oberlo, Google, and AliExpress. 

According to data from Keywords Everywhere, the term “hair styling tools” receives 12,100 searches per month, with sub categories like “hot tools” receiving another 33,100 searches per month, variant “hair tools” receiving 12,100 searches per month, and “hair styling accessories” seeing 2,900 searches per month. 

Keywords Everywhere also shows that the top 20 YouTube videos for “hair styling tools” are seeing an average of 1.7M views per month—with topics ranging from hair styling tutorials, reviews, and tips. 

When selling trending items in health and beauty, focus on visual platforms like Instagram and YouTube. You could partner up with influencers in the space and run Instagram ads to hype products and make sales quickly. A more sustainable option is to create your own Instagram profile and publish content around hair styling and hair tools. 

For example, you could:

  • Do a Q&A on Instagram Live on how to use your hair tools for the first time
  • Repost user-generated content
  • Run a contest
  • Make Instagram Stories highlighting premium product features
  • Publish product posts with shopping tags
  • Create funny Reels to promote your products
  • Publish carousel posts 

Why are product trends like this great for selling items online? You can easily expand your product line to include other popular products in the hair sector to maximize your potential sales.

Time to get selling

These are some of the trending products to sell in 2021, but there are so many more to choose from when deciding what to sell on Shopify. Finding product trends is only one part of the equation. The real secret is figuring out how to market them.

If you’re interested in hands-on training that walks you through the process of building a website around a profitable niche and finding the right products, watch our free dropshipping business webinar series. One ecommerce entrepreneur will share how they grew one of their online business ideas to over 8,000 unit sales per year, along with the marketing tactics that worked (and ones that flopped).

Illustration by Rolando Barry

Trending products FAQ

How do you find trending products?

The easiest way to find trending products online is to check Google Trends. The Google Trends tool examines the popularity of top search queries in Google across various regions and languages. It will show you the trends of your product ideas based on search volume from 2004 onward.

What products are trending in 2021?

  • Doormats
  • Household storage containers
  • Kitchen towels
  • Bike saddles
  • Handheld device accessories
  • Toy kitchens and play food
  • Motor vehicle carpet and upholstery
  • Bookcases and standing shelves
  • Bookends
  • Temporary tattoos
  • Needlecraft patterns
  • Hair styling tools and accessories

What are the most popular items on Amazon?

  • Toys and games
  • Electronics
  • Camera and photo
  • Video games
  • Books
  • Clothing, style, and jewelry 
Shopify Tutorial

How This 17 Year Old Turned a Love of Watches Into a $13,500 a Month Business

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/194984713-17-year-old-making-13500-a-month

For years I’ve been advocating for people to start their own online stores.

I love helping entrepreneurs create value seemingly out of thin air and have been fortunate to mentor a few students on their ecommerce journeys.

One of my most successful students is Jonah, a 17 year old competitive swimmer from Denver, Colorado.

Jonah was like many other people I’ve met.

He wanted to start an online business, but he didn’t know how to code or have any experience doing it.

So how did he go from knowing nothing about ecommerce, to making more than $13,500/month in revenue in his first year of business?

How did you get your start in online marketing?

I’ve worked a few part-time jobs and never enjoyed working for other people. I like working on my own time and I’m happy to put the effort I need into things, knowing there is a reason and reward for what I’m doing.

I had tried affiliate marketing and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. One day it hit me, “Why don’t I make my own store, not to sell my stuff, but to sell a product I care about instead of working really hard to sell stuff on other people’s store?”

My first ecommerce store, Watch Outfitters was launched with Shopify on January 2nd, 2016. I had absolutely no experience selling things online and had to put in a lot of time to get started.

Note: You must be 18 years or older to start a Shopify store. If you’re under the age of 18, your parents can start one on your behalf.

I watched webinars, followed the Shopify blog, followed Youtube tutorials, and I also asked specific questions to people in the Kingpinning and Shopify Strategy groups on Facebook when I got stuck.

It took me a little while to learn how to ask the right questions. For example I didn’t’ just ask, “How do you set up a Facebook ad?” I’d ask, “I’m setting up a new ad campaign and am looking to do some split testing—how do I know which segments to test?”

How did you decide what you would sell?

Since it was my first time selling something online, I wanted to chose a product line that I knew something about and that I had a personal interest in.

There are a lot of jewelers in my family and I personally love watches, so I decided to launch my own store based on my hobby and knowledge of watches.

Growing up I saw how different retailers would charge crazy amounts of money for watches of a similar style and quality that were a quarter of the cost.

I curated my selection for people who want a high-quality watch at an affordable price and decided to sell some popular brands as well as design and test a few of my own custom products.

How did you get your first sale?

Things started off slow and for the first few weeks I had mostly $0 in sales days, which was extremely de-motivating. At one point I even called you (Bryan) up and admitted that this wasn’t working out for me.

While we were talking I had an Aha moment and this is when my store went from selling $0 a day to $300-400 a day in product.

The mind shift happened when I stopped focussing on “selling things” and started to ask, “how can I add value to my customer?”

I began to focus on what my customer wanted and then provided specific copy and imagery that spoke to those wants.

My ads changed, my store changed, and I realized that I am not a master of my customer, but instead I’m a servant who must learn from my customer’s behavior.

What’s one of the best avenues you’ve found to grow your sales?

Knowing your customers equals testing.

Facebook Ads has been by far one the biggest growth drivers for my business.

Shopify has a great post on how to get started with Facebook Ads for ecommerce which helped me understand my customers and how to target the right groups effectively

I’ve tested a lot of different ad campaigns, from targeting people’s birthdays, to targeting ads based on specific brands they’ve liked. Most recently I’ve been testing ad targeting based on different interests people have and have been offering ads with different products for different demographics.

In the end there are four steps I took in order to maximize my Facebook Ad performance.

Step 1: Set up Facebook’s tracking pixel

If you’re using Facebook Ads you have to set up this step to track which of your ads are working and which ones are not. Sign into Facebook and go to your ad account. Click on the Ads Manager tab and under assets you can find your tracking pixel and copy the long number.

Once you’ve copied the Pixel ID log into Shopify and paste it into the Preferences tab within your Online Store Settings.

With this set up you can start tracking your ad traffic from Facebook and Instagram to know which ad groups are performing best for you.

Step 2: Find great product photos and write enticing ad copy

Without great product photos it can be hard to get users to click on your ads. I found that my most successful ads had high-quality images and some message that speaks to my customer’s wants.

At first I thought my ads should be telling users to buy a watch now, but these ads don’t add value to my customer.

My ad copy later changed to say things like, “Ready to step up your watch game?” which spoke to my clients desire to have a nice watch to wear for a night out on the town.

Step 3: Create groups of ad campaigns

When I first started with Facebook Ad Campaigns I was nervous to invest my own money. With some guidance I learned how to reduce my risk and maximize my profit with these steps.

By creating 3-5 Ad Campaigns in Facebook, I’d experiment with targeting different groups of people by age, location, interests and then experiment with which creative and offers worked best for each group.

Each ad campaign was evaluated when it reached a specific amount of spend, in my case, $25, and later $75. Below you can see two different campaigns with their cost and total purchase next to them.

The first campaign cost about $30, but made me $262 in revenue. The second campaign cost $75, but I only made $76 in revenue.

Comparing these costs I’d then remove any ads that did not convert into enough revenue after a week.

Step 4: Rinse and repeat

Every week, I’d continue the process of removing my poor performing ad campaigns and then duplicating the best campaigns to see if I could get higher conversions with new ad creative or copy.

It’s critical to constantly test new ads and make sure you are not spending more on your ads than the revenue you are receiving from them.

Outside of Facebook Ads, are there other ways you’ve grown your store?

A few other areas I’ve found to be impactful are email marketing and providing social validation for my store.

I use the Mailchimp Popup Subscription to ask visitors for their email address when they arrive to the site. By providing a special offer, like 10% off a purchase, I found my signups drastically improved.

After I collected email addresses for a month I’d send a “Watch of the Week” (WoW) email special, which now generates about $500 in sales with each email.

I also really like the Recent Sales Notifications app which tells visitors when someone else has placed an order. These small pop-ups show something like, “John Smith from New York City, NY just purchased this watch” with a picture and link to the watch.

This helps direct visitors to recommended and popular products on the site, and speeds up the turnaround time on the shopping experience.

After the purchase, the Coopt App allows my customers to share my website to their friends on Facebook for a small discount. I set it up to send an automated email offer after every purchase, asking them to “Help us fit the world with Watches” and include a 5% cash back reward.

Since my customers typically have friends with similar interests and demographics, this “social shoutout” is a great way to generate high quality traffic.

Any advice you have to other first time ecommerce entrepreneurs?

At the end of the day you have to put in the work and will get out whatever you put in.

It took me 6 days to get my first sale and once it hit everything became real. All the energy I had put into the business was coming back to me.

I said to myself, “I’m finally making money online.”

Shopify Tutorial

How to Start a Skincare Line: 9 Lessons From a 6-Figure Brand That Launched in a Dorm Room

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/204910217-business-lessons-from-a-6-figure-beauty-brand

Megan Cox went to bed and woke up in the morning to find that she had made $10,000 in sales overnight. At the time, she was an MIT student with a newly launched store, Amalie Beauty—her first foray into manufacturing and ecommerce.

Amalie now has six-figure sales, a history of glowing press, and products that sell out as soon as they launch.

How did it get here? Let’s rewind three years.

Megan started her business to solve a pain point: she destroyed her natural lashes and couldn’t find a restorative product that worked. After poring through the research and matching it against the products on the market, she found a gap.

What she also found was a massive audience for her product—an army of women (and men) looking for a simple, natural solution to a common problem. Born was her online business idea. Amalie launched with the brand’s flagship product, Wink—a naturally-derived oil designed to promote regrowth of lashes and brows—and has since expanded into other natural skincare products.

photo: @onabeautybender

Megan is growing her business from her family farm in Indiana, a small apartment in Shenzen, and on countless flights in between.

She’s learned a lot about business and manufacturing by trial and error—more than all of her MIT education put together. What can budding beauty entrepreneurs learn from her story?

Megan Cox, Founder, Amalie Beauty

Nine hard-learned lessons from Amalie Beauty Founder, Megan Cox:

1. Do your homework

Megan tapped into an industry that continues to thrive—organic personal care is expected to be a $13.2 billion industry by 2018. Once limited to small brands at health food stores, even Sephora now stocks a healthy number of large luxury brands within the natural realm. Research continues to show consumer trends towards mild, food-based, probiotic, and pollution-shielding ingredients, and a study saw organic health and beauty grow 21% in 2015 in the UK alone.

The continued upward trend is good news for new businesses in the space.

It’s no longer just a mom and pop industry. Tarte, a natural beauty line started in Founder Maureen Kelly’s one bedroom apartment in 1999, joined Sephora’s lineup in 2003, grossed $12 million in 2008, and sold majority shares in 2014 to global beauty behemoth Kose. She started the business with $18,000.

Megan had a similarly lean start, launching Amalie from her MIT dorm room after discovering a formulation that worked to restore her lashes—something no other product on the market could claim.

At the office with assistant, Charlie

She had ordered every top-rated lash enhancer on Amazon, to no avail. That’s when she tapped into MIT’s research paper database. Her sleuthing found that essential fatty acids showed promise in studies but no other company was using it in lash products.

“I went to MIT for chemistry but then after a semester I was like, ‘I’m not doing this,’ because everyone I talked to said they went into food science, which means that they work for Kraft, coming up with the newest cheese crackers. So, I switched into business.”

Her short-lived chemistry education did help her with product formulation, but she found the most useful information on the internet.

“I had some chemistry background, but really, when starting the business, I just read up online about what you needed to do—how the formulations work, what kind of testing you need to do to make sure it’s stable. Thank god for the internet, because twenty years ago, I could not have started this business! All the research is out there—there are a lot of smart people on the internet sharing information for free.”

2. Just start (no excuses)

Megan tested her new formulation on friends, with positive results. They encouraged her to sell the product. “I didn’t have any money or experience,” she said (unless you count her born-with-it entrepreneurial spirit).

“I started selling things at a really young age. The first time I got in trouble in the playground was for selling things. It’s my personality and was always my dream. I didn’t really realize that for a while, though.”

Her initial investment was exactly $1812 (a 10th of Tarte’s original startup costs). It was every penny she had. Not allowing her meagre investment to hold her back, she incorporated the business for $700, bought 500 bottles and a few thousand boxes, and paid for her first month on Shopify. She had $6 left to her name.

Though a business major, she soon found that the skills learned in class did not actually prepare her for her own brand launch.

“When I told my parents that I had a class where we learned how to write memos and emails, they were like, ‘That’s what we’re paying for!?’ That’s literally the only practical thing I learned in school that I’ve been able to apply to my business. Although, it taught me how to push boundaries and to be humble—meeting people who were so insanely smart makes you realize that you can’t ever be completely certain of yourself. You just have to keep working hard. MIT made me hungry in a way. That’s helpful for entrepreneurship.”

MIT made me hungry in a way. That’s helpful for entrepreneurship.

photo: I Know All the Words

As a newbie, marketing her product was mainly guesswork, and with no money, she needed to get creative.

She first went to Reddit, which resulted in a few sales. It was a simple call to her hometown’s local paper that was the catalyst for her big breakout. The paper interviewed her, bringing in yet a couple more sales, but the turning point was when the story was picked up by the state paper.

“I went to visit my best friend Miguel in Texas for a week before he started school. I had sold maybe four units at that point. We went to sleep and when we woke up, we had $10,000 in sales. I had no idea what happened because I’d only done one press interview and no advertising. But it was picked up through the AP. Three days after it was in my local newspaper it was in the state newspaper, which has a one million circulation. It was nuts. When I woke up, we had sold out, but the sales were still going because I hadn’t put a cap on stock.”

3. Roll with the punches

When they began exceeding their on-hand supply, Megan’s inclination was to turn it off, but Miguel said, “No way!” (she credits him as an instrumental partner in getting her business off the ground).

So they let the sales pour in. Although they only had 500 units ready to ship, and it took two months to restock and fill the rest of the orders, only two people wanted a refund.

“This was major amateur hour. I barely knew how to write an email correctly at that point. After we shipped the 500, I emailed the rest and said, ‘Guys, we sold out. I’m sorry. It’s going to be a while.’ Everyone besides those two people were happy to wait. I gave everyone a coupon for their next order. That was a really cool way to start. I still have a lot of those customers, actually, from the very beginning.”

This was major amateur hour. I barely knew how to write an email correctly at that point.

The unexpected success came with one major logistics issue: Megan was a full-time student. Because her parents, who were paying for her education, weren’t thrilled with the distraction, they took over shipping and fulfillment until she finished school.

“It became my mom’s full-time job for a year. She didn’t know what she was signing up for. She shipped out all of those five hundred units and waited for the new units to come in and then shipped those too. I said, ‘Guys, this is my company. This is what I’m going to do with my life.’ They’re like, ‘No, it’s not. Just go to school, okay? Get your degree. We’re not arguing about this.’”

It became my mom’s full-time job for a year. She didn’t know what she was signing up for.

4. Show your face

While the actual formulation is made in America, Megan works closely with factories in China to produce her bottles and product packaging. So closely, in fact, that she now keeps an apartment there, where she spends several months of the year closely managing the process. It’s critical to see the factories and to form relationships in person, she says.

Megan has an advantage over many other Americans doing business in China—she speaks Mandarin and some Teochew.

“If you don’t speak the language, I would say you’d have to hire a translator or work with a higher tier factory that speaks English. You’re going to be paying such a premium for that. I wouldn’t necessarily trust a translator or an agency if they’re from China and not from your home country. It’s really kind of difficult to get around.”

It took Amalie six months the first time to find a factory, start production, and ship. While she has made solid relationships and honed in the manufacturing, she still plans to spend half of her time in China while she’s developing new products.

“I wish I would have come to China sooner. It gives you a lot of ideas. You just realize there are a lot of ways to go about things. Like, you don’t have to just do ten thousand units. I think it’s just accepted in beauty that the minimum order is always ten thousand, ten thousand.”

Final negotiations at the bottle factory

Manufacturing in China: Additional Reading & Listening

  • What NOVO Watch Learned After Years of Overseas Manufacturing [Podcast]
  • Make, Manufacture, Wholesale or Dropship: The Pros and Cons of Each Model 
  • How To Find a Manufacturer or Supplier for Your Product Idea 
  • Alibaba 101: How to Safely Source Products from the World’s Biggest Supplier Directory  

5. Test, test, then test again

She continues to live half of the time in China because she says it’s important to conduct your own tests. It’s a lesson she learned the hard way.

“Packaging was a really big issue for me—I lost a lot of my customers because it was unreliable. The brushes were glued into place but the formulation didn’t mesh with the glue, so they were falling out. Now I come here and do the quality control myself. I make sure that I keep those relationships intact with my factories because I can’t afford for that to happen again. I think this is my sixth trip this year. Now I just have an apartment here because I’m going back and forth all the time.”

Wink Eyelash Serum

Manufacturing in North America can be more expensive, but the upside is the access to the factories, and the ability to be hands-on with the process. Megan is therefore incredulous when I ask about the internet storm over Kylie Jenner’s own packaging.

“Kylie’s factory is in California. I’m like, ‘Drive thirty minutes to your factory.’ I don’t know how that kind of stuff happens. Everything needs to be tested at every single step, and unless you’re a vet, you don’t think about it. Her factory should have caught that.”

Everything needs to be tested at every single step, and unless you’re a vet, you don’t think about it.

Always be testing!

She’s obsessed about testing everything, she says, including using the formulations on her own skin.

“I made a batch of a new formulation before I came to China. I brought some with me. I’ve been trying it out. I’ve been trying out new packaging. I’m always trying new things.”

6. Be a control freak, then let go

Back in the States, Wink was originally being produced and filled in a third party cosmetics lab. Her time in China however has taught her to become very particular about manufacturing, and this year she plans to take over all of the production of the formulation and bottle filling.

“When someone else is making the formulation, they’re also sourcing the ingredients. I want to know where my ingredients are coming from. I want to have everything documented. I want to be there. I want to smell the formulation and know if it’s right and if it’s going to work. This is a really big step—moving to mass production. I’d rather do it myself and hire an employee oversee all of it, than trust it to someone else.”

I want to know where my ingredients are coming from. I want to have everything documented. I want to be there.

To manufacture cosmetics in America, the FDA sets guidelines for ventilation, air control, and surfaces. While your manufacturing processes should adhere to FDA standards, there is quite a bit of flexibility for businesses who manufacture in spurts. Mobile clean rooms—essentially pop-up tents—are designed for this purpose and ideal for a business like Amalie.

Megan has recently added another layer of complication. She’s producing the raw ingredients for her formulations, too. While it’s another step of the process that she can now manage herself, the results are unreliable.

“With this new batch, I’m actually growing the plants myself. That’s an issue because it’s really cool when it works out, but there’s just a really big risk because you’re depending on the weather, the soil, and your ability to take care of the plants everyday. I had two sets of seeds that died because it was too hot too early this year.”

Once she’s satisfied with the process, she’ll need to delegate while overseas. She’s currently growing the plants on her parents’ and grandparents’ properties, and was personally on hand to tend to them the first time. Moving forward, she’s exploring two solutions: hire people in her Indiana hometown to manage the crops in her absence, or work with local farmers.

Manufacturing Natural Cosmetic Products in America: Resources

  • Becoming USDA Organic Certified
  • INCI Names List and Directory of Cosmetics Ingredients
  • FDA Authority Over Cosmetics: How Cosmetics Are Not FDA-Approved, but Are FDA-Regulated
  • Small Businesses & Homemade Cosmetics: Fact Sheet
  • EWG Skin Deep Cosmetics Database

7. Transparency = trust

Natural beauty has its own set of rules and complications, including short ingredient shelf life and a discerning, skeptical consumer.

“My products have a twelve months shelf life from the moment that they’re manufactured. That creates a huge logistical problem because I can’t go too big with my distribution. I won’t allow my distributors to buy too much product if I don’t think they can push it fast enough. I have had to replace their product a few times. Someone bought two thousand units last year and they weren’t able to sell them through fast enough and I thought, ‘Those are going to expire.’ I switched them out for free. I bit a huge cost there but I’m not going to let someone have a bad product with my name on it.”

photo: FutureDerm

Often with products labeled “natural” or “organic”, come customer expectation that they will be free of chemical preservatives.

“All my products now are oils and then this next batch I’m going to move to a cream. Making emulsions is a whole new skill set in cosmetic chemistry. You have to have a preservative system with it. I just don’t love putting preservatives in products because people are scared of them —they all have scary names.”

Under the Fair Packaging and Labelling Act, the FDA enforces proper labelling of cosmetics packaging sold in the United States. Manufacturers are required to list every ingredient in the products. That’s a fact, Megan says, that her competitors and many beauty brands try to manipulate.

“Why are you putting honey and metals and all of this garbage inside your product? It doesn’t even work. They’re just trying to confuse consumers on purpose. It drives me nuts. I hate when companies just put thirty ingredients in their products just so they can say, ‘You could never make it yourself. We just want to confuse you, but half of it is just complete bullshit.’”

I hate when companies just put thirty ingredients in their products just so they can say, ‘You could never make it by yourself.’

She built trust for her brand on the transparency of the ingredients. Her About Page clearly, and in layman’s terms, explains the science behind the ingredients and how each is necessary to the formulation.

“I think a lot of brands try to hedge their bets and put peptides and essential fatty acids and copper and sulphur together in one product. I don’t know. You can’t put a pizza and a taco and a hamburger together and make it good. You just pick one. I picked one and I just stuck with it.”

In addition to honesty around her own product, she’s frank about her feelings about others on the market. When asked her opinions on a competitor lash product, she dissected the ingredient list, objectively explaining the function and risks of each.

8. Content is king

Megan’s strategic approach to content involves tapping into the popularity of beauty reviews. The overwhelming number of brands and options (do I want a mascara that’s lengthening, curling, or thickening?), unpronounceable ingredients, and smoke and mirrors marketing copy, mean that beauty consumers are turning to online reviews before buying.

She’s establishing herself as a trusted expert, dedicating much of her blog to reviewing products (other than her own) in a refreshingly researched and practical voice. She’s positioned herself as the face of the brand, connecting to customers through content that’s genuine and frank.

The result? Organic traffic and sales are up.

“I started blogging consistently in April. I can’t believe it took me three years to get there. Now I blog about four times a week and we’ve had a big spike recently in organic traffic and we’re starting to see sales from more organic customers. I really haven’t done a lot of advertising in the last three years because in beauty, and especially with eyelash enhancers, the cost per click for adwords is crazy.”

Megan is also using content as an email list generator, offering downloadable content like “The Brow Bible” and “The Lush Lash Guide”.

9. Embrace the unexpected

Since she originally developed Wink for herself, Megan assumed that her customer persona would look much like herself: younger people with natural lashes damaged through extensions or trichotillomania (a disorder characterized by pulling out one’s own hair).

“Wink really took off and we found that it really resonated with older women and people who had just gone through cancer treatment. I didn’t really expect that at all. I pull my eyelashes when I get stressed, and I think a lot of people have nervous ticks like that. I thought it was going to be a really big hit with those people. I never imagined chemotherapy.”

Wink really took off and we found that it really resonated with people who had just gone through cancer treatment.

Amalie embraced the cause and actively supports cancer survivors. Recently Megan launched #PinkWINK, a campaign that donates one bottle of Wink to a cancer warrior for every bottle sold in October.

“We’ve helped over 25,000 women—including over 3,000 cancer warriors—restore their lashes and brows to their original beauty. “

photo: Notes From my Dressing Table

Megan developed a product backed by science and built her brand on transparency while establishing herself as a trusted beauty advisor. The strategy allowed her to stand out in a crowded market, and has paid off for the business. When Amalie launched its second product this year, it was reviewed by the #1 skincare blog and sold out in the first week.

Next week, she launches her newest collection—small batch skin oils derived from her homegrown crops—and expects to sell out to her loyal customer base. She’s driving towards another launch in the spring, too, testing every step of the way.

“Last year we made low-mid six-figure income. It may sound slow, but all of this has been growth on my initial $1800 investment three years ago. I started Amalie when I was in college, with zero income. It was always my intention to grow my own business slowly over time, and create something sustainable that I fully owned and believed in. Overall, I’ve to date made that initial investment back over 400X.”

Frequently asked questions about starting a skincare line

How much does it cost to start a skincare line?

Most businesses spend $40,000 in their first year to run their business. This amount includes startup and maintenance costs. Shopify merchants need about $38,000 during their first year. To start a skincare line, a lot of your investment will go into product development.

Do you need a license to sell homemade cosmetics?

You don’t need a federally recognized license to sell homemade cosmetics and skincare in the U.S. However, you will need FDA approval if your products contain color additives. Some states and jurisdictions require additional licensing.

How do you price skincare products?

Add up how much it costs to create the product and any associated overhead costs to find out your bare minimum. Look at what your competitors are charging for similar products. Test pricing on your website to find out which is best for profitability and sales volume.

How long does it take to make a skincare line?

It takes no less than 12 weeks to develop a skincare product. However, most skincare lines require much longer for research, development, testing, and go-to-market. Skincare products require comprehensive testing which takes time.

Shopify Tutorial

How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business: Everything You Need to Know

May 11, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/start-online-tshirt-business

T-shirts aren’t just a staple of casual wear—they’re articles of clothing that often reflect our personalities, interests, and identities.

Because of this, selling t-shirts online has become a popular choice, especially for entrepreneurs and artists looking for a relatively inexpensive way to learn how to start a business. Plus, the global market for the custom t-shirt printing industry is expected to eclipse $10 billion by 2025.

With the growth in popularity of selling t-shirts, there’s no doubt you’ll face some stiff competition. But by building a brand for a specific target audience and creating t-shirt designs your customers want, you can find your own success.

In this guide, we’ll go through each step of starting an online t-shirt business that brings in extra income month over month.

How to start an online t-shirt business, step-by-step

  • Choose a niche
  • Source quality material and t-shirt printing options
  • Create your own t-shirt designs
  • Mock up your t-shirts
  • Validate your designs
  • Set up your online store

1. Choose a niche

A niche will help your online t-shirt business stand out and better attract the right target audience without blowing your budget.

You hear the term “niche” tossed around a lot, but it’s important to choose one when looking for t-shirt business opportunities. One of the most important parts of building a successful t-shirt business is the ability to stand out, and one of the best ways to do that is by catering to a specific target audience or interest group.

Generally, categories like “t-shirts for people who like funny slogans” are going to be too broad to get noticed in a very developed market. You’re going to want to tighten it up a little more. An example of a more specific niche would be t-shirts with funny slogans that relate to doctors and nurses, or to dog owners, as pictured below.

Photo courtesy of: ThinkPup

There are many ways to find and evaluate a niche, but here are a few:

  • Visit your prospective niche’s subreddits and evaluate the subscriber count and level of engagement.
  • Use Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to gauge the size of your niche on the platform.
  • Scan this list of popular hobbies on Wikipedia for inspiration.
  • Consider your own interests and the communities you belong to—sometimes it’s OK to trust your gut.

Once you narrow down your niche, create a business plan for your t-shirt company that covers your goals and different opportunities to sell custom t-shirts, then figure out how you’ll execute that plan.

2. Source quality material and t-shirt printing options

Not all t-shirts are the same and not all print jobs are the same. As we mentioned above, quality is paramount to your brand and its success, so it’s important to educate yourself and choose your blank shirts wisely.

It might be tempting to sacrifice quality for higher profit margins, but you need to consider how the quality will affect a customer’s decision to share your brand and purchase from you again.

Choosing a quality t-shirt encompasses several factors, including fit, sizing, material, softness, and weight. A great starting point for determining which blank t-shirt to use is to check out T-Shirt Magazine’s review of some of the most popular blank t-shirts for printing.

Once you narrow down your choices, it’s strongly recommended to order samples so you can make an informed final decision.

3. Create your own t-shirt designs

Here are a few ways you can get a head start on your t-shirt business designs.

Find the best selling designs and niches

If you’re stuck for t-shirt niche ideas and designs, a great start is looking at what else is popular and currently selling well.

Below is a list of pages for some of the top graphic t-shirt marketplaces. You can use them to search the “best sellers” and “most popular” sections to help you get a better idea of your next niche or t-shirt design. 

  • Zazzle
  • Redbubble
  • SnorgTees
  • Kickstarter t-shirt campaigns

You may also want to consider checking out Google Trends to get a sense of the topics people are currently interested in.

Hire a designer

Once you have an idea for some t-shirt designs, you’re going to have to actually design them. If you have Adobe Photoshop or a similar program, you likely can produce some great designs by yourself. However, if you’re like most people, you’ll need to enlist some help.

There are a wide variety of tools and marketplaces you can use to find a suitable graphic designer to help you.

Design communities

Dribbble: Dribbble is a designer community with lots of unique talent. Search for the style you’re looking for and message the designers you like to see if they’re available for freelance projects.

Behance: Behance is a cool platform to check out. You can see portfolios from different creators around the world who specialize in illustrations, niches, and styles and more. If you end up liking a designer, you can reach out to them and get a quote on your custom t-shirt designs.

Freelance networks 

Some other options you may want to try are the popular freelance networks like Freelancer and Upwork. You can find qualified t-shirt designers, fast, and check out their past job successes and portfolio. If you like someone, you can reach out in right in the platform and hire them on the spot. 

Buy t-shirt designs

If you’re stuck finding a designer, you can always purchase pre-made designs. Keep in mind that if you choose to go this route, there’s a high likelihood that other people are already selling whatever design you pick, making it harder for you and your brand to stand out.

Check out the following t-shirt graphic marketplaces:

  • Designious: which sells vector packs and PNG t-shirt designs, also clip art to create your own products. 
  • Tshirt Factory: which offers a variety of vector images — from old school to punk rave and urban styles — for t-shirt printing businesses. 
  • Creative Market: which doesn’t focus exclusively on t-shirts, but you can find over 3 million unique fonts, graphics, themes, photos, and templates designed by independent creators from around the world.
  • Graphic River: where you can buy and sell royalty-free, Photoshop files, vectors, and icon packs for your t-shirt designs. 

Keep in mind, if you plan to sell t-shirts online, you may need to purchase a commercial license. 

4. Mock up your t-shirts

Once you have some final designs, your next step will be to get some mockup images made so your customers can see what the final design will look like printed on a shirt.

There are a few ways you can get images of your final designs on t-shirts, including ordering samples and taking product photography yourself or, with the abundance of t-shirt mockups and templates online, opting to create a 100% digital mockup, like the one below.

Adobe Photoshop t-shirt templates are the most common types of mockup files. They allow you to quickly preview how your designs will look printed on a t-shirt. Most Photoshop templates come with multiple layers that let you change the color of the shirt and apply your own design that will blend with the shirt’s creases, folds, and contours.

Here are several resources to help you find the best mockup file for your next project:

  • GraphicRiver t-shirt mockups
  • MockupWorld
  • 19 awesome t-shirt templates

If Adobe Photoshop isn’t right for you, you can also use web-based mockup software that will let you do the same thing without having to download and figure out Photoshop.

  • Printful mockup generator
  • Printify mockup generator
  • Placeit

Another great option for tasks like this is to enlist help from someone on Fiverr. Just search for t-shirt mockups.

5. Validate your designs

Before you invest a lot of money on your new business idea, you should verify that there is a market for and interest in your designs. There are many ways you can go about validating the market and sell t-shirts online.

Some of the most popular and more common methods for validating your design ideas include:

Personal social networks. Post some of your designs to your Facebook profile, niche Facebook groups, Twitter, and other social networks your friends and potential customers frequent. Be careful when asking friends and family, however—their opinions are prone to kindness.

Reddit. Despite the community’s general aversion to marketing, Reddit is still one of the best places to get honest feedback on your designs (which can even translate into sales after you launch). With countless subreddits, it’s easy to find a highly targeted niche of potential customers and ask them directly for their thoughts on your designs before launching.

Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding sites have made it much easier to test, validate, and collect money upfront for your new business idea. Launching a crowdfunding campaign can be time consuming and requires a good deal of preparation. However, the benefits can be huge, including fully funding your project before you launch it. If you have a particularly novel t-shirt business idea (say, matching t-shirts for dogs and dog owners), crowdfunding might be for you.

Print on demand. Finally, with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, it’s never been easier to set up a fully functional online store (domain name included) in a matter of hours to validate your business idea. Start a 14-day free trial and integrate a print-on-demand service to validate your t-shirts by trying to sell them online.

6. Set up your online store

Now that you have your t-shirt designs in hand, have made your mockups, and validated your idea, it’s time to build your store. 

There are a handful of t-shirt print-on-demand services that directly integrate with your Shopify store, allowing you to start taking orders in no time. These services will print and ship your t-shirts to your customers on your behalf every time you receive an order. 

There’s no need to purchase or hold any inventory upfront, making it a great way to get started. Best of all, if you want to use your design on other printable products, such as mugs and tote bags, you have that option as well.

There are a variety of t-shirts available through the following print-on-demand companies:

  • Printful
  • Teelaunch
  • Printify
  • Gooten

Once your store is set up, you’ll be ready to start selling t-shirts online. 

Learn more: Build and run your store website with ease. Visit https://www.shopify.com/online.

5 considerations for starting a t-shirt business

Although the tools and technology available for designing, printing, and shipping custom t-shirts makes starting up relatively simple, the difficult part is building a brand to stand out from the competition. Combine competition with slim profit margins and building an online t-shirt company becomes a little harder than it might first appear.

If you want to design and sell t-shirts online, you have to make the right decisions from the get-go.

There are several critical elements involved in starting a successful t-shirt business. Each of these elements needs to be considered closely before moving forward:

  • T-shirt printing techniques. There are many different ways to print designs on a t-shirt. Choosing the right one can help you save money and make smarter business decisions. 
  • Design. The majority of people purchasing graphic tees are looking for designs, graphics, and slogans that connect with them and reflect their opinions and personality.
  • Quality. The quality of the shirts you use and of the print job need to be top notch to build a sustainable business.
  • Brand, A strong, interesting brand is vital in the t-shirt industry.
  • Inventory, Will you manage your own inventory to take advantage of volume discounts or use a print-on-demand service to save time and effort.

Let’s take a deeper look at each one.

1. T-shirt printing techniques

There are three popular methods for printing onto t-shirts. Each method has its pros and cons and deciding which one to use will partially depend on how much time you want to invest in the product creation and which printing partner you choose.

Below, we have outlined all three t-shirt printing options, to give you a better understanding of each process. Whether you invest in your own printer or use a local supplier, it’s worth knowing how each printing technique works.

Screen printing

Photo courtesy of: Printful

Screen printing is an old technique that has stood the test of time for business owners who design and sell t-shirts online and in-store. 

As one of the most popular methods for printing onto t-shirts, screen printing can produce durable and long-lasting results. It also lets you print on products like canvas items, mugs, hats, and other things to make and sell, if you want to expand your product line. 

However, a labor-intensive initial setup means screen printing is most cost-effective when printing in bulk. Screen printing also poses issues when it comes to complex designs or designs with more than four to five colors, as each color increases costs and production time.

Pros

  • Cost effective for large batches
  • Volume discounts

Cons

  • Not cost effective for multiple colors
  • Can only print simple images and designs

Heat transfer

Photo courtesy of: Transfer Express

Heat transfers have also been around for a long time and exist in several forms. You may have seen basic heat-transfer paper at your local office supply store.

Although this method makes it easy to print designs from your home computer and transfer them with an iron, it won’t cut it when it comes to running a small business. The more advanced form of heat transfers are called “plastisol transfers” and are printed by professional printers on special, high-quality heat-transfer paper. 

The advantage of heat transfers is the ability to order a stack of prints from your local printer and transfer them to your t-shirts with a commercial heat press machine as you receive orders.

Heat transfers can produce full-color images onto t-shirts relatively easily and quickly.

Pros

  • You can “print” each shirt on demand
  • More affordable for small batches
  • No limit in number of colors you can use in a print

Cons

  • Lower quality and less durable than direct-to-garment and screen printing
  • Large upfront investment in a heat press machine (from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand)
  • The do-it-yourself approach means additional time input for you

Direct-to-garment (DTG)

Photo courtesy of: Anajet

The direct-to-garment printing process operates much like an ink-jet printer you might have at home. It’s a common type of t-shirt printing business equipment because it prints ink directly onto the t-shirt and can produce full-color images with accuracy.

Direct-to-garment printing produces quality printing on par with screen printing and better than heat transfers. Because it operates like an ink-jet printer, there are no setup costs, unlike screen printing. This means it’s easy and cost effective to print small orders.

The major disadvantage of direct-to-garment printing is the lack of volume discount for large orders, as it takes the same amount of time to print each shirt.

Pros

  • Unlimited color options
  • High detail accuracy in printed design
  • Great for small orders or one-offs
  • No set-up costs

Cons

  • Not cost effective for large production runs
  • Generally no volume discounts

2. Design

The last thing a visitor would want is to see in your catalog is a copy of a t-shirt design found elsewhere. Your designs don’t necessarily need to be complex—in fact, many of the best-selling graphic tees are very simple. However, they do need to connect with your audience and stand out.

To ensure a quality print, your design files should generally be at least 300 pixels per inch (dpi or ppi), have a transparent background, and be large enough to cover the actual print area of the t-shirt. Just note that your exact specifications will vary depending on the printer and printing technique used (more on that later).

3. Quality

The next most important factor in the success and sustainability of an online t-shirt business is quality. You can disappoint someone once, but they won’t let you disappoint them twice. A pattern that fades and cracks or a t-shirt that shrinks and rips won’t create raving fans that come back and repurchase.

Higher quality t-shirts might cost more to produce but can also command higher prices. The final quality of your t-shirt will depend on the material of the blank t-shirt, printing technique used, and correct preparation of your design file.

Photo courtesy of: Nuvango

4. Brand

A strong, interesting brand is vital in the t-shirt industry. Your brand is a promise that will tie together all your choices, including your niche, designs, and quality. From your t-shirt business name to the logo you use, building a unique and likable brand is important in a high-competition industry.

When customers have more choices, it becomes extremely important for an ecommerce business to have a distinctive presence to capture their attention.

If you’ve chosen a niche that embodies a certain lifestyle, you can incorporate it into your marketing and website to speak to these customers, like in the anime/streetwear example from Imouri, below.

5. Inventory

When starting a t-shirt business, most people either opt to buy and hold inventory, taking advantage of bulk pricing and local printers, or use a print-on-demand service to take inventory management and shipping off your plate. You can also opt for a mix of both.

By holding your own inventory, you can more easily sell in-person and potentially improve your profit margins, whereas with print-on-demand, you take on a lot less risk. Weigh the pros and cons before you start. If you’re unsure, print-on-demand is always one of the best low investment business ideas.

Dropshipping is an easy t-shirt business model for small business owners to wrap their heads around. With services like Printful, it’s incredibly easy to start and test your t-shirt designs.

Of course, if you have the budget for it, you can also invest in your own printer and set up a base of operations.

Online t-shirt business success stories

Many entrepreneurs have been successful starting an online t-shirt company. One in particular, Ryan McCarthy, founder of Imouri (formerly known as Sugoi Shirts), has used Shopify to run his anime-inspired t-shirt printing business since 2016. 

Ryan decided to create his t-shirt business when he couldn’t find anime-style clothing that fit his personal style. He quietly launched what he thought would be a small clothing line, which has since turned into a six-figure print-on-demand apparel business selling streetwear inspired by Japanese pop culture and anime. His secret? Identifying winning designs early on by using Reddit and paid ads to test products. Hear his best t-shirt business tips on our Shopify Masters podcast.

Start your t-shirt business today

It’s never been easier to express your creativity and sell t-shirts online. Whatever niche you choose to serve or however ambitious you decide to be with your quality and designs, a t-shirt store makes for a great first online business for new entrepreneurs.

Here’s the good news: Building and launching a new t-shirt brand on Shopify is relatively inexpensive and quick. If you already have designs you want to sell, you can be up and running in as little as a few hours.

With the abundance of apps and integrations in the Shopify App Store, you can also connect your store to a t-shirt printer/dropshipper in minutes and quickly have a fully functioning store, ready to print and ship to your customers.

Illustration by Alice Mollon

FAQ: Starting a t-shirt business

Is a t-shirt business profitable?

T-shirts are a staple for men, women, and children around the world, with global retail sales reaching $1.9 trillion in recent years. Creating an online t-shirt business is profitable and has low startup costs compared to other business opportunities. While t-shirt business profit varies depending on your niche and marketing costs, you can set up a profitable additional revenue stream in as little as 30 days.

How much does it cost to start a t-shirt business?

Starting a t-shirt business from home can cost you a minimum of $260, according to one Shopify store owner Tucker Schreiber, which is a small investment compared to opening a brick-and-mortar t-shirt store and buying your own t-shirt printing business equipment and embroidery machines. 

How do I start a t-shirt business?

  • Do market research and find a passionate community.
  • Come up with a t-shirt company name.
  • Make a business logo and set up an online shop.
  • Create your own t-shirt designs.
  • Set up your social media accounts.
  • Run paid ads for your online t-shirt business site.
  • Do blog outreach and free promotions with influencers. 

How much can you make selling t-shirts?

The amount you make selling t-shirts depends on how much time you put into your business. There have been many accounts of business owners making $100,000 selling and dropshipping t-shirts online.

How can I start my own t-shirt business with no money?

If you want to start a t-shirt business fast with no money, add products to your store using print-on-demand dropshippers like Printful. Go to the Shopify App Store, search for Printful, and click ‘Add app.’

Do you need a business license to sell t-shirts online?

Typically, you do not need a business license to sell t-shirts online. You may want to get a resale license to buy clothing from a distributor free from sales tax. Check with your local county revenue or finance department to learn more.

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Shop Small: 50 Sustainable Products for Earth Day—and Every Day

May 10, 2021 , by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/eco-friendly-products

Earth Day arrived quietly this year—did you almost miss it? There is, after all, a lot going on in the world, and it may be hard to find the energy to care about sustainability when a global pandemic is dominating our collective attention. But today is a good reminder that being thoughtful about how we consume is as important as ever. Now is the time to support independent businesses that have been hit hard by COVID-19—especially those on a relentless pursuit to make the world a better place.

For the environment, the impacts of a global shutdown have cut both ways. Pollution has seen a decrease and emissions have been reduced in many big cities as planes stay grounded and cars parked. On the other hand, consumption is up—and an uptick in online shopping is contributing to an increase in excess packaging.

Minimize your footprint by growing your own vegetables in a self-watering container. Orta Gardens

We can, however, make incremental changes to our shopping habits—say, switching from plastic wrap to beeswax wrap—to help minimize waste. And, with all this extra time, maybe this is the moment to eschew bagged carrots and realize that balcony container garden of your dreams.

Whether you’re looking for sustainable home office solutions, ethical loungewear, or clean comfort foods, we’ve got you covered. To help you shop more sustainably on this 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, we’ve handpicked 50 good-for-you—and good-for-the-earth—products from independent business owners everywhere.

Sustainable tech

Get a glimpse of a more eco-friendly future with innovative gadgets powered by the sun or made from recycled materials.

1. Limited edition Bee AirPods and phone cases in honey by Pela Case

Bonus: 5% of the sale price supports causes like Save the Whales Coalition

2. RIVER solar generator by EcoFlow

3. SunLight portable solar light by BioLite

4. Handcrafted wood laptop stand by Oakywood

5. Wireless charger made with hemp and recycled plastic by Nimble

Bonus: shipped in biodegradable, plastic-free packaging

Ethical fashion

Style for staying home, picked from brands with a thoughtful, transparent supply chain.

6. The Pocket Classic crew tee in penny by Franc

7. Black Tulip tee by Free Label

8. Recycled cotton long shorts in stone by Pangaia

9. Cotton structured mini dress in gold medal by Hoibo

10. The Wanderer wide-leg slacks in hemp organic cotton by Uniform

Good for pets, good for the earth

Keep Rufus entertained while you (try to) work from home, with recycled and upcycled dog toys and treats.

11. Hemp and cork dog leash by Wigglywoos

12. Recycled Tug and Toss dog rope toy by Harry Barker

13. Beco Family George the Giraffe recycled dog toy from Chopper & Otis

14. Upcycled dog treats made from food rescued from agricultural and production waste streams by Shameless Pets

Gardens and the great outdoors

Turn your backyard into a staycation oasis—and a bountiful food source—with smart green goods for the outdoors.

15. Self-watering microgreen grow kit by Orta Kitchen Gardens

16. Portable campfire made with recycled soy wax by Radiate

17. Outdoor loveseat set made with recycled ocean plastic by Yardbird

18. Organic Pizza Garden Collection by The Living Seed Company

19. Beehive kits by BackYardHive

Kind foods

Organic, fair trade, or solar-grown—sure, they’re good for you, but they’re also delicious.

20. Organic and fair trade Peanut Butter Pitbull bar by Rescue Chocolate

Bonus: 100% of profits support animal rescue

21. Organic Mayan Magic espresso coffee beans by Higher Grounds

22. Upcycled vegetable Pulp Chips in jalapeño lime by Pulp Pantry

23. Solar-roasted coffee beans by Fluid

24. Salted caramel plant powered energy balls by Little Tucker

Low-impact (on the earth) fitness gear

Stay inside, but don’t stay still. Up your at-home fitness game with sportswear and yoga gear constructed with recycled or renewable materials.

25. Sustainable sneakers by Norm

26. Biodegradable rubber eKO yoga mat by Manduka

27. Performance wear made from recycled coffee grounds by Five12

Clean beauty and personal care

Take care of your skin—and the planet—with products made from organic and naturally derived ingredients.

28. Plum beauty oil by Le Prunier

29. Bamboo and organic cotton pads and tampons by Tsuno

Bonus: each box sold helps fund girls’ education

30. Naturally derived red clay facial mask stick by Found

31. Bamboo toothbrush with plastic-free packaging by VirtueBrush

32. Clean and cruelty free All-Over concealer stick by p/y/t Beauty

33. Juniper and Birch soap by Boreal Folk

A sustainable kitchen

Ditch disposables in favor of reusables or upgrade dinnerware to recycled—and seriously cute—alternatives.

34. Flora & Fauna drinking glass set made from recycled bottles by Green Glass

35. Durable kids’ dinnerware made from recycled bottles by Re-Play

36. Family pack of four bowls handcrafted from coconut shells by Coconut Bowls

37. Collapsible drinking straws by Final Straw

38. Reusable produce bags by Flip & Tumble

Compassion for animals

Buy critter-friendly goods from brands that give back.

39. A symbolic moose adoption by WWF

Burst

40. Merch to support the dog rescue efforts of Justice Rescue

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41. Piggy pin to support Herbivorous Acres, an animal sanctuary operated by Herbivorous Butcher

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Eco-minded accessories

Treat yourself (if not now, when?) with little extras made from materials diverted from landfills.

42. Recycled and fair trade embroidered zipper pouch by Rice Love

43. Vera net socks in recycled polyamide by Swedish Stockings

Bonus: send in your old socks for recycling and get 10% off

44. Recycled firehose wallets by Recycled Firefighter

45. Reusable tote and backpack combo in forest green by Notabag

46. Sustainable eyewear by Dick Moby

Natural creativity

We can’t guarantee you’ll get a day off, but these kindly made craft supplies and exploration kits might buy you a few moments of kid-free silence.

47. Bike Basket Jumbo Journal made from post-consumer recycled paper by EcoJot

48. Set of six Beeswax and soy chick crayons by A Toy Garden

49. Mineral face paint by Natural Art Supplies

50. The Forest School Den Kit for outdoor discovery from Conscious Craft

Illustration by Amanda Berglund