Drop Shipping Business

Easy to sell, Crafts and Curtains

January 10, 2010 at 2:49 AM | Posted in Mail Order, Small Business | Leave a Comment
Tags: advertising, books, business, craft, curtains, customers, home, journal, mail, materials, pack and mail, people, personal, price weight ratio

Craft supplies

There is a large range of possibilities under this heading. The enthusiasts of this craft or that — knitting, jewellery making, pottery, leatherwork, marquetry, painting, toy making, modelling etc — have a continuing need for the raw materials of their crafts, appropriate craft tools and books on the subject. Few people live within easy reach of a shop that can cater for the needs of their particular craft, and it is this that gives such products their mail order appeal.

Advertise in the relevant hobby journals. With many crafts, you may be able to start your business with no more in the way of advertising than a simple printed list of items and prices sent to enquirers responding to your classified advertising.

Most raw materials are easy to pack and mail and have a good price/weight ratio. Satisfied customers can be expected to re-order basic supplies regularly, and they will also be in the market for occasional purchases of equipment.

Curtains

Various mail order opportunities can be considered here. If you are a skilled curtain maker you could offer a made-to-measure service, sending sets of specimen materials to prospective customers, together with instructions on how to measure up windows. Such a service could be advertised in the personal columns of papers and magazines.

Alternatively, you could deal in ready-made curtains of standard lengths; these are probably best sold from full-colour display advertising. Or you could deal simply in curtaining materials, selling lengths for customers to make up themselves.

Easy to pack and mail, with virtually no risk of transit damage, curtains are unlikely to cause after-sales problems as little can go wrong beyond stitching coming adrift, and that should certainly not happen in any properly made curtains.

Because heavy drapes tend to be more expensive than lightweight ones, a good price/weight ratio should be maintained throughout the range. Follow-up possibilities are, first and foremost, more curtains; every home has many windows, and customers who have used your service for one room are obvious targets for follow-up sales for their other rooms.

Don’t forget net curtains as well — even easier to handle and mail than drapes.