Introduce your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?
I created a design patent from an idea that I had to help women who had loss their hair to cancer or alopecia. Once the patent was published, I put the product on the market. I make all my lace wig straps myself. I invested in a very good sewing machine and I continue to make them myself. The love for my product and knowing that women all over the world are wearing something that I created leaves a very warm feeling in my heart.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
I have a beauty blog and a YouTube channel for beauty/wigmaking/product reviews and I am also on all the other social media sites as well. I promote my product on my YouTube channel as well as all my social media networks — the orders just started pouring in. Google search is my advertiser because it's essentially free advertising. I have a beauty blog where I list photos and details, and my photos always come up in the search engines when people are searching for lace wig straps. People always say they found me from searching Google.
My Shopify site is still pretty new. Prior to opening my own website, my product was listed on Amazon. I still maintain the Amazon listing and Amazon is still my #1 source for generating sales. My YouTube channel has over 1.4M views and almost 10K subscribers. I make videos using the straps all the time and Youtube is my second most venue for traffic sales. My beauty blog comes in last but I do have some people say that they found me after clicking on a photo that led them to my blog.
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?
Right now I'm not using any special apps. I only have two products that I sell so apps aren't required. I do sell my services as well, but those require any special apps either. I have set up my account with USPO and I print labels as my orders come in. I also use PayPal which seems to be the greatest payment option for most of my buyers, so I just print the labels from the PayPal website as well.
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
I would say to start a YouTube channel and a blog because everyone uses Google search engines. Videos and photos are key to successful advertising for me. Start uploading photos into your blog and follow all of the search engine optimization procedures to get your blog noticed. Photos are key because people search for photos of everything and then go to YouTube to see the product in action.