Reader Questions on Product Development, Buying Sites & More

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

The dynamic duo returns to help answer listener questions. Today we tackle a wide range of topics from how to structure your business joint ventures to what the best sources are for buying and selling eCommerce sites. If you've got questions, Andrew and Drew have the answers. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Drew Sanocki of Nerdmarketing.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow e-commerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, it's Andrew here, and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to the show. Today on the show, going back and doing a round of your questions, reader questions from the blog and online, just doing a random grab bag of questions we thought were interesting to tackle. And joining me to really answer all these... Drew: The tough ones. Andrew: The tough ones. I'm going to take all the softballs, Drew, and hand you off all the really, the ones I have been stressing out about. The men, all the hard answers, Mr. Sanocki, how are you doing, sir? Drew: Good. How are you? Andrew: Good, good. Drew, things in New York well? Drew: Things in New York are great. It's getting warmer and spring is just around the corner. Andrew: And you recently sold Karmaloop, correct? Drew: We did. I did not, we did, but yeah, that was a quick turnaround. We bought it out of bankruptcy last summer and just sold it a week ago to a sneaker retailer on the West Coast. Andrew: That's fantastic. Congratulations, sir. Drew: Thanks. It was a great chance to really try out a lot of the things that I preach on my blog, and they work so it was a good case study. Andrew: Yeah, well, you mentioned that a lot of the tactics and things you talked about at your talk at ECF Live which we'll link, well, it's available to all eCommerceFuel members in the community, but a lot of the things from that talk are the things you used to really turn that retailer around. Drew: Yeah, that's right. One of the first things I did was I talk a lot about figuring out who your best customers are and then building the business around that group of customers. And I spent about a month doing that at Karmaloop, and once I figured out who that group was, the next step was really developing the marketing campaigns that kept those customers around, acquired more of them and kept them buying. So that took about a year to implement and it worked. We brought it from a money-losing company, month-over-month losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to about break even and that's when we sold it. Andrew: That's awesome. Well, congratulations, sir. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Nice little cap in the feather, that's really cool. Drew: Thanks. Andrew: All right, sir. Should we get into some questions? Drew: Let's do it. "In skincare, do you start in-house and small or go straight to China?" Andrew: So the first question we've got is from Matt, and Matt says, "Hey guys, listen to the podcast and love it. I'm looking at starting a store with beauty and face care products similar to Nurture My Body which is Bill's store, but in a different vertical. If you were starting a business like this, would you immediately try to set things up with a Chinese supplier and have them develop formulas for you, or would you do everything small in-house to perfect the formulas first? A little stuck on which avenue is the best to try and pursue." Drew, what are your thoughts? Drew: I don't really know a lot about this kind of production, but it seems like you'd want to do something like this domestically just to figure out the formulation before you deal with sourcing anything from overseas.