Hi,
Let me give a little bit of background. I, and a friend from NIFT, have been playing around with the idea of launching a slightly upscale leather accessories brand (starting with handbags, wallets, iPad covers, etc.) We have done quite a bit of research and figured out the manufacturing, production and design side of things, but we are a little confused about the best way to start off.
We don’t have the money to open a store in a Mall (which would be the ideal launch-pad if money was not a problem).
We will have a website and sell our products there, but as girls who shop online, we know that it would be difficult to convince people to buy a bag from an unheard-of company(unless it was very cheap) online. Would it be a better bet to start off by selling our products on Flipkart, Myntra, etc? Does anyone know how that process works? As for physical stores, is it better to have a standalone store, or to sell through retailers like Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, etc? We are considering having some pop-up shops to get an initial buzz going. Any help will be appreciated.
P.S. Our target customers are stylish professionals who need to carry a lot of stuff to work, but don’t want to carry aunty-like bags. And at the risk of sounding immodest, we actually have pretty cool designs.
Thanks!
asha chaudhry
neharika…
if you have pretty cool designs – i would suggest start with a facebook store. i’ll ping nameet of sellmojo – he is one of our rockstars and he can surely help you.
https://www.therodinhoods.com/profile/NameetPotnis
Nameet Potnis
Hi Neharika,
Congratulations on the decision to start off on your own! Let me jump right in.
Starting off on marketplaces: This is a pretty good idea! There are advantages and disadvantages of doing this. I have seen some success stories and quite a few horror stories too. All good marketplaces would require you to be a registered company with your sales tax/ registration etc in place.
Doing Pop up stores – Excellent Idea! Quite a few of our merchants over at SellMojo do Pop up stores. For example https://rotikapdamakaan.co.in does quite a few, this was one of their pop up events – https://allevents.in/mumbai/shop-up-at-the-pop-up/251030108386890 I would highly recommend you do this!
Now, SellMojo: Using SellMojo.com you can set up a Facebook Store as well as a Website. Setting up takes all of 2 minutes. Currently we offer 4 front ends; the merchants Facebook Page, the merchants own website, a SellMojo sub domain and a SellMojo Marketplace. In the near future we will be adding more frontends for our merchants. This simplifies their life as they only have to handle inventory at a single location!
On SellMojo, you will be in good company ranging from RotiKapda Makaan, Veruschka, Vellvette, Tipsie Toes to even Reliance! (You can see most of our merchants selling here on the Marketplace)
You can check out all the SellMojo features here – https://sellmojo.com/features
Let me know If I can help with anything else in particular. You can get in touch with me on nameet.potnis@sellmojo.com 🙂