The Energon Pub

Well the thought has crossed my mind many times, and i have the means & money in which to do it. If i was to start such a venture what advice would you guys have for me from a customers prespective? I'm far from a final decision on this, but it would be intresting.

payload wrote:Well the thought has crossed my mind many times, and i have the means & money in which to do it. If i was to start such a venture what advice would you guys have for me from a customers prespective? I'm far from a final decision on this, but it would be intresting.

Only start a business when you are sure you can handle it and it will last.
And you need to build up the trustworthiness and reputation too.

good advice for sure

payload wrote:good advice for sure

Basically, if you've got more than enough cash, you can try it out.

Make sure to sell interesting things and not the stuff everybody can get in the next store, so a good supplier is in order. That's not to say that normal stuff isn't of interest as well, sometimes it's even more interesting than the specialities.

Make sure to package your things securely, explore which options for shipping are available and hwo expensive they are (tracking is always a good thing).

Worry about how your customers are supposed to pay (I for example refuse to use Paypal).

How do you make sure your accounts and the store in general is protected against hacking and viruses? Is your hosting service reliable.

Think about how and where to advertise (I find it somewhat annoying to see ads for MP04 and MP05 when the store has long sold out).

Do want to sell internationally? (Starts the whole shipping question again.)

If you are succesful, can you keep of with that success, or will it be too much to get all the stuff everybody wants, answer all the inane question coming in via email and still send out all orders. What to do when something goes wrong with an order.

Err, do you want me to go on?

There's no point selling something you can get cheap in a store down the road in an online shop. So unless you can get them for conciderably less than rrp, and can ensure postage is very cheap, dont sell tfs that are easily available to your target customers. (Most online shops will tend to aim ap a particular market, say the UK or the US.)

As far as modern transformers go, you'd be best stocking Japanese tfs mainly, as the US has as good as anybody else distribution of Hasbro tfs (though it might be worth stocking some of the hard to come by ones, (like '08 bumbles' and 'US MP SS'), tfs that are likly to be popular and seriously scalped).

start small and go from there. if it fails then you aren't left with tons of stock you can't get rid of. The main thing with TF is having product that is high quality, at a great price (= or less than local retail stores) and having great customer service/fast shipping. You might be better off starting your business on eBay and growing it from there.

After talking to my local import toy shop, you need to be ordering a few hundred figures and moving those to make it worthwhile.

Sarri wrote: Worry about how your customers are supposed to pay (I for example refuse to use Paypal).

I on the otherhand am more comfortable using paypal than other methods...go figure.

I suggest looking at features that other online shops have that people like(BBTS' Pile'oloot, for instance).

Otherwise, supporting a number of payment options, having swift shipping, and timely, helpful customer service are must haves.

Haven't lots of people tried this and it hardly seemed to work?

In regards to packing: I do not recommend taking the action HQ approach. When i received my mp megs from them and it came in a slightly oversized box with no padding present. Megs's box was merely wrapped in plastic then taped into the center of the box. I expect a little bit more. Needless to say this put me slightly off and i have not ordered from them since, despite the product arriving in perfect shape...i dont want to take the risk.

One thing to make sure you do is register it as a business meeting all the associated federal and state laws for taxes and the like. Things like this are happening up here in CANADA:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... /#headline

I would also recommend doing all the shows like Botcon to get the word out regarding your online store and also buying some ad space on this site once you are more established. It is tough though so be prepared to have some lean times. I've thought about it too but decided against it in the end.

So when is this gonna start? What's available in your line up?

I would suggest you try eBay. Start small and get a feel for it. Then you can open an ebay store.

LigerJohn wrote:I would suggest you try eBay. Start small and get a feel for it. Then you can open an ebay store.

That's a good recomendation.