Photo Credit: Randy Hage
Putting up a digital storefront is a lot like putting up a physical storefront. You need to acquire or rent the property, put a building up if one doesn’t exist or remodel the preexisting one. Once the building is ready, it needs to be decorated inside to make it attractive to customers. Then of course you need to decided what inventory to pick and acquire it. Once you get the product in house, you need to get it ready for sale and then display it. Finally, you need to get all of the systems in place to actually sell the product to someone and deliver it to them.
Most of this is taken for granted when you’re selling items on eBay and Amazon. Obviously you need to acquire and list the product, and then eventually get it to a buyer, but everything else is already in place.
It’s a bit of an eye opening experience when you go to build a digital storefront from the ground up. There is a lot of “Oh, yeah, I’ve got to do that…” moments.
The Best Buy nearest to us is currently being remodeled. Literally, you feel like you are shopping in a store that is under construction. The building that the store is in is still under construction, and the store itself is under construction. If you want to kind of get a feel for what that is like, you can take a look at the online storefront that I am putting together. It’s called Tentmakers By Trade Marketplace. The overall site, called Tentmakers By Trade, is still under construction, but I wanted to get the ball moving on the eCommerce site.
The corresponding eBay and Amazon storefronts are in a little bit better shape.