EP 30: What Kind of Ecommerce Business Are You Building?

There are two major routes in the business of online retail, you either: Sell products from a range of brands and in other words ‘curate’ a range and offering of products for your target market. You’d most likely be a specialist i.e. like a store selling only high end headphones, or wooden floors or affordable leather goods. Margins are typically slim in this instance and you’d find that Amazon dominates a significant number of verticals. You need to dig deep to position your store as a specialist store with a deep offering and brilliant customer service. Design, invent, develop, manufacture and sell ‘direct-to-consumer’ (D2C) - a tough slug as you might need to constantly refresh and update your offering. You’d most likely need to seek partner manufacturers, designers, etc. The difficult part is taking your product to market. If you have a look at the products on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you’d find that they are all D2C businesses attempting to use crowdfunding to lunch their businesses. Because you control the entire value chain, margins are a whole lot wider here.