Hi Guys,
I'm a little bored in my day job at the moment and unable to work on my online shop, so I'm tossing around fantasies of how my shop may grow. I currently operate out of my home. I have an extremely limited amount of inventory that I keep at home (well-organized) and otherwise drop-ship stuff to my customers. I'm an online retailer of pet supplies.
At some point, I suspect in two or three years, I'm going to have to expand out of my house, stop doing the drop-shipping and maintain my own inventory. I'm already chafing at being unable to control my unboxing experience, and as mentioned in another thread here, drop-shipping distributors don't provide decent product photography required for online sales. So if I need to buy wholesale just to take pictures, I may as well hold all of my own inventory.
Luckily, there are tons of available warehouse spaces in my local area. I've been browsing listings when bored, for fun. I am thinking I should start small, about 1500 square feet of space. One "amenity" I haven't seen in any of the warehouse real estate listings is how the service with the post office might be set up. Would I have to ask the local post office (assume just for simplicity that I use USPS and not UPS or Fedex for now) to send a truck by my place once or twice a day? Would it need a contract?
If we're talking purely warehouse/distribution operations, is location much of a concern? (As opposed to a retail space where location is critical.)
What else will I need to know in a few years when I'm ready to start working on this growth seriously?
I'm a little bored in my day job at the moment and unable to work on my online shop, so I'm tossing around fantasies of how my shop may grow. I currently operate out of my home. I have an extremely limited amount of inventory that I keep at home (well-organized) and otherwise drop-ship stuff to my customers. I'm an online retailer of pet supplies.
At some point, I suspect in two or three years, I'm going to have to expand out of my house, stop doing the drop-shipping and maintain my own inventory. I'm already chafing at being unable to control my unboxing experience, and as mentioned in another thread here, drop-shipping distributors don't provide decent product photography required for online sales. So if I need to buy wholesale just to take pictures, I may as well hold all of my own inventory.
Luckily, there are tons of available warehouse spaces in my local area. I've been browsing listings when bored, for fun. I am thinking I should start small, about 1500 square feet of space. One "amenity" I haven't seen in any of the warehouse real estate listings is how the service with the post office might be set up. Would I have to ask the local post office (assume just for simplicity that I use USPS and not UPS or Fedex for now) to send a truck by my place once or twice a day? Would it need a contract?
If we're talking purely warehouse/distribution operations, is location much of a concern? (As opposed to a retail space where location is critical.)
What else will I need to know in a few years when I'm ready to start working on this growth seriously?
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