Business lesson #3: Quality. Price. Reputation.

I had to repay my debt. I set up an eBay account with my good friend Ajan, and we sold watches and online gaming guidebooks, and those unsold aromatherapy products from my failed venture.

We visited some sort of a flea market in Bugis, bought tons of watches, and tried to sell them online. The watches were really cheap. We tried to strike a deal with the stall owner, but he could not lower the prices further. We marked up the price by at least 100%. It was dirt cheap. It was still cheap at our selling price. We managed to sell a few, but soon, we gave up. The watches were of really poor quality. Mine broke down after I've barely started wearing it (like maybe once or twice?). It barely sold. Cheap products do not necessarily sell! Looking for a quality, affordable supplier is probably one of the hardest things to do for a new venture. And this is probably what puts most people off from starting something new. Capital was always the excuse, but I doubt that this is the number one hindrance. At the back of our minds, surely most of us think that we need to have certain connections with businessmen and suppliers. And since most of us don't, we simply give up trying. Well, I would like to say that this is certainly not true at all, and my recent experience confirms it. But I will share it in another post.

The gaming guidebooks sold really well though. We sold guidebooks for 2 games - Runescape and MapleStory. I remember waking up each morning and checking my email in anticipation of sales notifications from eBay. Each email notification meant $3.99 in sales. It was so easy! There was virtually no work involved in selling digital books. I can't recall what happened to the guidebook business. It probably died out over time - either because everyone already has one, or because we did not update our guidebooks. The guidebooks were not created by us. We had no means of updating it or making it more exciting. We had great knowledge of Runescape. I was growing my virtual wealth in the game so fast through sheer hard work and dedication. But hey, it is always easier to do it in a virtual world. I always told myself that I can make it really far if I transfer that hard work and dedication over into the real world. In any case, those knowledge of Runescape was not translated into our own original guidebook. We were probably too late to the game. Creating a guidebook may take months, by which time all the market shares would have belonged to the incumbents. As for MapleStory, we had zero knowledge of it. So, no original guidebook for that for sure.

The aromatherapy products sold extremely well. I was out of stocks very fast. Ajan helped me. We tried to set up a website to circumvent the eBay fees, but our primitive knowledge of web-building got us nowhere. I had to sell the products through eBay in the end. Through this experience, I learnt a great deal about international shipping and postage, not that there is too much to learn. I got a feel of the costs and time involved in shipping - by sea or by air. I got a feel of what is allowed and not allowed to be shipped. I would wrap up the products nicely in a bubble wrap, purchase some small boxes from the post office, drop the products and thank-you notes in the boxes, and ship them out. I had buyers from US, Europe and some parts of Asia. I had people who wanted to order tons of it, I had people who kept asking me when I will have new stocks (of course, I was never going to get any new stocks).  My customers gave me glowing reviews. After graduation from my university, I was able to show these reviews to my interviewer cum boss in a small company. And I was hired.

Lessons learnt:
-There had to be a minimum standard in the quality of your product. The watches were never going to see daylight because they were really bad, even though their appearance was nice.
-Selling digital books are great. You create it once and you can sell unlimited quantities without incurring further costs other than electricity and transaction fees. But it is even greater if you can create your own content. Since I do a ton of research on investment and economics, I can probably create some contents myself and sell them. This is in the pipeline. A future project.
-Reputation is very important to me. My aromatherapy customers enjoyed the great product at reasonable prices and relatively fast shipping times. I answered all of their questions promptly and sincerely. I tried my best to deal with any discontent. If I remember correctly, I even sent a replacement product to an unhappy customer. If your reputation is good, customers will stick with you, and they will probably tolerate some rough patches that you might go through.