Branching Out Your Business

By Adam  |  27 Jun 2015 15:00:00

Imagine things go well. Imagine things go very well and you're making a living from your eCommerce website. At this point in life (and if you've not opened your Sellr store yet, it could be a while away) you may be wondering whether your business could possibly get any bigger and asking yourself "What next?" If that is the case, then this blog post has the answer for you (or, at least, one of many possible answers).

You're probably not going to want to rent a building so that you can open up a real shop just based on your online success. After all, just because you have been successful online, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will be successful in real life. As a way to test your abilities 'out in the world' you could open up a pop-up shop. If you're unfamiliar with the idea of a pop-up shop, don't worry, it's fairly basic: it's essentially just running a shop from a stand at a certain location on a non-permanent basis.

So, if you want to open up a pop-up shop, where could you do it? Well, there are quite a few options. You could approach a shop that you know of, preferably an independent one, and ask whether you could sell your stuff in there for a day (or more). If you do this, you should choose a shop which would sell similar things to you, but not identical things because you don't want to be in competition with one another. Ideally this will benefit both you; you will get a feeling for selling in person while making some money at the same time, and the shop that you are in might attract some more customers than usual, when people see that there is something unusual going on in there.

Another possibility would be to set up shop in a shopping centre. I'm sure you've seen it before, where there are stands with people selling things in the middle of a busy shopping centre. Often they are there for quite a while as well. This may bring you more customers than being on the inside of another shop, simply because so many people pass through a shopping centre. By doing this, you'd also get a large variety of people come through which could potentially give you a stronger understanding of your target audience (should one be needed).

Something else to investigate is whether there are any local arts and crafts fairs. These are great opportunities for local creatives to do some networking and to make some new customers. People are often keen to fund local artists and you could maybe even make some customers for life. The good thing about these arts and crafts fairs is that you will probably get a chance to meet lots of other people doing similar things in your area, which could lead to potential partnerships and the flourishing of several businesses.

Perhaps the best place you could open up a pop-up shop is within a vacant commercial building. This is quite a rare thing, but if you know of a place like this, it's certainly worth approaching the appropriate people. If it works, you've essentially got your own little shop, and rent free! And it works for the people trying to rent the place too, as it makes the building look more attractive and useful. People are always more likely to approach a shop over a stand, especially a new shop, so if you’re up to it and the chance presents itself, you should definitely take it!

So, if you are doing well with your Sellr store, trying out a pop up shop could be well worth your time! If you've had a pop up shop, but never used the internet for your business, why not open an account with Sellr? The internet may be quite the untapped resource! And, if you've never done either of those things, but want to start a business, you should open a Sellr account too, you've got nothing to lose!