How I set up my Craft Business website shop.

My handbag making supplies e-comm shop went live in Nov. 05. I first had the idea to set up the shop the previous winter and from planning and putting the wheels in motion it took me 7 months to source my supplies, get myself a website, and all of the other necessary stuff in between in order to be able to trade online. In this post I’m going to list all of the steps I took to get my e-comm shop off the ground, I’m hoping this will be useful for anyone else who wants to trade via their own website.

After a few seasons of selling my bags in a craft market I knew that I wanted to start selling bag making supplies online. There were several positive indicators that this could be a viable business. So armed with a loan from my family and no knowledge whatsoever of how to go about it I set up my first website. This was how I did it, in the order I did it:

1. Sourcing supplies - I decided upon what supplies I needed to open my shop and then I ordered them to be made in the factories. I ordered my supplies first because I needed samples to be made and approved, the factories would need time to produce the items (which could be anything from 4-6 weeks) and the thing that would take the longest time was that I wanted the items to be shipped to the UK (rather than flown). Shipping is far cheaper than flying but it can take months rather than days, or weeks.
2. Website design- I knew from the start that I wanted my own website rather than sell through eBay or Etsy. I phoned around LOADS of website designers from friends, to agencies to freelancers. I was quoted prices from £200 ($400) – £2000!! In the end I decided that agencies were too expensive and I settled upon a freelancer who seemed to be very knowledgeable in e-comm and I asked someone else to do the website design and logo. I found them both through this Freelancers site. The design process took approx 3 months in all – I intentionally gave them a long time to do this because there was lots of to-ing and fro-ing with asking my opinions on design and re-jiggling and testing. etc.
   
3. I opened a business bank account – keeping your business finances separate from your pesonal finances makes life much easier.
4. I set up a merchant bank account - this type of account receives funds from the sales of my items and sends them in my business account. I chose not to go with Paypal for website payment system because at the time there was bad press about Paypal’s security – this doesn’t seem to be an issue now, but at the time it was. I also wanted payments to take place completely on my site (rather the customer being taken to Paypal pages). Another advantage of having my own payment system is that (in the long-run) this method is cheaper than Paypal, so I can pass this saving onto my customers. Therefore I needed to set up my own payment system – hence the need for a merch, bank account.
5. I set up the payment gateway - because of the above (and me not wanting PayPal) I had to set up a system that processes funds from the sale of my items. The payment gateway takes these funds and then passes them onto my merchant bank.
6. The samples arrived from the factories – 8 out of the 12 custom designs were great so I ordered a shed load of them. The other 4 designs need modifying…
7. I purchased office furniture - good old IKEA they have great office furniture.
8. I purchased postage & packaging stationary - I looked at the dimensions of my smallest and largest items and chose padded envelopes accordingly.
9. The admin part of the website is ready - the part where you upload items and make any changes to your website is now ready and I can start uploading products to the site (even though it’s not live yet).
10. The finished goods from the factories, bag patterns, and the fabrics start arriving – sooo exciting, but loads of work. I have to check through the all of the orders to make sure I have been given the right amount of everything and that all items are in perfect condition. I now have heaps of photos to take and photoshop. I have to go through all of my invoice sheets for each item and price and describe each item. Before going live this process took me 3 weeks of working in it every day.
11. I register myself as a self-employed person - oooerr…no going back now! I tell the tax people of my self employed status and I tell them that I am going to be a sole trader (which is the most basic form in which a company can trade).
12. I’m live; U-handbag lives!!!! - The site goes live on the 11th Nov 2005 and I bite my nails down to my elbows (virtually sitting on my computer) until Michaela in UK makes the shop’s first ever order on the following day.
13. I start looking into pay per click advertising with Google - this is bloody expensive (at least it was because I don’t need it so much now because of my blog).
14. I start approaching various craft mags to let them know I have started my business - most of them aren’t that interested, but a few of them do mention me in their magazine which is great!

So that’s how I brought U-handbag.com into existence. I don’t know if that’s the best way to go about creating a website as I had no knowledge of how to go about it, but it all seemed to work out fine in the end