Many times, most independent Shopify sellers focus on the North American market, and I am no exception. But I know that the minority language market is a huge “blue ocean”. Unfortunately, I only know English and not the minority languages. During the Spring Festival of 2021, I accidentally saw an article on the Oberlo official website DROP SHIPPERADRIAN SAENZ: "I FOCUS ON JUST ONE PRODUCT AND I PUT ALL MYEFFORT INTO IT". Interested sellers can go to the Oberlo official website to read this Article.
After reading this article, I decided to share the essence of the article and the inspiration it gave me with you.
The protagonist of the article is Adrián Sáenz, a young man living in Barcelona, Spain. He first became interested in business when he was 16 years old, and his high school teacher taught him how to be a businessman. He brought goods through Instagram and tried to be a businessman. At the beginning, Adrián Sáenz’s business actions failed. At this time, his mother gave him a lot of support, because his mother was a businesswoman and understood the difficulties of starting out.
Adrián Sáenz began to operate his lnsatgram account carefully. He hopes to bring goods through Instagram. He began to rely on intuition to select products he wanted to buy. Later, he realized that if he wanted to do business for a long time, he also needed to understand the needs of his customers rather than his own preferences. So he began to study subdivided vertical fields, and finally wanted to sell clothing targeted at specific groups of people.
I think Adrián Sáenz’s change of concept in product selection is very representative. Many of my students were at a loss for product selection at the beginning. Even if they had done Amazon or eBay operations before, they said they did not know how to select products. It is true that product selection accounts for about 50% of the operation of Shopify independent stations, but it is difficult. In many cases, we are afraid of trouble and do not want to spend time studying.
The product category Adrián Sáenz finally chose was clothing. From the perspective of the entire e-commerce industry, the competition in this category is very fierce, but it is not fierce for independent Shopify sellers. Why? The main reason: Foreign sellers rarely choose this category, and Chinese sellers don’t choose much either. As far as I know, only corporate-operated sellers in China are engaged in the clothing category. Looking at Shopify independent sellers around the world, basically individual sellers or small sellers will not choose this category. The advantages and disadvantages of the clothing category are obvious. The advantages are large demand, relatively low competition among independent sellers, low value, suitable for international transportation, and large price premiums for branded or targeted clothing. The disadvantage is that there are too many SKUs due to clothing styles, colors, sizes, etc. Once the product volume increases (that is, the order volume increases), the requirements for product quality, customer service quality, logistics and transportation timeliness, supply chain, etc. are very high. Therefore, Adrián Sáenz chooses the single product station in the clothing to do it. Boutique stores have higher requirements on sellers in all aspects, and it is not recommended for new sellers to try.
In addition to product selection that troubled Adrián Sáenz, choosing which target market also troubled him. He knows that the world’s largest Shopify independent station market is in the United States, but at the same time, the competition in the American market is also the most intense. In the end, he chose the Spanish market and some Spanish-speaking countries that he was familiar with. Facts have proved that 80% of his independent station orders come from Spain, and 20% come from some Spanish-speaking countries and regions in Europe and Latin America. In the two months of June and July 2019, he received a turnover of 16,575.86 euros.
Many new sellers don’t know how to choose the target market. My suggestion is that if you only know English, then the North American market (the United States and Canada), as well as English-speaking countries and regions (mainly the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand) ) is definitely the first choice. If you know a minority language and the people in this minority language country have a certain purchasing power, then you can try to choose the minority language market.
After solving the problems of product selection and target market, Adrián Sáenz faced the problems of logistics and stocking. He found that neither ePacket nor AliExpress Standard Shipping provided the information he wanted to see customers sign for packages. That way, he couldn’t tell whether the package was delivered to the customer. This results in a series of customer service issues such as customer complaints and refund requests without standards for judgment. Later, he found a logistics provider that could solve his problem and began to stock large quantities of goods in overseas warehouses, which improved the logistics timeliness. At the same time, he also customized the packaging, which greatly increased customers’ favorability of the brand and the rate of repurchase. In addition, he also employs five employees. It can be seen that the repurchase rate of customers was once as high as 5.16%.
Many new sellers may not have encountered the trouble of happiness, which is a series of customer service, transportation, refund and other problems that arise when there are too many orders. My suggestion is that if you are an individual seller, you need to find a suitable supplier to optimize the entire business model at this time. You must not do it alone, otherwise you will eventually be defeated by the workload and many force majeure.
Finally, Adrián Sáenz’s “traffic” mainly relies on Instagram advertising and “influencer” marketing. He attaches great importance to email marketing and product packaging, and the repurchase rate has been maintained very well. I think that when individuals or small sellers run independent Shopify sites, they can focus on one or two traffic channels at the beginning. After the independent station grows bigger and bigger, the traffic drainage methods must be diversified, so as to ensure the long-term and healthy development of the independent station.