If you open a store online, what is your competition?
How can we stand out among the many online stores? It's already quite difficult for customers to notice our little shop, like looking for a needle in the ocean. After they come in and find our products appealing, hearing that "ding dong" sound is such a rare occurrence! After much effort, when an order is finally made, how do we turn them into repeat customers? This brings up an important question: what is your core competitiveness? What is your core competitiveness? I've asked myself this question too. Should we compete on popularity, capital, sources of goods, experience, quality, or price? In short, you need to highlight your differences from other online stores, show what makes you unique, display your strengths, and let customers resonate with your advantages.
Our little store sells pants. We believe that appropriate investment is necessary for output. Therefore, from the very beginning, we invested over ten thousand yuan in computers and photography equipment (for sellers starting with limited funds, try to save as much as possible; we initially put in a lot of money which took a while to recover, making us feel a bit disheartened at times. Do what you can, as even heroes can be troubled by a single coin). Our experience was mainly from running physical stores. We can guarantee the quality because all our goods come directly from the source. While we can compete on price, the ultimate goal of business is still to make a profit. Long-term reliance on low-price strategies through dropshipping on Taobao is unsustainable without profits, as businesses without profit are bound not to last long. However, our prices are relatively low compared to others. This is mainly due to our ability to secure goods at the source, passing on the profits to customers. We must negotiate with suppliers, hehe.
Pricing strategy is particularly crucial. Many new sellers don't know how to set prices. Prices shouldn't be too high; customers are smart and can easily search to see if your prices are significantly higher than others'. But does that mean the lower the better? Not exactly. Businesses without long-term profits can't even sustain themselves, let alone continue operating. Maintaining a certain profit margin while keeping prices slightly lower than competitors is sufficient.
Besides pricing, our advantages lie in our sources of goods and services. We have a physical store located in China's No.1 clothing street: Hangzhou Sijiqing Clothing Wholesale Market. Naturally, our own pants are featured prominently in our Taobao store. To diversify and complete our product range, allowing buyers who visit our shop to find satisfactory pants, we started considering expanding our inventory. Initially, it was like begging when negotiating with other suppliers, then taking photos and uploading them. At first, we didn't sell much, and many people began doubting the feasibility of our online store. Even if they didn't say it outright, their stance was clearly unsupportive. So there was a particularly tough period. However, persistence pays off. After a year of sticking with it, our online store finally showed some improvement.
By 2008, Hangzhou's Taobao industry was thriving, with more and more Taobao procurement merchants appearing in the market. The declining sales of many traditional wholesale competitors opened their eyes to the potential of the online platform. As a result, when we went to procure goods, we received much more cooperation than before. Talking about our services, ---- when we reached a certain stage, we joined the Consumer Protection Program. For our supply chain, we focused primarily on ensuring quality. Pants that didn't meet our standards were simply not sold. We strived to ensure high-quality products with good value for money. Only then could we attract repeat customers. If quality couldn't be guaranteed, customers we worked so hard to convert might not return. Consider this: there are countless online stores, and the chances of them noticing ours are slim to begin with. A large proportion of visitors browse and leave without purchasing. Then comes negotiation, and finally, a deal is made. For a pair of pants, the profit margin is only 10-20%, yet it takes numerous selection criteria from buyers to reach a transaction. Therefore, after-sales service becomes extremely critical. Before shipping, we would compile useful information and mark it with a little red flag. Additionally, we established customer profiles for future follow-up services.
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