Deciding if it’s Right for You and Getting Started!
Since the concept of vendor based ecommerce is new to the network, there are some kinks still being worked out and these do need to be considered when making the choice if this is right for you. (More about that later.)
Overall, I am really excited about the potential that this has to A) add depth to our sites and B) support local momtrepreneurs.
Step One: Who do you want to include?
At Cincinnati Moms Blog we wanted to begin offering ecommerce as a way to support smaller, local businesses (primarily mom-run) in our community who simply do not have the budget to advertise with us in the traditional way. To stay true to this mission, we decided on the following inclusion criteria:
- Business must be local – for us this includes a pretty good radius around the city center, including northern Kentucky.
- Must be a small business
- Ideally, mom run, but this is not a deal breaker
- Products we believe in. We started with some of the vendors we had relationships with from the beginning who make adorable products.
- No direct-sales.
- No service based services at this time (ie. home cleaning, consulting, etc…)
Step Two: Determine your pitch.
It is important to come up with the specifics of your pitch before you begin. Why is it valuable for these businesses to partner with you specifically (beyond the normal things – trusted resource to local moms, engaged community, etc…) I spoke with some local moms who run etsy shops. I wanted to get a feel for what we could offer that etsy did not. Our decisions on details of the pitch ultimately ended up being as follows:
- We established a % of gross sales which would be our commission.
- We opted to not charge a listing fee per item for sale as this was one of the primary complaints we were hearing about etsy (plus it would likely be very time consuming under our current structure.
- At this time we are not charging a sign-up fee, however I think there is a lot of value in that piece for more established sites or as things grow. We hope to make this part of the equation in the future.
- We decided that shipping and customer complaints would be the responsibility of the vendor. Under the current structure this means the vendor needs to come up with a flat fee for shipping.
- Promotion would be of the ecommerce site, not the businesses individually unless we decide otherwise.
- Payment would go through CMB paypal initially and commission would be paid out monthly to the vendor.
Step Three: Find and sign up your vendors.
As mentioned, we started with some vendors we had previous relationships with to see how much interest there was. One even writes for us now and has been a big help with the vendor perspective as we have launched.
We also sent this as an open call:
After the initial responses, I sent the individual vendors a more detailed description of the initiative and once they verbally committed, I sent and had them sign a contract. See example here.
Step Four: Getting Ready for Your Build.
Vendors will need to send you the following information:
- Product Name
- Product Description
- Product Images (should be uniform – I used 600 X 503)
- Logo Image (should be uniform – I used 600 X 230)
- Product Weight
- Shipping Fee
- Product Cost
- Colors and/or Product Options
Step Five: Launch.
If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, check out the CMB main shop page here.
The vendors also have their own Store Front links which I sent to each of them for their own promotional use. See example here.
Step Six: So How Does it Work?
- Orders are placed and paid for via Paypal only at this time.
- Both the site and the vendor receive email notification that an order has been placed and which contains customer name and address.
- Orders can be viewed through a Woocommerce tab on your dashboard. You can view details of the orders, mark as completed, refunded, cancelled, etc… This is really easy to navigate.
- Vendors can have access to view and complete orders through wordpress, however, to make this work, the vendor has to be given FULL PERMISSION to the site. Since we have a vendor who is also a contributor, we may ask her to be our shop manager to help us with some of the back end stuff instead of giving all of the vendors full access.
- The vendor completes and ships the order and notifies CMB that they did so.
- Payment goes to the site’s Paypal account and then monthly a commission must be paid out by the site to the vendor. Commission is tracked on the back end in wordpress and can be found by going here: Woocommerce > Commission
- Woocommerce > Products allows you to view and adjust vendor products as needed. You can mark an item as out of stock, change details such as pricing and image. This is pretty user-friendly.
Kinks to be Fine Tuned Down the Road.
- Shipping does need to be a flat rate fee, which is a negative because with etsy the shipping is individually calculated and the vendor just prints a slip – so this piece is much easier for vendors through other venues.
- We have been working (so far unsuccessfully) on getting the site’s paypal to automatically send % to vendor upon purchase. Since this has not officially been fixed, for now, site is responsible for monthly commission payments.
- There is not an easy process for refunds at the moment. You can cancel and refund orders, but there is no built in protection (aside from wording in the contract) that ensures the vendor will handle these, so this is a risk on behalf of the sister site at this time.
NOTE :: CMBN Tech Support will work hand-in-hand with you to set-up products, configure payment and order processing, and workflow. There is also a $250 fee for adding ecommerce functionality to your site. Please contact Kelli Biller ([email protected]) with specific questions!
Sarah Braukman
Cincinnati Moms Blog Co-Owner