Pat, you should be marking your topics as Show HN:
Promotion of your blog should be clear to readers.
Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, that's good to know because in Finland, your employer does pay it.
Hey, serious question from an American. How does this policy not cause massive hiring discrimination against young women, especially recently married women? I asked my Canadian relatives this question, and their answers basically boiled down to 'well that would be illegal'. But from what I can tell enforcing anti discrimination in hiring is next to impossible, especially if you interview and hire even a slightly more…
I would argue that it's not the law that's preventing discrimination, it's the fact that nearly 50% of the workforce is made up of women, thereby excluding a huge category is detrimental to your business. You wouldn't be a very good manager if you decided not to hire women because one day they might take a year off. Additionally, many managers are probably also parents themselves and understand the importance of maternity leave and understand it's part of having a workforce. Plus, in my department, we actually see the benefit of maternity leaves. We get to hire a new person for a year that can bring new insight and experience into the role. If they are good, we try to find a place for them, if they are bad, the year expires and they go off without any fanfare.
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine's wife started a very high margin business selling scrapbook grabbags on eBay. She'd buy up clearance items and local craft/hobby stores, and bundle them up to sell on eBay. She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts, cutting her cashflow off, effectively killing the business.
> She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts What does that mean?
It means that PayPal (incorrectly) suspected her of fraud and took her money (froze her accounts). If this all sounds weird to you then you should search for more info because PayPal loves screwing over sellers on their platform.
Alternatively, she could have had a wrong account type (personal instead of business), but my charitable assumption is that GP took care of that.
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#54Beware. There's a whole lot of "start an e shop and get rich quick" bullshit out there. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-ex...
> "PJ: That is the one thing that actually makes it look slightly scammy... like Nike's not like we just sold a pair of sneakers." I do have to disagree on this. This is them trying to increase the "social proof", proof that you are making a solid choice in buying this item. Nike doesnt need to do this because everybody knows nike, and feels that they are good shoes worth their money. Showing proof of other purchases…
> Of course this all assumes legit "soAndSo bought it too" messages
And this is why I would never trust such messages. It's way too easy to fake it, and too much work to make it real, and there's no way for customers to verify it's real anyway.
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#55Revenues are irrelevant. Profits aren't.
Yep, this is a reoccurring problem on his blog. Low quality interviews and articles.
I believe he has lots of accounts to upvote, otherwise this would be hidden.
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine's wife started a very high margin business selling scrapbook grabbags on eBay. She'd buy up clearance items and local craft/hobby stores, and bundle them up to sell on eBay. She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts, cutting her cashflow off, effectively killing the business.
> She made enough money that after two months, PayPal came along and froze her accounts What does that mean?
[deleted]
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, that's good to know because in Finland, your employer does pay it.
Hey, serious question from an American. How does this policy not cause massive hiring discrimination against young women, especially recently married women? I asked my Canadian relatives this question, and their answers basically boiled down to 'well that would be illegal'. But from what I can tell enforcing anti discrimination in hiring is next to impossible, especially if you interview and hire even a slightly more…
This is totally a wild guess, but I think a small part of it is just the cultural values. It seems most people are for such leave, including the people who hire.
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#58I run an almost identical fabric shop online. 20k/month revenue is great but remember this is not a SaaS with unlimited scale and low costs. It's actually a very traditional business model, and margins here are only going to about 20-30%, potentially a lot less if you have to pay for your storage space. You buy the fabric, typically you'll double the price when selling to customers. Then you take off additional posta…
> If you're good at marketing you can shift quite a lot of fabric For me marketing is always the toughest part . How do you do your marketing ? What tips can you offer us that save the most time and money spent ?
tl;dr: Learn retail.
It's kind of funny that people will get advice to get CS degrees, take a boot camp, learn a language, etc. to execute on an idea, but for soft skills you never see classes for business or marketing recommended. People could take 2-3+ business/marketing classes in the time it takes to learn React from zero Javascript knowledge. Instead, people are told to sign up to Stripe Atlas or Shopify and Instagram. "...and then a miracle occurs."[1]
Imagine a bizdev person saying, "for me, programming is always the toughest part, any tips?" and the response being, "Oh, you should definitely sign up for Stack Overflow. Simplifies things quite a bit." This may reflect a conceit on the part of programmers that it's soooo much more complicated and important, and the business side is full of chads and beckys who talk too loud on speakerphone (yes these people are a cancer, but that's beside my point).
Biz/Mark has its own, shall we say, "Data Structures and Algorithms" to it, there's just no one set of books that everyone (...) agrees on. Even so, people have been selling fabric for thousands of years, there's not much that the internet changes about that, or many if not most other business categories.
1. https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4003/4633000725_8817dcedb9_b.j...
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#59I run an almost identical fabric shop online. 20k/month revenue is great but remember this is not a SaaS with unlimited scale and low costs. It's actually a very traditional business model, and margins here are only going to about 20-30%, potentially a lot less if you have to pay for your storage space. You buy the fabric, typically you'll double the price when selling to customers. Then you take off additional posta…
One thing I've been wondering about wrt high-volume online shops: how do you protect your hands against the dryness of the cardboard boxes and papercuts? Is this an issue?
Re: Bootstrapping an Online Fabric Shop and Growing to $20k per month
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's true. If you have revenue from thousands of purchases, and lots of revenue, you have an avenue to reduce costs as your pipeline matures. It's not the only number you should care about, but it's hardly a who-cares item.
I respectfully disagree. Without context, revenue by itself is less than 'who cares', it can be something of a damaging number in the sense that it can lead financially illiterate people astray.
I don't see how you can solve the 'financially illiterate people [will be led] astray' with some other metric. Profit is similarly useless without context (e.g. Is this reoccurring, or one-time?). Giving all the metrics you might care to can still lead financially illiterate people astray.