Online Business Ideas Chapter 2 of 5: Starting a Lash Business
Starting a lash business, the first thing that I'll be covering that a lot of you seem to have questions about which I'm sure it's like the most common thing that everybody wants to know is how much we have to spend on the products purchased and what was the turnaround time. Say I spent about two hundred and fifty close to three hundred dollars on the first products that it ordered if anything it was probably less and the only reason I'm giving you guys a little bit more it's just so you guys I anticipate to spend that amount of money. As I have involved in this business I am going to share my experience with you all. I only got two items the first time that I purchased things that are not including all the products that I currently have so of course if you want to add more items to your launch date and stuff like that the cost will start going up of course.
Choose your Vendor:
Please take a good amount of time to choose your vendor, there are a lot of people around supplying these products claiming them as a vendor but they are not the actual vendor so do some serious study to find the vendor that suits you. Buy some samples before you order, don’t mind to pay for the samples if the vendor demands it. This will let you know the complete process of delivering the product, payment, and the response time of the vendor. Please don’t go for bulk purchase initially even if you find it for a cheaper price. Get at least 3 promising vendors and do not stop the process, keep trying out like an endless process in your free time so you might get different products at a better price.
Where I got the vendor I'll be showing you guys so I'm going to go ahead and pull up my Instagram app which is where I found my Thunder, the way I did it is on the tags on the account. I did just look up last vendors you guys can see now this is kind of like a trial and error thing that you are going to have to go through it is going to take a while for you to figure out which lash vendor you want to go with things like cost, timing, how long does it take for them to send you to get products and all of that.
You can find on Instagram going to their profile and you'll look over their items so as you can see they have 3d mink eyelashes they have the 15mm and 25mm lashes and it just means the length of them. I would look for their packaging so are they prepackaged or do they come in just a clear little eyelash thing because then that means you'll have to buy the eyelash plus the packaging which means your cost will go up so once you find these style of an eyelash that you want to sample. So what you'll do is you a screenshot it says, for instance, I like that purple packaging and say I like these eyelashes right here what I'm going to do with that is I'm going to go ahead and find their contact information.
Again you'll either email them message them on Instagram or not or on what's up so what you'll do is you'll take those screenshots you'll go on their messaging page and then you'll just kind of let them know hello I am interested in your products looking to get a quote on these lashes with this packaging also questions you want to ask one message in your venture what is your minimum that you accept on orders. F000000or instance if you only want to purchase 50 packages of eyelashes and you have to find a vendor that will offer you to only purchase 50. Some vendors will ask you to purchase a large amount, for instance, they'll be like oh no my minimum order is 500 and also with asking how much their minimum order asks them if the price starts to drop as the more you order for instance say you want to order a hundred and the cost for a hundred of the eyelashes with the packaging is $2.00 ask them if you order 200 will the cost drop to let's say a dollar and eighty cents or a dollar and sixty cents because a lot of vendors will do that because of course, it's more business for them
Don’t buy too much:
Make sure you don't buy too many that way you don't waste them in the end if that makes sense mine were free so I'm very thankful for that chedda to my sister she did get them done for me. Another thing to keep in mind this is also including sampling the items so of course, you don't want to buy like 500 of these and then the last is being garbaged so I did first purchase one and one I tried out the eyelashes and wanted to make sure that they work in and last a long time.
Having a Website:
There are many eCommerce platforms available to choose the one which suits you, for me it is Shopify, it has a simple process with a 29$/ month subscription. It also prints labels that would be handy for you. You can list your products based on color, size, brand, etc of whatever you wish. There are a lot of templates available you can choose which drives your interest. If you want to go for a free template initially to lower the cost you can try and then when you get some confidence you can purchase a paid template. A paid template would be between 30 – 100$. Please use initially PayPal which is a free payment gateway and trustable for a long time even though many cheap payment gateway providers are available. Then later you can add various payment providers on the go. You can choose your website platform, do some research, and have a comparison, choose the best one which suits you.
Promotion:
A few things it is going to depend on how you promote your items what type of audience you are going for and what you sell for me I made my money back. I want to say within the second day if not the first day of actually launching my eyelashes so start selling them to people the first day I did Supergirl like I sold so many of these eyelashes I was like shut and I want to thank everybody for that because it was a lot of friends and family that did purchase from the beginning which I'm very thankful for a lot of people were curious on wondering.
The best way to promote I would suggest with your social media platform for instance if you have Instagram if you have Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter all of that you want to promote hey guys I'll be launching products this day this time this is how you can buy them later on. I did start having friends help me purple and this is friends with more followers of me I would in exchange provide them free products for them to mention my items or if later on, you start getting bigger you are going to have to start paying people to promote your item.
If you're starting a social media account you want to make sure you have something easy to spell as far as your name when I have like a phrase you know it's easy to look up something that will come upon people searches and something that will just kind of be like a catchy phrase for people to remember anybody. Another thing that I want to mention to you guys is research searching what other companies selling the same product as you might be doing um so you don't want to for instance sell your eyelashes for $30 if there's another company out there selling them for 10 but again that's just something that you want to keep in mind.
Shipping:
Another thing that you want to ask is what is their method of shipment, for instance, do they use to do they use feta again this is the stuff that you just want to ask so you know and you kind of have an idea on time frame how long it'll take. When finding a vendor is you want to make sure that is for them to allow you to sample the eyelashes and you'll just ask them hey I want to sample this pair and this packaging how much will it cost usually for them to let you sample the eyelashes they will just ask you to pay for shipping so that's another thing to ask if they allow you to sample and it must be all the information that you would need to ask your vendor.
If you even want to work with them but that's how you find your vendor again I found mine on Instagram it was pretty easy it was kind of like a trial and error thing where I had to try one out and then if I didn't like I would just move on to the next one.
Pricing :
How to go over your pricey now this is something that I was having a hard time because I didn't want to charge like $20 for eyelashes. I'm not coming for any Brad's but you know there are eyelashes out there they will be charging people a ridiculous amount of money for one pair of eyelashes. I think if I was a customer what I want to spend my hard-earned money in just one pair of eyelashes for $20 okay let's say this cost $3 the Mellor cost $1 that's $4 and then let's say mely and cost you $3 for that $7 for these eyelashes to not only buy but package and ship now if you're only selling these eyelashes for let's say $10 you're only getting that $3 profit is it worth it. For you, that's how you want to find out how to price your items.
Further Investing, Product Varieties:
The wise thing to keep in mind is, later on, you are going to add more products that you are going to be selling so that's something that you want to you know anticipate for you want to make sure that you have good money coming in, so that way you have money to invest on other products. For instance, I just recently purchased in packaging so this is a new packet it is a glitter box with their round eyelashes and then it doesn't have anything in the best one right here this is like the holographic ones is what the back looks like it's just like a holographic box so this is something that later on you will start to invest.
Recently I started selling these but this one right here is currently my best seller the reason being is because it is ten pair of eyelashes for only twenty dollars a lot of people like to be boogie but on a budget aka the name that I have for this package here, want to have different price points for different customers, different styles for other customers and a lot of people don't have eight dollars to splurge on one pair of an eyelash but why you want to have options for everybody, you want to form a strategy who are your customers, what budget they would prefer, what are their specific interest and sell your products.
