Sportswear gives little handling or mailing difficulty to the dealer. The price/weight ratio is good.

Follow up with other items of sporting interest — sports equipment, books on sport, camping equipment etc.

As with many of the more popular areas of mail trading, if you can find a product with slightly unusual characteristics which can be written up and illustrated in order to bring out the product’s uniqueness and usefulness, you have a very good starting point for a mail order business.

Follow-up possibilities include everything related to the taking, processing and display of photographs: a developing and printing service, special enlargements (poster-size prints of customers’ favourite photographs?), cameras and other photographic equipment etc.

An alternative way forward is to specialise in frames and framing, and to move on from the cheaper small display items to larger and more elaborate frames suitable for paintings or reproductions of paintings. This could be a made-to-measure service; or you could supply easily assembled frames in knock-down form, the latter being cheaper and easier to mail and handle.

None of these items should cause any after-sales problems in the ordinary way.

Follow-up possibilities include the full range of household products.

China and glass are, of course, easily broken, so packaging must be done carefully. Some sets of tableware come pre- packed in manufacturers’ presentation cases, and though these may themselves need to be packed securely in outer boxes, they can simplify your handling problems. As always, the higher the quality of your product, the greater the problem of advertising but the fewer your other problems. A cheaply printed design that starts to fade in the first wash may, because of complaints and returned goods, give rise to greater costs than you would have had if you had purchased a more expensive but better product in the first place, even if you went on to sell it at the same price as the inferior product. Given a product of adequate quality, there should be few after-sales problems beyond the inevitable breakages in transit, and these, of course, must be allowed for in your pricing.

Follow-up possibilities include tablecloths/napkins, kitchen utensils and household goods in general.

Of all items sold by mail, there is probably nothing lighter, simpler to pack, or cheaper to mail than postage stamps. All serious collectors are familiar with the main catalogues which list virtually every stamp and variant form of every stamp that has ever existed, so the small dealer need not print expensive catalogues himself. He need merely give the details of a stamp, and collectors will be able to identify it and know what it looks like.

At the junk end of the market — by no means to be despised by the dealer — are the large packs of various stamps which appeal to the new young collector. At the top end of the market, there are individual stamps changing hands — which probably means moving from one owner’s bank vault to another owner’s bank vault — at thousands of pounds a time. The new mail order dealer will probably find it best to start his venture at the lower end of the market.

Follow-up possibilities are, of course, stamps and more stamps. If you sell by the approval method, your aim is to get regular customers who buy from you over and over again. Other follow-ups include stamp albums, catalogues, magnifying glasses and all the other aids the collector uses.

All these devices make good items for mail order. Although problems of reliability and after-sales difficulties must be expected, the products have a lot in their favour for mail order selling. Product prices are high enough to justify the cost of well produced advertising. Most products can be excitingly written up at length, detailing the various features they offer. There has always been a ‘useless gadgets’ section of the mail order market, appealing to those whose sense of wonder at what things can do is stronger than their judgement as to the necessity of doing them. Telephone devices appeal directly to this market. But they appeal also to the coolheaded, calculating business person who can see worthwhile applications for such things. So there are two different markets to go for, and the follow-up possibilities will be different in the two markets. The buyers of gadgets will be interested in more gadgets, electronic or otherwise; the business market will be interested in other business equipment and business services that are demonstrably cost-effective.

Before purchasing equipment for resale, satisfy yourself as to its acceptability to  Telecom, its reliability, and the manufacturer’s back-up service.

Party novelties are easy to pack and mail, and after-sales problems should be nil. If you do indeed supply to the trade, repeat orders are likely from satisfied customers.

Once you have established outlets with market traders, follow-up possibilities are limitless: anything that market traders sell would make a reasonable addition to your range of products — cheap reproduction pictures, toys, games, ornaments, gadgets of all kinds and so on.

If you also plan to sell direct to the public, this side of the business should concentrate on those items that are more expensive in small quantities — fancy dress costumes, for example, conjuring tricks, sets of toys, games and so on. By all means try to sell the cheaper items to the public too, but only as additions to the more costly sales.

Tents, groundsheets etc have a good price/weight ratio, are fairly easy to handle and despatch, and are unlikely to give rise to many after-sales problems. Illustrated advertising is best but classified two-stage advertising should also be considered.

Follow-up possibilities include backpacks, hiking boots, compasses and all the other items appealing to those who like the outdoor life. The trade tends to be seasonal, but the real _enthusiasts are in the market for equipment long before the time they hope to use it. Advertise in the specialist magazines catering for hikers, campers, ramblers, cyclists, motor cyclists etc.

Outdoor wear

Motorcycle jackets, flying jackets, raincoats etc are always popular mail order lines. Though often bulky, their price/weight ratio is generally good, and they should not cause any problems in mailing. Government surplus gear can often be offered at keen prices which undercut similar garments selling in high street shops. Of course, to acquire the government surplus or similar stock you need to buy in quantity at auctions and you therefore need adequate warehousing to store your goods. Alternatively, if you buy stock through a local wholesaler you can work with a smaller stock but almost certainly at less advantageous prices.

Items like these can be sold off the page by display advertising or via classified ads if you invite enquirers to send for your catalogue.

After-sales problems should be minimal. Follow-ups of other items of clothing and footwear should appeal to satisfied customers. Go for the camping/walking/climbing market, and possibly include non-clothing items of related interest in your catalogue — tents, backpacks, outdoor stoves, and so on.

There are various ways in which you could make your offer a special one. You could, for example, draw up plans for garden plots of different sizes, and suggest precisely how a variety of different seeds should be sown in order to obtain certain effects; in such a case, your offer would consist of the plan, full instructions, and all the packets of seeds required. Or you could simply make up bumper packs of packets of different varieties of seeds, carefully chosen for their attractiveness when grown together, and offer these at an all-in price. Or you could specialise in unusual seeds or ones that are not easy to find in local garden centres.

A well produced full-colour catalogue would be helpful, but there is no reason why you should not be able to sell direct from classified advertising, or from lists of seeds sent to enquirers.

The follow-up possibilities are not difficult to work out: satisfied customers will come back year by year for their annuals, and you could move on from packets of seeds to bushes and trees, although these are naturally much more difficult to handle. Other items of interest to gardeners, from lawnmowers to fencing, from soil-testing sets to secateurs, could also be offered. Direct mail your customer list every year in good time for the spring sowing.

Being consumables, office stationery items have the attraction to the mail trader of building up a business which, if successful, quickly acquires a certain momentum: satisfied customers keep coming back for more. And as these supplies are the necessities of life for a business, not optional extras like most consumer products sold by mail, you’ve a higher than usual chance of getting a customer for life.

Advertising need not be elaborate or expensive. A small classified ad in the right place, eg appropriate trade and professional journals, inviting enquiries for your office stationery price-list may be all that you need. Bear in mind also that as you are seeking long-term continuing customers, you can afford to take a short-term loss on your initial advertising and sales if this seems a good way of pulling in a reasonable number of customers to get the business going. This is not to say that you should go for a short-term loss as a matter of policy, but you certainly have it as an option if it seems appropriate.