Online Baby Toys and Accessories Store

Today world has changed so much. My mother use to take me along with her for shopping and I remember how I use to scream and cry seeing toys in the market and wanted them all. But this trend is gradually disappearing all thanks to this online business. Everything is now available online from grocery, food, apparel to toys. Somehow I consider it good as the current generation is so busy earning and then the amount of laziness we carry after returning from the work that we hardly manage to get time for window shopping. And then there are many factors which prove that online shopping is best for us such as -

• You don’t have to move around from one shop to another. You can visit number of shops while sitting at one place.
• And then everything is on one place, you don’t have to climb endless floors to find just one silly pair of socks
•  Yes no more silly shop assistants (shop assistants please pardon me saying this) who keep coming to us and tries to be overly sweet with their chanting lines “Oh this one is really good and will be best for  you”, etc
• Then you will get a huge variety of choices. Endless choices to choose from.
• And the best is that you can be multitasking, I mean you can even cook and do any other work while shopping.

Yes I know there are drawbacks as well but we are not talking about it here.

Hmm I am sure you all must be experiencing the same that whenever we go online we see so many commercial ads keep flashing and distracting us from our work making us bound to visit the site once. I always get swept away by it and I am sure you are as well.

So one day I saw a commercial ad of a site showing beautiful accessories for the little ones and my finger gradually went on the icon and I clicked it. I was amazed seeing the accessories and toys they were offering and thought of buying a few for my little one but all my thoughts were overshadowed by the price; such a big amount for a small thing not really good. I mean that was not at all affordable. I did a close analysis and then I found that it was not so life-size and had technical procedure to be priced so high. And to tell you the fact it is not possible for a middle class or higher middle class earning segment of the society like me to buy these items frequently on such as high price. I felt so disappointed with the price. What this price is for? Are they charging us for the above mentioned plus points of online shopping? This is not good for a large segment of people who cannot afford to buy it every time.

And then at this point I think of China products, they are cost effective and had larger variety to choose from and easily available. So it is going to be a good cost effective business if anybody wants to open an online store with China products for us (middle class or higher middle class). But before we start any further in our online store we should know why China products are so cost effective. So let’s talk about China products cost effectiveness now for some time.

Over the few decades China has emerged as a big industrial country and their products are just flooding into the Indian market economy. They offer a comparable quality, novel idea and low prices products with the difference of 20% to 50% from other country’s good. The main reason they offer such low cost products is their strategy of following a mass-production and mass-consumption formula, which means keep the profit margins low and cover the gap by the successive boost in sales. The other factor which influenced China industry growth is tariff differentials, lower cost of capital investment, higher labor productivity, lower transaction, and power and transportation costs. So these are main reason why China products are so cost effective and are into the budget of middle/higher middle class families.

It will be a good option for those who are willing to open their own online business by selling China products because they are cost effective and will not be a burden on the pocket of the vendor and their customer both. But I personally think that in-house and domestic or cottage industries will be a good option for buying in bulk as it wills also turn out to be a cost effective turn around. But this is not our topic of discussion for now. We will talk about it later some day.

So now back to the main line topic how to open an online Baby Toys and Accessories Store.

Below are the steps to get started with -

• Plan your Business: The very first step in every business is planning without planning you cannot reach any horizon. So do a proper planning, like decide on -
  • What all toys and accessories you will sell
  • Determine the price
  • Look out for the wholesaler from whom you will buy your inventories.
  • Since this is an online business have a talk with the people who will handle delivery of your parcel
  • Decide a place form where you will operate.
  • Decide on internet connection, web page, etc
  • Decide the name for the business

• Learn to use internet: It depends how familiar you are with internet. If you are not then learn to use it. You should be able to do a search. Look out for your competitors what they are selling. Learn to use the web tools such as Twitter, RSS Feeds, etc. Become familiar with the online buying and selling activities.

• Domain Registration: Your domain is your unique address on the Internet similar to a patent or a trademark. So register your domain with the companies (registrars) who offer you to purchase domains from them. There are few listed below –
  • Bluehost- 1and1.com
  • Network Solutions
  • Go Daddy
  • 1and1.com

• Look for a web host: Now what is web host? A web host is a company that will rent you space on their servers to host your website. Web host features such as storage capacity, uptime percentage, and domain based email and server security. Many domain registration companies offers web hosting as well.  So you can have your both from the same company but before making your choice consider these factors as well its ability to host a blog, provide response forms, marketing tools and tools for e-commerce.

• Website Designing: Now design your website. Either you can design it by yourself or you can ask any professional to do so. If you wish to design it by yourself then there are many tools available such as WordPress, Dreamweaver,  etc for designing.

• Buy Online Payment gateway: Now you have to buy online payment gateway so that customer of your website can pay you for your goods online. There are many companies who offer such services are PayPal, Google checkout, PayUMoney, etc. You can opt anyone but before that read and understands there terms and conditions properly.

• Delivery: Once the customer has paid you now it’s your task to deliver the product on time, so there should be some currier company with whom you have tied up with for the deliveries.

• Build online site traffic: This means advertising your site and making people visit your site. You can achieve this by
  • Registering you with the major search engine providers such as Google, Yahoo, etc.
  • Advertising on Google and facebook
  • Advertising by flyers, prints, on billboards, local newapaper, etc
  • Publishing email letters

• Tracking Your Growth: There are tools available to track your growth in the online business.

• Monitoring your Business: Keep a close eye on your website, update it regularly about the new products, stock update, and on time delivery. Keeping in contact with the whole seller for the stock update.