Price Setting: Wholesaler vs. Discount Retailer

Whether you’re a wholesaler who is interested in maintaining the value of your products or a retailer who wants to be able to offer the products you sell at a discount, if you want, you’ll be interested in this discussion.

The Baby Wearer forums are full of WAHMs who sell their baby slings online. Whether you sell baby slings, cloth diapers or something else entirely, I’m sure the comments from these savvy business women will be of interest to you.

Take a look here…

WAHM Fuzzies: Punchwork Studios

Kris of Punchwork Studios:

How did you start your business? After getting my Masters Degree, and doing
a lot of research I set my mind to running my own business and applying all
of the things I learned to the business. I learned from trial and error
over the next couple years following that…which is a great thing because
it allowed me to narrow down and focus on what is viable, and enjoyable.

What are your favorite colors? Black and blue. However I did not choose
those for business colors…they are my personal favorite colors. For my
business colors it is toned down and softer to be more visually pleasing and
not harsh on the eye, and Jen at Four Little Ducks did a great job with the
pastel green, tan and teal on my website. I use that same template and colors for business cards too!

When did you open your store? 7/1/2005 was the official date on my business
license. I went online as an additional marketing and shopping tool for
added exposure in 2006. Today I do the bulk of my custom embroidery for
local small business and groups offline and in person; and the bulk of my
embroidery design sales are online because those with an embroidery machine
like to receive their designs right away while shopping online.

What advice would you give to a new WAHM? Educate yourself in the business
world. The best thing I could have done was to get a masters degree. Going
through the process, doing the research papers, the presentations, and
studying other companies really helped! Another thing is to conduct focus
groups or do market research. If you are selling a tangible product, have
samples ready and ask people in your targeted demographics how much they
would be willing to pay for such an item, and ask their opinions on the
appearance and quality of the item, ask if they think the item has staying
power etc. Know what your customers want and their opinions on it. Then if
it is decided it is a viable product, you next need to calculate your costs
to produce the product (or your cost to purchase it wholesale and resell
it), and determine if your price point is suitable.

What is your best selling item? Offline my biggest seller is doing custom
embroidery orders for other small businesses locally and helping them come
up with an identity through embroidered shirts with their logo stitched on
them. On my website my biggest sellers are the embroidery designs.

How has the Shop Kit Plus helped you? The Shop Kit Plus is amazing!
Embroidery and Digitizing is my area…computer programming, shopping carts,
html, etc is not my area. I leave that area up to Watersweb Solutions and
am very pleased! I have learned how to add my own products, put in photos,
add new pages to my website, add attributes to my product pages, modify
categories etc. Once you read the manual, it is very easy to use…when you
want to try something new, and do not know how, the helpdesk is right there
to support you. The best part is the helpdesk! They REALLY help when I do
get stumped. I have never had any problems with SKP, nor the service behind
it. It is wonderful.

Let’s Get Over The Winter Blah’s With Some WAHM Fuzzies…

I’m feeling a little blue and need some cheering up. Nothing like a good story to warm the soul, right?

So, I’m going to ask several work at home moms a few questions and share their answers with you. If you’d like to participate in these interviews, just respond to this entry and I’ll email you the list of questions.

Let’s get started!

It Is Always So Great To Hear Postive Feedback From Customers

I was grinning from ear to ear and floating across my office after receiving these comments from a happy customer:

Michelle, Thank you for all of the hard work you put into your business so that I can make mine a success. You are consistent with OUTSTANDING customer service. You are the only company I would ever think of using for SKP, hosting and all the other services you provide like helping us with copy content and how to improve our sites!
Kris Congo-Owner
Punchwork Studio
http://www.punchworkstudio.com

Thank YOU very much, Kris, for being such a great client. I have enjoyed working with you and I wish you all the success you desire.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hope everything is going well for you this Valentine’s Day! Take care of yourself, and most importantly, take a break!

You can here more of my thoughts on taking a break at MomSoapBoxTalkRadio.com.

Have you started thinking about Valentine’s Day?

As a product seller, you’ve probably been planning your Valentine’s Day Specials for months now. Unfortunately, I’m not that far ahead in my planning, since I don’t typically run seasonal specials.

So, lay it on me. What are some of the great Valentine’s Day deals I can find? If you’re a WAHM and you have a great special running, I’d like to hear about it.

Thank you!

Did your bank return an AVS mismatch, but place a hold on customer’s money?

If you have ever experienced this, you probably remember the angry customer on the other end of the phone. And if you haven’t, pay attention, because you’ll want to know what to tell your customers in case it ever does.

So, here’s my story.

I decided to order a downloadable product today. I placed the item in my virtual shopping cart, entered my name and address and hit the button to complete my checking. The next screen told me there had been an AVS mismatch and my order could not be completed.

Now, as a merchant myself, I knew that meant that the payment gateway had queried my bank to see if funds were available and if the address matched. Apparently, the address I entered did not match, according to my bank.

At this point, I decided to login to my bank’s website to see what address I had setup, because I knew I’d entered the right one. That’s when I discovered that $115 had been placed on hold at my bank account by the company that I’d just attempted to make a purchase from.

What?!

For a moment, I found myself in the shoes of the frustrated customer who is trying to buy my stuff, but can’t — and has just discovered that the money is gone anyway.

Luckly for this merchant, my brain kicked back in and I remembered this:

After the payment gateway queries the bank to see if the address is correct and funds are available, the bank places a hold on the funds. If the purchase is not completed, then the hold is removed from the funds within a few days.

Not sure about your bank, but at mine, those funds remain in a pending status on my account page until they are removed, or fully processed.

So, if you ever have a customer who experiences this situation, explain to them how the process works — and then suggest they call their bank to find out why the hold has been placed and what their policy is on how many days it will take for the hold to be lifted.

Product Sellers And Organization

Mom Mastermind’s Organizing Minds ebook made me think: What kind of organizational issues do product sellers face, that others don’t?

You have many of the same issues, such as how to store business papers, organizing your bookmarks, keeping track of ideas…

But unlike informational or service based businesses, you often have lots of products and supplies sitting around that need to be organized before it’s used or sold.

So, I figured the smart thing to do would be to ask you, the people in the trenches, so are having the issues — or even the solutions.

If you’ve got questions, or just want to comment, please let us know:
What is your single most important question about organizing your product inventory?

Organizing Minds Want To Know

Several of my friends at Mom Masterminds and I worked with Kelly McCausey to put together this free book on organizing your home office space.

This 38-page ebook contains organizational tips from Mom Masterminds members and the results of an organization survey conducted by Kelly at WAHM Talk Radio in April 2006.

My contribution is an article about organizing your business using a whiteboard. I personally use a whiteboard (and a big notepad on an easel) to map my projects and keep track of timelines.

Click here to download your copy of this free report.

Get The Spam Off Your Wordpress Blog

My friends at Mom Masterminds know everything there is to know about internet marketing — including how to use a weblog for business. And even more importantly, they know how to keep the spam off of it.

So naturally, when I decided to start this weblog, I turned to them for advice.

How do I keep spam off my weblog?

The answer: Spam Karma 2

This plugin is amazing. You install it, adjust a couple of settings and then let it run. It couldn’t be simpler.

So far, on my two wordpress blogs:

• Spammers: 0
• Spam Karma 2: A bazillion

Next Page »