Modish Biz Tips

Retail: Brick by Brick- The Business Plan Challenge!

Hello Modish Biztips Readers!

We were invited by Jena (thank you Jena!) to share our first hand experience setting up our retail brick and mortar store. Before we get too far, I should really explain who we are and what we’re doing.

My name is Lili Nedved and my partner’s name is Henry Sinha. For about 4 months, we have been planning to open a fabric shop here in Vancouver, Canada. Henry and I hope to take the best from our jobs in the past and work together as a business partnership – we already make a cute couple.

You may have seen me around online before. I have a handbag company, iglubu, which has helped me learn a lot about online marketing, e-commerce and of course fabric. Henry brings technical and customer service skills to our business from his experience in engineering support.

Right now, we are actively looking for the perfect retail storefront (which we’ll talk about more in the future). Henry and I both have retail experience, but neither of have owned a shop before! Through this column we hope to provide a first hand, in depth look at what its like to open and run a shop. We have a few ideas for posts already, but we’d love to hear from you. In the comments below if you have any questions or topics you’d like to see covered, let us know!

Laying the First Brick:

To start off on a solid foundation, the most important thing we’ve done for our business is write a business plan. I know, I know, writing a business plan is about as exciting as it gets and it’s no problem convincing you to write one! Oh wait, you even hate the idea of writing a business plan? We felt the same way. In fact, shhh… don’t tell anyone, but I never wrote one for my handbag business. Now, after writing one for our shop I really wish I had.

There are a few good reasons for any business to write a business plan:

Building a Website: Hosted Shop Options & Hiring a Web-Designer

So, if building your own e-commerce site from scratch isn't exactly for you, there are easier, less time consuming and some less expensive routes to go instead!

Hosted shop options:

Rather than having to choose a webhost, integrate a shopping cart and design a site yourself, etc, you can set up an easy "hosted" shop site. That means they're hosted by the company themselves so you don't deal with any backend mumbo jumbo. They're perfect for those of you who are used to selling on etsy/dawanda and other marketplace sites as they have the same sort of features and administration, where you can easily plug in information and photos, but with the added benefit of being able to point the shop to your own domain (and not have any direct competitors lurking about either!) and have more customization in your design.

Here are some hosted shop options that you can look into. Most of them have monthly charges, which are pretty minimal. I point-> you research options, pricing and see which one may be the best for you!

• Big Cartel
• Shopify
• Homestead
• Volusion
• Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

Out of these, I know that Big Cartel and Shopify are the most popular in our little indie/handmade sect- I'm not as familiar with the others but know they're are viable options, so mentioned them here.

*Would you recommend one of these over another? Are there any other hosted shop sites available? Or shop template sites? Share with us in the comments below!

Hiring a Web Designer:

Eileen Fisher Women Entreprenuer Grants

I'll be back later today with the last post in the building a website series, but wanted to pop in real quick and let you know about this opportunity that I found out about via twitter pal Danielle!

Women's wear designer Eileen Fisher hosts a business grant program for woman entreprenuers! Awesome! She started her business "with $350 and a vision" and wants to help out fellow female business owners who have innovative and socially conscious companies.

They'll be giving out five $10,000 grants to women owned businesses, at least one of which will be a start-up (your start-up perhaps?) Find out more here and read about last year's recipients here.

Building a Website: Build your shop, and they will come... (hopefully)

You've got your domain name secured now, good job! So uh, how do you get a shop on there now?

If you're considering building a self-hosted e-commerce site all by yourself, here's the low down on what you'll need to get started. Of course, there's no way I can help with the actual how-to's of creating an online shop here- there's entire blogs/books/forums dedicated to such things, but I hope to at least point you in some helpful directions so you'll have some starting ground and know what you're getting into!

Building your Own E-commerce Site

The hardest and most time consuming, albeit perhaps the most rewarding road to go down is to hunker down and build your site yourself. It's not an easy task, espcially when it comes to e-commerce sites, but it is doable!

I started my first online shop, curio j (see it in the waaaayback machine- there's some graphics missing, the background's gone, but some of the links still work- cool! weird!) in Nov 2005, before sites like etsy existed and I created it all on my own with a will and way, armed with a book thicker than the Oxford English Dictionary called Dreamweaver demystified, the endlessly helpful Switchboards and many, many hours into the lonesome, quiet night.

Was the end result totally awesome, the best site I've ever seen? No, not so much.

Did it get sales? Yes! Did it look pretty good and function well too? Yes! Did it impress my mom, and friends? Heck yes! And yours can too!

What you'll need & how much it'll cost:

Building a Website: Are You Master of your Domain?

Last week we discussed the different marketplaces that are available for you to set up shop, but what if you want to build your own website and host your own shop? Well, I think that's a great idea!

Even if you run your shop through etsy or another hosted site, it's a good idea to have a "business card" website, which at the very least has your basic contact information and directs people towards various outlets where they can find your work- eventually perhaps you can move to hosting your own shop on there too, hmm?

But how to build a website? Ah, there in lies the tricky part... I started to tackle the how-tos of building a website and all the different options you can take here and quickly realized that it's really a whole lot of information to cover in just one little post. So, I'll be spreading out some "building a website" posts over the next few days to make sure all the basics get covered. Today, let's start with first things first:

Are you Master of your Domain?

If you have a business and you don't yet own a domain name for it, stop here. Head to this instant domain search right now. Buy your domain name. Pronto!

Yes, you need one. Plus, they're inexpensive- usually just $9.99 a year or less. Even if you're not planning on doing anything with it right away, why not buy it now and hang onto it until you need it?

As it's not so fun when you go to register a domain name and find it's already been taken by an Asian make-up manufacturer that seems to be no longer in business, but still has the domain registered for the next 3 years and you can't do anything about it. (ie: Modish.com, which has been taken and re-registered by said company since I started my blog. That's why I registered modishblog.com instead!)

Tips for choosing your domain name:

Do you need a supportive relationship to make a successful business?

{photo by Auzigog}

A wonderful Modish reader, Laura, wrote in this morning with a question that really piqued my interest, as it's something I've never actually thought about before... She's an entrepreneur working on getting her business off the ground, and as she reads about all these other successful entrepreneurial women, she's noticed a trend- they all seem to have very supportive husbands/boyfriends/partners in their lives.

But she doesn't.

Hmm, where are all the single ladies at?

If you look at the past interviews in the Do What You Love archives, you'll notice that all the women that have been featured so far mention their boyfriends and husbands as a means for support, either emotionally or financially, or just the person they rely on to have dinner with at the end of the day, share ideas with and remind them how great they are from time to time.

Marichelle over at Heart Handmade even has a whole series dedicated to the supportive men behind the scenes of phenomenal business women, because well, there's a lot of them! (Mine included!)