Name? (again)

Maro2Bear

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It’s your Company, you need to work on a good all around business plan. From name, to logo, to letterhead, to products. “Cheap Tortoise Products” works well too. How do you get ppl shopping on your Site compared to LL Reptile, or Tortoise Supply or Kapadilo Farms or HomeDepot or Chewy or PetSmart?

So, sure, Swell Shell sounds great. But if your prices & S&H arent cheaper than others, then it’s just another on-line store. Ps - i have some great flat MD stones that would be great in tort enclosures. You can advertise them!
 

Crush da Baum

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Brooksville
It’s your Company, you need to work on a good all around business plan. From name, to logo, to letterhead, to products. “Cheap Tortoise Products” works well too. How do you get ppl shopping on your Site compared to LL Reptile, or Tortoise Supply or Kapadilo Farms or HomeDepot or Chewy or PetSmart?

So, sure, Swell Shell sounds great. But if your prices & S&H arent cheaper than others, then it’s just another on-line store. Ps - i have some great flat MD stones that would be great in tort enclosures. You can advertise them!
Yea, the only upper hand I have right now is I can afford to have a very small profit margins. I am also only selling the best and most importantly safe, products. For example, I will not be selling things like compact UVB bulbs, and others that are not completely safe for torts. I do not know if that is going to help me but I would never sell something that would hurt my customer‘s torts. As far as fulfillment costs, I believe I am just cutting storage and shipping costs out of my profits. I have to juggle between distributers because I want to sell from many diffrent companies but for most of my products, it will be shipped to you within two days. Which is cool. Those stones would be awesome! Were you thinking about selling them? Maybe I could automate that product so you get a notification when someone buys it and I can set up the payment to go to you.
 

jaizei

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Yea, the only upper hand I have right now is I can afford to have a very small profit margins. I am also only selling the best and most importantly safe, products. For example, I will not be selling things like compact UVB bulbs, and others that are not completely safe for torts. I do not know if that is going to help me but I would never sell something that would hurt my customer‘s torts. As far as fulfillment costs, I believe I am just cutting storage and shipping costs out of my profits. I have to juggle between distributers because I want to sell from many diffrent companies but for most of my products, it will be shipped to you within two days. Which is cool. Those stones would be awesome! Were you thinking about selling them? Maybe I could automate that product so you get a notification when someone buys it and I can set up the payment to go to you.

It sounds like youre talking about drop shipping?

Generally speaking, drop shipping works with generic products. Not so much name brand products that are available from a ton of other stores. Smaller sellers that offer Zoo Med, for example, typically are only offering Zoo Med for 'completion', they're expected to have it. They make much more money on their own products or animals.

I think you mentioned Mazuri in your other thread. If you are just offering it same as it comes from manufacturer, you wont be able to really compete on price. If you were to buy it in bulk and repackage it into 1-5 pound bags like most of the Mazuri resellers on ebay etc, you could make decent money. But you would have to handle/store it and ship it yourself. Or even offer it locally to people that dont want to buy 25# bags.

Smaller sellers can't compete with the larger retailers on price - so they typically offer items not found from larger retailers, or offer a service (knowledge).
 

Crush da Baum

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544
Location (City and/or State)
Brooksville
It sounds like youre talking about drop shipping?

Generally speaking, drop shipping works with generic products. Not so much name brand products that are available from a ton of other stores. Smaller sellers that offer Zoo Med, for example, typically are only offering Zoo Med for 'completion', they're expected to have it. They make much more money on their own products or animals.

I think you mentioned Mazuri in your other thread. If you are just offering it same as it comes from manufacturer, you wont be able to really compete on price. If you were to buy it in bulk and repackage it into 1-5 pound bags like most of the Mazuri resellers on ebay etc, you could make decent money. But you would have to handle/store it and ship it yourself. Or even offer it locally to people that dont want to buy 25# bags.

Smaller sellers can't compete with the larger retailers on price - so they typically offer items not found from larger retailers, or offer a service (knowledge).
Not drop shipping. What I do is, I talk with these companies like Zoo Med and Mazuri and I give them my EIN, Resale Certificate, and legal business name. They check to see if I am a actual business and then will send me their products at about half the price. I then tell them to ship to a storage facility and when someone buys my product. My fulfillment agency then ships it to them. I also can compare on price. Lets say I get a 25 pound bag of Mazuri for about 20 bucks. The storage costs another 5 and fulfillment 8. The final cost is about 33 bucks. That leaves me about 7 dollars profit. I do not have to pay rent and can afford to have much less profit so I can settle for 3 dollars profit. Now that’s not a lot but like I said, got no responsibilities yet. So I will be either selling for less than everyone else, or selling them for the same but with faster shipping.
 

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