Serpentine Ecommerce Fulfillment Adventures in Florida

1 year ago
1

The inability to let go of control in any one of my businesses drove me to own the entire paraphernalia supply chain; all the way from importing the products, to adding each item to inventory, to managing the entire ecommerce fulfillment directly to the customer/

My train of thought was that ecommerce fulfillment was going to be challenging, because the paraphernalia business was restrictive.

The recipe to survive called for knowing the price of each one of my items, the cost of selling that item using fulfillment software and technology, figuring out the cheapest cost of packing material, and only then I could calculate break-even.

I started with a simple spreadsheet that had every field value that existed in Shopify's product catalog and began cataloging and warehousing items that were never standardized for its industry. Now this spreadsheet is like a living, breathing brain, packed with marketing #automations.

Once I had the top selling items with the exact cost of goods sold, the plan was to use 3rd party fulfillment to sell the inventory that made sense from a margin standpoint.

I have been doing this for over 10 years now, and it has proven to be an excellent business model, because of the data. It is not perfect, but it works well enough for me to keep my finger on the pulse of that industry.

One of the most interesting parts of ecommerce fulfillment is the creatures that we see here in Sarasota. This racer snake encounter is the 4th #snake that has visited our warehouse, but it's not uncommon to see lizards, bugs, rats, mice, and plenty of other creepy crawlers from the pond behind the parking lot.

 I'm @brolop and I make stuff on the internet and #IRL. Some people say I am entertaining. I say this is just a tasty sampling of my unconscious brain. Eat it up. It's #delicious.

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