Have you even thought about what you could make? What would sell? How much is it going to cost you to make your item? How much would you sell it for? Does your price cover your costs?
These are things we didn't think much about when we started. We started with soy candles and had an idea of what we could sell them for. Then we realized that we had to do cost analysis. I know that the the word analysis can scare you. It did me, too. But if you don't break everything down, you could be selling yourself short.
You can't go to Michael's or JoAnn's or even Hobby Lobby and expect to buy all of your materials at retail and expect to make a profit. These places are great for when you are doing projects for you or projects with your kids. These are excellent places to get ideas. But, you need to do the research.
With the internet, research is soooooo much easier! Find wholesalers when ever you can. You may have to buy in larger quantities, but when you look at the gains you can make by mass producing and selling your item, it will be worth it.
Back to the candles as an example. For one candle we needed a jar, wax, color, a wick, and two labels (our business label and a warning label). Go to a retail store and you will spend $8-$10 dollars getting all of these items. How much do you think your customers will spend on one candle? More than $10 each? Not likely. Then, you aren't even accounting for the time you have spent making the candle or the supplies you needed to make the candle.
We started with a company based out of California. What we learned in the long run was that the shipping alone was killing us. To have all of this material sent to us, even in bulk wholesale quantities, was killing our profit margin. With a little more research, we found wax in Michigan (and Indiana) and that cut our shipping costs by more than half!
RESEARCH!
Take the time to do your research. Once you do that, you are one step closer to being ready to sell.
Questions? Send them to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment