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Inventory Selection Advice
Okason
subscriber Posts: 3
Hello all, I am having a little bit of challenge deciding
how to add inventory to my ecommerce site. Here is my situation; I have
identified a niche market which is a particular immigrant community here in the
US.
I have selected some items to sell these community based on my research. One of
the products I will be offering is books and there a several hundred titles of
these types of books. I have located a publisher who will sell me these books
at wholesale price with good profit margin if a I buy a certain number of
copies per title.
As a self funded startup I only have so much money for say
50 titles of the books for a start. And therein lays my challenge. Which titles
to buy? As much as I have identified a demand for books these books, I have no
way to tell which titles sells.
Now here are some of my ideas: First, as you can guess a
competitor if you wish is Amazon. They have some of these books and they also
buy from the same publisher. I was thinking of going ahead and listing all
these books and just wait for someone to buy it, I will go ahead and buy the
book from Amazon and ship it to that person. I can do this for sometime until I
get a better understanding of which titles sells faster.
Another option is to use Doba.com; however the problem is that
I only saw very few titles with them, besides the problem of their monthly fee
and high prices. Another option is to go ahead and buy some titles blindly and
hope that it sells.
Now some last bit of information, I know that Amazon is
dominant player, however as I mentioned I am not only selling books. I have a
few other items that I will be offering. I have taken months to study the
market, I have noticed the weakness of the few other providers of these
categories of these good to this community, and I have invested in building a
very decent yahoo store. I have even run a trial store for months and saw the level
of demands and some of the complaints. So I have come up with some strategies
to become the leader in this tiny niche. However as with all startups I have
very limited fund and I want to make the most of it. As always your thoughts
and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
how to add inventory to my ecommerce site. Here is my situation; I have
identified a niche market which is a particular immigrant community here in the
US.
I have selected some items to sell these community based on my research. One of
the products I will be offering is books and there a several hundred titles of
these types of books. I have located a publisher who will sell me these books
at wholesale price with good profit margin if a I buy a certain number of
copies per title.
As a self funded startup I only have so much money for say
50 titles of the books for a start. And therein lays my challenge. Which titles
to buy? As much as I have identified a demand for books these books, I have no
way to tell which titles sells.
Now here are some of my ideas: First, as you can guess a
competitor if you wish is Amazon. They have some of these books and they also
buy from the same publisher. I was thinking of going ahead and listing all
these books and just wait for someone to buy it, I will go ahead and buy the
book from Amazon and ship it to that person. I can do this for sometime until I
get a better understanding of which titles sells faster.
Another option is to use Doba.com; however the problem is that
I only saw very few titles with them, besides the problem of their monthly fee
and high prices. Another option is to go ahead and buy some titles blindly and
hope that it sells.
Now some last bit of information, I know that Amazon is
dominant player, however as I mentioned I am not only selling books. I have a
few other items that I will be offering. I have taken months to study the
market, I have noticed the weakness of the few other providers of these
categories of these good to this community, and I have invested in building a
very decent yahoo store. I have even run a trial store for months and saw the level
of demands and some of the complaints. So I have come up with some strategies
to become the leader in this tiny niche. However as with all startups I have
very limited fund and I want to make the most of it. As always your thoughts
and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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