Starting a Pearl Business --How much inventory to hold at the beginning

[jsmsoriano]

Hi,

We are in the process of starting a Pearl Jewelry ecommerce site and we are in the process of building Inventory. I know many of you are very successful in this business and was wondering if any of you will have some great advise starting out.

At the moment we are starting out with Freshwater pearls, we have a supplier set up. I was wondering how many items should i offer at first. For example necklaces, bracelets, earrings, pendants, etc. and how many sizes and lengths to offer.

[pearlescence]

Buying pearls is easy
know your usp

[jshepherd]

The more you offer the more you will sell (the long-tail theory), but in the beginning you should probably not keep more than even one piece of each in stock. Starting an eCommerce pearl business isn't what it was a decade ago and it can be very difficult to gain much traction. A decade ago, new businesses weren't faced with competing online sellers carrying millions in inventory that have spent hundreds of thousands on site design, SEO, SEM and social media marketing. Visibility is much more difficult now and unless you are able to jump in the game (a'la MyPacificPearl.com's scam) overnight via mass exposure, you should expect more than a year of hard work and a lot of education before seeing the fruits.

[jsmsoriano]

Thank you for your insights. I knew it was going to be long ride especially the first year or so. I am learning as much a i can with the pearl industry. I spend hours everyday trying to learn about pearls and i can't say im all pearl'ed out but it seems like there are so much information that i need to know. I recently signed up for the Graduated Pearl program from GIA and hopefully that program ,this site as well as others would help in the process. SEOs on the other hand i found out is a tedious process, monitoring web traffic from search engines and competitior sites and choosing the right keywords is a difficult process indeed. But its alearning process. I guess i should slow down on building inventory at first then? .

Oh what are your thoughts on Fulfillment services like Amazon? I know HGPearls.com for example , has their inventory at amazon, well based on their info on their websites. I am not sure how profitable it is to get into Fullfillment services, but sites like Amazon do drive a lot of traffic but its not specific to Pearls so it may not attract your target customers as you would with your own site.

[jshepherd]

SEO is a tedious and very difficult process and there really is no quick fix. There are a lot of companies overseas that offer inexpensive services, but most use techniques that can get your site blacklisted (no matter what they claim). The firms that do it right are very expensive. You can do it on your own if you get a real handle on titles, tags, style sheets, keywords and keyword density, but even that is just the beginning.

Amazon's fulfillment services aren't a bad way to go. If you use their services, your products will be eligible for Amazon Prime, which will increase your exposure and help you sell more. Amazon does take a hefty cut though. Also, getting on with Amazon as a gold seller isn't the easiest thing to do, and the spreadsheets ... it took us a couple of weeks with an Excel professional to get up and running with them.

[morphius]

SEO is a tedious and very difficult process and there really is no quick fix. There are a lot of companies overseas that offer inexpensive services, but most use techniques that can get your site blacklisted (no matter what they claim). The firms that do it right are very expensive. You can do it on your own if you get a real handle on titles, tags, style sheets, keywords and keyword density, but even that is just the beginning.

Amazon's fulfillment services aren't a bad way to go. If you use their services, your products will be eligible for Amazon Prime, which will increase your exposure and help you sell more. Amazon does take a hefty cut though. Also, getting on with Amazon as a gold seller isn't the easiest thing to do, and the spreadsheets ... it took us a couple of weeks with an Excel professional to get up and running with them.

Just to add to what Mr. Shepherd said, there are no quick fixes to SEO and SEM. Until recently, I was the Director of IT Services at multi-million dollar-a-year company with a departmental budget of $750,000, for the last 5 years.

For a business just starting out, I would not recommend using any company that promoted any guarantee of getting your business to the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). In the early days of the internet, promoting your site and getting it to rank was dead-easy because everyone was still learning how the internet should function. Today however, the internet is very much user driven...meaning that Search Engines (like Google) pay close attention to what the average person expects to experience...and the search engines have responded during the last two-years with multiple upgrades that have been a benefit to many sites, but killed many more (blacklisted).

The best approach to getting your website to rank well (in the beginning), is to not worry about ranking at all. Write the content of each page as if it were a conversation you were having with a person right in front of you. From that point, you would make slight refinements to the content until it's perfect. Well written, original content, that serves a purpose to the people visiting the page will always continue to rank higher and higher over time. I would suggest starting out by visiting the Google, Bing and Yahoo web developer pages as they all very specifically list the types of things to avoid when building your website. Once you have well written, original content on your site, you would then move forward to SEM (online advertising).

There are some key differences though between an informative site and a commerce site which also plays an important role in natural ranking, but I don't want to get into that presently as I might derail this thread.

If there is interest on Pearl-Guide, I'd be more than happy to share my more than 12 years of IT experience in a new thread titled as such - or anyone is welcome to msg me.

Admin note: Please go to http://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/sho...5469#post85469 for a whole thread of techie talk.

[Caitlin]

Wow! What a resource. I hope you just stick around and post like this!

[pattye]

Morphius,

How awesome of you~offering share info about this confusing subject! Quite a few of us here have small shops and websites. Perhaps a thread under "Pearl Books and Resources?" What do you think, Caitlin?

[Amanda]

I don't know about sites which sell stuff, as I don't have one.

I do have a site about English history, and I did some SEO stuff at the start. I later realised that writing good articles did, over time, do its own SEO.

[jshepherd]

... and you are now posting on a prime example of just that. We didn't hire anyone to optimize Pearl-Guide.com. I did all the onsite optimization a few years back and we still tweak things now and then. But it is the content (threads, conversations, etc.) that make PG what it is in the SERPS. There are several very important keywords that our commercial site can't compete with PG over.

Take akoya pearls, for example. Results will vary depending on whether you are logged into a Google service and your location, but for me the natural results are -

#1 PG
#2 PG
#3 Pearl Paradise
#4 Blue Nile
#5 Pearls of Joy
#6 and finally Wikipedia

Mikimoto ranks number 10.

Pearl-Guide takes the first two spots, even beating Wikipedia, which is very difficult.

[Amanda]

Looking on google.co.uk, I get PG first and second, wikipedia third, wintersons.co.uk fourth, and pearlsonly.co.uk fifth.

[morphius]

(decided to remove my comment because it's just too off-topic to the thread - I get carried away with tech talk like I do pearl talk)

[Katbran]

This is a really interesting thread ...I did the Akoya search in Australia and got 1. PG 2. The Breakwater Akoya Suite (sounds nice) 3. PearlsofJoy 4. Median Akoya notebook comp. 5.Akoya software 6.music site 7. more Akoya computers 8. Akoya article from New South Wales Gov. The only site on the whole first page that actually was about pearls is the #1 PG site. Would never have guessed that no other pearl sites would come up.

I think a new thread with Morphius' information in it would be great..really informative! Thanks so much for posting.

[kojimapearl]

Thanks Morphius for that interesting techy talk. I get dizzy just thinking about the SEO world, similar reaction to Charlie Brown listening to the teacher. However, I do appreciate that great content and connections can drive traffic to your website.. I like that an on line business can be rewarded for making and keeping solid connections with others, and that the forming of on line families helps to combat the scammers out there (of which in the retail pearl world there are SO many).
As for starting your own e commerce pearl business, my first advice is .. only buy what you love and you KNOW you can sell.. then if you don't sell it.. you can still enjoy it (and in my experience, your love of the pearls will be infectious!)
Be different, be creative, flexible, and when communicating with potential customers via email.. learn to read between the lines, so to speak. Education is key, and I enjoy helping customers have a better understanding of just how special each and every pearl is...
yet when I transitioned from a wholesale only business to that and on line sales.. I realized quickly that I was wasting a lot of my time with futile emails. In person, there are so many clues to show you the true intentions of the person you are talking to. On line you have no idea who you are talking to.
I have wonderful customers, and I get a lot of emails asking questions about pearls.. and with time I have learned the difference between someone who truly wants to learn, and someone who has a big void to fill and has found a sympathetic pen pal.
I hope this is not too harsh (and I hope I haven't offended anyone still waiting for a response .. but it was a big issue as I was opening the website. Managing my time between the businesses (and life) is still a struggle, but having a website is a joy, and I still love that I have met amazing people whom I never would have run into with out it.
As for inventory, I am with Jeremy.. do not overstock to begin with. Pearl prices (ESPECIALLY for Chinese pearls) tend to change pretty quickly.... and often not in the dealers favor. There will almost always be a new product the next time you are buying, and a year from then it can be offered for half the price.

[Caitlin]

Morphius, I am going to set you up with a thread for online business tips! http://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/sho...5469#post85469

I will copy your post from above and maybe add the link to it in this thread. I am so wowed by you!! Post away!