Reality Strikes

Blimey, received an e-mail today saying 'my goods are now arriving' please give us delivery details - which has caused me some confusion as my understanding was that they were going to ship the goods to their warehouse and I could then arrange to pick them up from there, so have had to e-mail back for clarification. I hope that the items will have been shipped in a form which means I can load and unload a van by hand - given I don't have access to a forklift truck and I'm pretty sure one wouldn't fit in our garage!

I am also now waiting nervously to see how much I will have to pay for shipping, customs etc. When I first set out on this venture I did receive a quote for the fully landed price but I am intrigued to see if what I actually end up being charged bears any resmblance to this quote (I have added a supplementary order to the shipment so I am expecting it to have changed a bit but not by a massive amount.

Now it is time to really focus on tidying up the JKToys website at http://www.jktoys.co.uk/ , deciding on the pricing strategy and defining the marketing strategy.

In respect to the final of these topics I have now signed up to both Google's Adwords and eBay's Adcommerce schemes - my plan is to use these schemes to drive customers to either the goods I am selling on eBay (my initial sales channel) or the JKToys website. I am intrigued to see how effective these schemes will be - they certainly seem to offer plenty of tracking statistics to show you number of click throughs etc.

I need to work on the definition of the campaigns in both of these tools ready for launch date - I am having to hold myself back from having a go with the tools now - as obviously the site isn't ready and I have nothing to sell (I'm just really keen to see how well these tools work).

WooHoo - progress

My goods are finally on the way to the UK, as I am becoming used to with my Chinese agents they didn't bother to tell me this minor detail I only found out by asking what the current progress was. I think I may have to investigate other agents before placing my next order, or even look into working directly with the factories - a daunting prospect at the moment.

Anyway for now it is full steam ahead with tidying up the website and making sure I have the processes in place to fulfill orders - I need to look into how to package the goods so that they look up to a professional standard; I am thinking a heat sealing machine to bag up groups of items will give a better impression compared to sending out loose items in postal bags, so I think it is time to look on ebay to see what offers there are to be had. Obviously the cost of the packaging will need to be factored into my cost/price model to ensure that I am making an adequate return from each sale to cover all of my costs plus a profit (fingers crossed!!)