What's the most important thing you learned about your business?
Never underestimate the power of rapid change for good, bad and ugly. Don't have a most important one, but its good one for now that comes to mind :)
Ebay as an additional sales channel has both positives and negatives, but overall it's worth using:
It adds incremental sales, allowing for lower cost imports.
It works for some of our categories but not others. Eg. small items that China can ship directly to Australia - we can't even compete on Ebay for those.
The fees are fixed at around $25 per month + 9% commission. We can run that year-round, unlike some other advertising that we have to pause in the low season.
A second point:
Focusing more on our hammock chairs improved our low season, since they are less seasonal than our regular hammocks. We improved our range and promotions, and it is proving successful.
The business is 18+ months old and has gone great this year with around 150% YoY growth, but I feel like I've already gained a reasonable market share but the profit is hardly impressive. From this point it'll be much harder to grow, since the market share has already gone from tiny to reasonable. The profit is less than a full time income in winter, and equal to a fairly high full time income in Summer. Luckily the work is only equal to a part time job. There is still room for improvement though, so I'll keep at it. It just feels like some other businesses may have higher potential...the hammocks market may be smaller than I had thought.
Clarification on the type of clients we love to work with and what activities we really enjoyed. This was important to us because we wanted to build a business as they say in China that last 100 years..It's not just a job, its our way of life.
That kind of clarification can definitely change your trajectory.
Jef Lippiatt, Owner at Startup Chucktown
That sounds very positive.