Ready to launch (but don't tell anyone!)

I am finally in a position where I feel confident that the shop will be open for business on the 1st of October. In fact things are going so well now that I am keen to open as soon as possible - I have decided that whilst holding to the official opening date of 1st of October I am going to start spreading the word in advance of this through the use of adwords as well as postings on forums etc.


I am also starting to sell some of the second hand items I have on eBay and with each purchase I send out I will be enclosing some money off vouchers for the website, http://www.jktoys.co.uk/ . Hopefully word will start to spread and the orders will follow!

E-mail marketing

Whilst looking for some general hints and tips on producing HTML emails to send out to people who have expressed an interest in JKToys I came across the following website: http://www.mailchimp.com/

I have signed up for a fre account which allows you to store up to 500 people in a list and send up to 3,000 e-mails as part of a marketing campaign. It appears to have some very useful tools such as helping with the design of an HTML e-mail to be sent out and then tracking how many people open the mail and whether they then click on any of the links which you may have included within the mail.

I have had a quick play and think this could be a very useful tool - all I now need to work out is how to get people to sign up to be on my mailing list. I have added a sign up form to the website (another handy application provided by mailchimp) so hopefully as more people visit the site so the mailing list will grow. I am determined not to be seen as a spammer so it is very important to me that anyone who receives our newsletter must have signed up for it.

To try and get people to sign up to our newsletter I am offering the chance to win a 100 piece BRIO compatible train set which I will be selling at c. £37 and which many others sell for nearer £50. You can sign up at http://www.jktoys.co.uk/ if you are interested.

Taking Product Shots

Now that I have the products I need to get shots suitable for placing on the web to show them off. There appear to be a couple of options on how I go about this:

1. Use a specialist product photo studio - best price I can find is £5 per product which actually seems reasonable when you read what they do - it is 3-4 high resolution shots, post processed if necessary and adjusted for eBay / website thumbnails


2. Invest in the necessary equipment and learn how to take professional looking product shots.

I have decided that sticking with the JKToys low cst ethos option 2 is the best choice for what I want to do. I already have a reasonable digital camera so in order to take half decent product shots it appears that the only other piece of kit I really need is a light tent. These retail from c. £200 but I have found online instructions for a DIY version which will cost c. £50 - details are at:

http://andypiper.wordpress.com/2007/01/06/building-a-light-tent-part-2-assembly/

and there is a handy tutorial on how to take decent shots at:

http://www.shortcourses.com/studio/tabletop/studio.htm

Having built the light tent as per the instructions above I have found it to be a bit on the unstable side - I will therefore be modifying the design to incorporate leg braces for additional sturdiness. I also think I need to invest in some higher wattage lighting as my initial shots as can be currently seen on http://www.j.ktoys.co.uk/ are a little bit noisy I think due to less than ideal lighting.

Anyway will post an update when I get around to modifying the light tent design for anyone interested.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

It certainly feels like it has been a battle to get to this stage and yet I haven't even tried to sell a single item yet!!


I now know that there are 149 cartons waiting to be picked up from a warehouse near the M25 - time to clear out the garage!!

Garage cleared - all ready to go and collect my goods, just a quick phone call to check their opening times oh and "by the way the goods haven't been cleared for release so you won't be able to pick them up." Yet again my Chinese facilitators have yet again done anything but facilitate!! Having transferred my final dues for shipping, VAT etc. a week ago I was pleasantly surprised when I received the details of my shipment and where I could pick them up from - I guess I should have known then that this was running too smoothly to be believed, how appropriate the title for this post, which I typed a couple of days ago, now seems.

1 month and counting

Well the title says it all - it is now one month until my target opening date of 1st October for JKToys. Apparently my goods are now in the country; after failing to get a response to my e-mails I finally resorted to calling the intermediary company in China to find out what is going on. Re-assuringly I managed to get through to my account manager (although I get the feeling she may be the one account manager!) and she reported that my container had been unloaded at Felixstowe and I should soon be hearing from their logistics partner to discuss delivery.

I have received my heat sealer and the necessary consumables and have to say I am happy witht the end results of the sample items that I have packaged up - I now need to spend a bit of time to develop the process so as to reduce the turn-around time for each order.

Development of the website has been continuing apace - helped by the fact that my e-commerce provider has set up a new forum for bug reporting, feature requests etc. and they are taking all the comments on board and turning things around pretty quickly, so fair play to them - for reference they can be found at http://www.hbecommerce.com/ (if you use them to set up a shop please let them know I sent you!).

The thing I am really missing is the product - I need this to do the necessary photo work and to work out what track layout options I can build and hence market with the track I have ordered. I have sent a request to China for prices of additional items I want to stock (surely it can't take as long for the second order), I am looking to expand the range with some of the more expensive items such as train sheds, turntables etc so as to be able to offer more of a one stop shop for Brio and wooden train set accessories. One of my concerns at the moment is that because I will not have a stock of the full range of items people may go elsewhere, the plan therefore is to expand the range of items stocked as quickly as possible.