Let's Hug It Out is on a mission to spread hugs, positive vibes and happiness around the world simply by wearing a shirt.
We are primarily an Ottawa ON based company so everything has been sourced here in the city
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
We started making sales the first day we opened the store and did so by using a specific plan to get our Let's Hug It Out shirts into the hands of some of our influential contacts and getting photos of them and then sharing those photos on our social media channels and driving traffic to our store by including the website with all the posts.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We use a theme that we feel really highlights our business and our mission. Retina is the name of the theme we use.
We have a couple apps running on the store. One is to create discount codes and the other is to integrate us into Facebook. The 2 apps are called Quantity Breaks and Shopify Facebook store.
Currently we do all the fulfillment and shipping ourselves being that we're a start up. As we grow we will scale ourselves so that we outsource those two very important steps, however we'll over see everything. Quality is so important for us and so we'll be heavily involved.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
be prepared to invest money, time and significant effort into your business and remember no one will ever care about your success or failure, you must be the driver and responsible for doing all it takes every day to make sure you succeed.
Sometimes you'll win and sometimes you'll learn. Building a business is not easy, not easy at all, however when you do something you're passionate about it is all worth it. Make sure you are always open to learning and paying attention to the wins but more importantly pay attention to the mistakes and failures because buried in them are very important lessons that can dramatically impact your wins in the future and set you up for big break throughs.
Be consistently looking for ways you can be innovative and unique and stand out from the crowd. There is so much distraction out there today and everyone is trying to get consumers attention so you must be creative in getting people to talk about you and become fans. You need a strong word of mouth message that people can get behind and share. Those all come from having a powerful "WHY". Why is your company in business? Why is your company selling what it sells? If you can clearly communicate your WHY to others they will get behind it and share it and be loyal to you for a long time. Know your why and share it with everyone always!
read books, talk to mentors, brain storm ideas, get creative, attend seminars, learn learn learn. Become a student of your business and industry and success. You must change if you want things to change for you. You must be better if you want to attract better circumstances. Success is something you attract by the person you become so above all invest time and money in you so you can attract the success you want and deserve.
Never ever give up on your dreams and your passions. Life is too short and you are here for a powerful purpose and you deserve to lead a life of your dreams but if you quit on yourself you are hurting no one but you. If you have found your passion and have created a business around it then go forward confidently no matter what anyone tells you. If you want it bad enough you'll make it happen. As long as you don't quit it will become a reality, it will not be easy but it will absolutely be totally worth it.
Go out there and change the world!