yurdlecity

Saturday, December 21, 2002

After doing all of this diligent research, it was brought to my attention by my partners and staff (the ones who live in the same house that I live in) that I was the only one interested in coffee. In business only 2 days and already there is rebellion in the ranks. What's a CEO to do? While pondering our dilemma, I decided to walk to the vending machines during my day job and buy a candy bar. (It's not in the budget, but I mentioned there may be unknown expenses.) Across from the vending machines was a table with a display of scented candles on it. Of course, it's CHRISTmas time, many of my fellow employees run little side businesses. Maybe I could get a deal on some of these candles and sell them on the web. I quickly jotted down the phone number on a scrap of paper and put it in my pocket.

I was in full brainstorming mode now. I raced over to the bulletin board where many of these side businesses are listed to see what else I might find. There was a listing for card stamping. That didn't seem like something that would be very easily mass produced, but I took down the number anyway. Then, to my amazement, I saw an add for scented candles with a web address. I added the name to my list.

Later on I logged onto the aforementioned website and found that they not only had scented candles, but body lotions too. And even better than that, there was a place to contact them about wholesale information. I sent them a quick email to get more information. I didn't say too much, just that my wife and I are starting a small business and were interested in any information they could give us as a supplier. We could hardly sleep that night waiting for a reply. And it came the next day. There minimum order is only $200.00 with a $150.00 requirement after that. All we need is a vendor's license. They've also offered to give us a couple of samples, but we haven't taken them up on that yet. No sense getting there hopes up since we don't even have a web page. And the best part about it is, they are only about 2 miles away, so we'll save on shipping charges.

Alright, crisis averted, management is in agreement, flavored coffee, scented candles and body lotions. Now we just need to get the rank and file interested. We'll cover that when we talk about the vendor's license.

P.S. I did get a candy bar.

familybusiness 12:00 PM - [Link]
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Finally, we get to move on to the fun part, finding a product or products. But how do you find one? Being novices at all of this, we did it in the novice way. We wanted to see if we could find a drop-ship wholesaler so we wouldn?t have to worry about any of the shipping stuff. So we did a search on 'wholesale drop ship' and received 63,700 results. We started at the beginning and then would skip a few pages so that the guys at the end wouldn't be slighted. You never know what you might find. Unfortunately all we found is that for the most part there are a lot of people trying to sell a directory of wholesale drop shippers. Being a bootstrapping business, we decided not to spend $20.00 for something that from what we could tell probably wouldn't pan out. We're not saying these directories aren't good, we just didn't want to go that route.

So I decided it should be something I like. I happen to like a good cup of coffee occasionally, so I decided to do the normal thing, I did a search for 'wholesale coffee'. This gave me a list of 453,000 options. I started to go through that and realized that what I was really looking for was 'wholesale flavored coffee' and whittled the list down to a manageable 10,800. At this point, let me be honest with you and admit that I did not research all 10,800 results. If you've done any kind of a web search you know that many of the results were duplicates. I've narrowed that list down to 2 possibilities. I was looking for something in my area (which is kind of remote) so that we could possibly pick up our orders in person and save some shipping costs.

familybusiness 6:00 AM - [Link]
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Friday, December 20, 2002

Well, let's start with the basic equipment. Since this will be an e-commerce business, we'll probably need a computer and some sort of connection to the Internet. Fortunately, we already have the computer. It?s not the newest thing on the market (we have 6 mouths to feed, remember), but then again, we're not launching a rocket to Mars for goodness sake. All we have is an old system with 133 Mhz, Windows 95, 32k of ram and a 2 gig hard drive. I hope that's right, I'm no computer scientist. The whole thing cost us $1500.00 new, now for that price you almost can send someone into outer space.

When the time comes we'll probably have to invest in a decent printer to print mailing labels and packing lists. But then again, maybe our inkjet can handle the job. I dread thinking of the costs of ink cartridges though. Maybe we'll be able to come up with something to reduce the cost there.

We're also going to have to find an ISP. Right now we're leaning toward a cable modem, but the cost is about $45.00 per month in our area. Oh well, even if this fails, we'll still have a heck of an internet connection.

That should about do it for equipment. Like we said, this is an ongoing project, so we may find something we need later on.

familybusiness 11:00 PM - [Link]
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OK, that's enough small talk, let's get on with it. We're going to start with our 'to do' list. We'll put the list here and then use a separate blog to explain what we have done or are doing in each case. This is not necessarily the order we will be doing these things in and is not prioritized in any way. As a matter of fact, a lot of these things can and will be done simultaneously. Also, this is not be an all inclusive list. There?s a very good chance that we may have missed something (maybe even something REALLY BIG). If that happened, we'll let you know.

- Find basic equipment
- Build a website
- Find an internet service provider (ISP)
- Find a product
- Find a product supplier (wholesaler)
- Find a web host
- Open a merchant account so we can take credit cards and be a real
e-commerce site
- Get a vendor's license so we can make wholesale purchase's

familybusiness 10:33 PM - [Link]
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Thursday, December 19, 2002

We're your average middle class family of 6 (with another due in a few months). The kids ages range from 10 years old to 14 months. None of us are college graduates, so don't expect a lot of theoretical mumble jumble here. We'll just tell you what we do, what works, what doesn't and at times even ask for your input. We'll even provide you with our 'to do' list, our costs, our goals and any helpful links and shortcuts we might come up with along the way so you can follow along. Our goal is to be up and running by August 30th so that we are prepared for the CHRISTmas rush and to keep the total start-up costs under $1,000.00. Remember, we are not professionals, so if we can do it, so can you. (But you might want to see how it works out first.)

FYI - There may be times when a lot is happening here and times when nothing happens. We'll keep you posted as quickly as possible as to our progress, but remember, we are a family first, so some things like the birth of a child may slow us down a little bit. Also, there may be times when we are working on the business itself, but there is nothing new to report. Don't worry, keep checking back and you won't miss anything. As we proceed, the whole process will also documented on our website. (Once we get to that point.)

familybusiness 2:45 PM - [Link]
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Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Test Post
System 11:25 AM - [Link]
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