Tips on How to Open Successful Online Toy Stores
How do you open successful online toy stores? Stock is key – without a good range of things to sell, one has slim hope of finding and keeping a customer base. Find the right range of toys for your market, or work out what market you should be aiming at given the toys you are able to procure. Baby toys, kids learning toys, baby soft toys – to a large extent, what you can get will determine the kind of store you are running. A good first tip for a successful store, then, is to make sure the store itself is built around the stock: so that the stock “looks” right in the environment, either online or in your bricks and mortar shops. Make sure your stock feels naturally arranged and is easy to search for. It doesn’t matter how good your range of toys is – if people can’t navigate it in a logical fashion they’ll seldom find what they want and ultimately your sales will suffer. Online toy stores are only as successful as the amount of things they can sell – so make sure yours is easy to search.
Think about supply. If you aim to sell baby toys, kids learning toys and baby soft toys how will this work? Will you operate a warehouse or will you act as a middle person in a deal between customer and supplier? If you run a warehouse of your own you will be able to take the full amount of money that comes in as a result of every purchase, which is good; but you’ll have to maintain that warehouse, and pay for it, which can be very expensive. You’ll have to employ warehouse staff and make sure that orders go out in good time. The more successful your online toy stores become, the more orders you’ll have – which then means moving to a larger warehouse and employing more staff to keep things going out of the door on time.
A better way to start an online toy store is to have your baby toys, kids learning toys, baby soft toys and so on stored with third parties – usually at the warehouses of the manufacturers. You’ll agree a discount with them – so you “buy” each toy from them at a discount when an order is placed with your site. The customer pays the full price to you, and you send the money on, minus the discount, to the manufacturer. They in turn fulfill the order on your behalf ideally using your branded packing material.
The beauty inherent in this second way of doing things is obvious. However successful you get, you don’t have to worry about warehousing and staff because the warehousing is being done for you by the manufacturer. Your online toy stores grow, selling hundreds or thousands of baby toys, kids learning toys, baby soft toys and so on: and you are free to concentrate on further growing the business whilst the logistics are taken care of for you. For all small to medium sized toy enterprises, this is generally an easier and safer way of doing things: one you’d be well advised to start with.
