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How to start an online boutique?

The past has been rude to aspiring entrepreneurs wishing to open their boutiques. It seemed like only big fashion designers, who worked with the celebs, could make the world a more stylish place. Those who took some risks and started their boutiques in a smaller scale, faced numerous challenges, such as finding a decent space to set up the retail, acquiring legal licenses, and then promoting the business to drive sales. The name ’boutique’ itself seemed luxurious enough to scare a small entrepreneur.

Thanks to the internet and eCommerce, starting an online boutique is no more as challenging it used to be in the past. Although an online boutique still demands hard work and decent expertise in many things, they are not as challenging as the issues in the past. You can crack the code with a little exposure in entrepreneurship skills. This article will give you that exposure and help you to prepare your groundwork for the venture.

If you are worried about the cost of building your online boutique platform/website/application, don’t worry, as we have curated some very economical options for you. We have discussed some prominent questions like how to start an online boutique, what are the choices for website development, product outsourcing and many more. So let’s jump.

Find a Profitable Niche to Sell

To succeed in your business, you need to make good sales. However, before your business starts making money, you need to decide your specialty. In short, find a niche where you can rule.

You might become tempted to try out different things and offer a little something for all kinds of audiences, but be advised that selecting a niche is the wisest move to succeed in today’s environment. It’s easier to acquire a good name in a niche than focusing on the general class of products. If you think you can sell good designer clothes, devise a plan to sell only Women’s, Men’s, or Children’s clothes. Alternatively, you can also establish yourself in the custom jewelry and accessories segment. To be precise, don’t clutter your catalog with random stuff. Select a niche and stick to it.

Deciding your niche will not only help you to determine the ways to acquire inventory but also lead the path towards designing your marketing strategies, building your customized website, selecting a relevant theme, and promoting unique brand identity. Everything else in your business links directly to this very first step.

Create a Business Map Around it

Once you know your niche, it’s time to devise a cutting-edge business plan. Whether you are selling your products online or through a brick and mortar retail, you always need a business plan. Think of it as your roadmap for the next couple of years: your business goals, things you need to do to reach the goals, needed innovations in the business model, marketing plans, investment budget for customized eCommerce solution, supply chain, funding, required workforce, legal formalities, tax, and all possible challenges that require resolution.

In short, devising a business plan means knowing stuff and documenting it to have a continuous track so that you can always map your moves to know if you are going in the right direction.

Secure Your Supply Chain

After establishing a formal plan for your business and fixing a niche to focus, the immediate step is securing your supply chain and inventory-source. Depending on your business model, there are multiple ways to secure inventories for online stores.

You can get in terms with a reliable wholesaler. The wholesaler will supply you the products in bulk on wholesale rates, and you can sell the same to your customers on a retail rate. The margin between the wholesale and retail rates will be your profit. Of course, you will have to reduce the cost of business operations from it. You can find good wholesale suppliers online in the US and overseas.

One of the biggest benefits of purchasing your inventory from a wholesaler, supplier, or a manufacturer directly is you can have complete control over the quality of the products. You can check all the supplies before sending them to your customers. However, this also means that you are responsible for things such as, storing the inventory, managing warehouses, managing shipping from supplier to the warehouses and then to your customers, and managing packaging of your products as well. Therefore, your final profit on each sale you make would include a deduction of expenses done on managing all these errands.

Anyways, despite all these expenses, purchasing your inventory and then selling it is one of the most profitable models in terms of the thickness of the margin. Since you are in control of the entire business process, you can fix a decent margin on each sale you make. Be advised that the more you manage by yourself, the more is the chance to thicken your margin.

Take dropshipping for example. It does not require you to manage anything about inventory or shipping of your products, but the margin is very less. Moreover, you can’t have control over the quality of your products because dropshipping suppliers ship the orders directly to your customers. There are fewer hassles and overhead costs in the dropshipping model than the inventory model, but the profit margin diminishes, too.

Dropshipping is not a bad choice either. It is great for selling without an inventory. You just need to analyze your case and decide the model that works best for you. If you are a one-man-army thinking about managing the entire business with a lesser workforce, dropshipping is a lifesaver. However, if you have good funding and you can spare investments in workforce and business operation overheads, the inventory model could be a wiser way to make better money.

Read about both the models. There are tons of good articles on the internet about how to find reliable dropshipping suppliers, how to manage a dropshipping business, what are other alternatives to sell without an inventory, how you can maximize your profit margin in either of the models and a lot more. Move past this point only when you are confident about your supply-chain model, because all other steps past this point depend on it.

Register Your Business Legally

You shouldn’t start selling unless your business is legalized through a formal registration. Registering your business will help it drive trust among the customers and the investors as well.

·         Business Structure:

Choose your business structure and ownership model. For an online boutique, the best options are registering it in the sole proprietorship or Limited Liability Company (LLC) model. Setting up under the sole proprietorship model is the easiest, as it does not require a lot of paperwork. However, it has some limitations. Therefore, it’s always advisable to take some extra mile and register as an LLC, if you have an aim to go big in the future. LLC model will protect you as an individual and your personal assets, in case your business is held liable for business debt.

Alternatively, if you think about going extra big in the future by acquiring some big investments, registering under the corporation license would be a good idea.

·         Legal Documentation:

Depending on your registration model and the state or the nation you live in, you will have to file some paperwork and pay a filing fee. You can take the help of a corporate lawyer to help you out on this step. Make sure you also open a corporate business account in a bank. No one recommends using your personal bank account for business. The lawyer will also help you to acquire a federal tax ID. Moreover, don’t forget to clear things about sales tax and other taxes you might have to collect from customers and pay within your registered state. Get some help from a chartered accountant if required.

Choose the Right eCommerce Platform

Since you are running an online boutique, it’s imperative that you choose a well-covered eCommerce platform for your business. You will be building your online store on top of your chosen platform, so it’s not wise to land on compromises; at least not in terms of features and customizations, which make your store unique from others. You must choose a shopping cart software for your customers, while the back-end interface should focus on your requirements and ease-of-use.

If you are willing to let other sellers sell on your store and pay you commissions, go for multi-vendor marketplace software. Alternatively, if you want to keep your store exclusive for you to sell, you can go for inventory-based eCommerce platforms. In either of the cases, you will need the respective set of features and solutions to operate your store. There are multiple options available in the market:

·         SaaS:

If you don’t want to manage the technicalities of your store and just want to focus on selling your products, SaaS-based eCommerce platform is a good option for you. You can sign-up online for any SaaS eCommerce platform and set up your store right from there. You don’t have to worry about anything, such as website hosting, security patches, website speed, feature upgrades. The SaaS vendors will manage everything for you.

You just need to pay a monthly subscription fee, which may range from $30/month to $1000/month, depending on the range of requirements. Moreover, some SaaS platforms also charge an extra transaction fee on each sale you make.

Examples: Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, Squarespace, Magento Enterprise Edition (PaaS)

·         Free self-hosted:

Free self-hosted eCommerce platforms are available as open-source under a public license. You can download their source-code free of cost and host it on a supported web-server of your choice. Most of these platforms have big community support, so you will get many choices when it comes to purchasing ready-made modules and extensions for your website. Unlike SaaS, you will be responsible to manage the technicalities of your store.

Since there is no fee for using these solutions, you can invest in customizing the eCommerce platform to fit your needs. You also get the freedom to choose your B2B partners and integrate their APIs, such as shipping services, payment gateways, dropshipping services, etc.

Examples: Magento Community Edition, WooCommerce, Drupal Commerce, PrestaShop, OpenCart

·         Premium self-hosted:

Premium self-hosted is very similar to free self-hosted platforms, except you don’t get the source code free of cost. Since vendors develop premium self-hosted platforms customized for individual needs, they are more suitable for niche business ideas like an online boutique. You cannot use even the free alternatives without customizations, so it’s better to get an already customized eCommerce platform for your needs.

They might seem a little expensive as they demand upfront cost, unlike SaaS, but it is a good investment if you aim for scaling up in the future. A typical ready-made script would not cost more than $1000. However, if you also need mobile apps for your store, you might have to spend around $2000-$3000 depending on your requirements.

Examples: There are no specific examples. Different software vendors sell them with different names based on the customizations. Some of them also call them clone scripts. For example, Amazon clone scripts, Etsy clone script, etc.

·         Established Marketplaces:

In case you don’t want to develop an online store but want to sell online, you can register on any relevant marketplace platform and start selling on the go. You can register as a seller on sites like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and others. A site like Amazon also provide managed services under FBA programs, where they manage your inventory for you, shipping orders, and handle your customer care.

However, we don’t recommend this choice for two reasons. First, any of the popular marketplace sites are not well known for designer stuff or boutiques. Second, selling on a third-party site means no control over your business. They control everything about your business. You would remain just a seller; not an independent online business.

Instead, you can set up your site, and hire a 3PL company (Third Party Fulfilment Company) to manage your shipping, inventory storage, and customer case. Although the margin will be low after paying out to a 3PL company, you still have absolute control over your business.

Build Your Website Around it

Once you select your eCommerce platform, build your store on it. Customize and personalize it to fit your brand identity and requirements. Secure the B2B services and integrate their APIs, such as payment gateways, Dropshipping, 3PL Company, Shipping services, etc. In short, set up your final site and go live with the online boutique.

Selling on the Go

Rest everything is marketing, promotion, conversion optimization, SEO, and customer support. Develop your business on these grounds, and gradually acquire your customer base. Run customer loyalty programs, affiliate programs, and discount campaigns to attract customers. If your budget permits, run premium Ads on prominent platforms, such as Google Search, Facebook, Instagram, Bing, YouTube, and others. If everything stays on track, with some patience and strategies, you will soon become a proud owner of a successful online boutique. Good luck with your venture.

Simplify the Customer Service Problem with the Best Software

It’s a sound business decision to have multiple channels of communication with your customers such as email, online chat, point of sale, phone call, etc since it enables your customer service team to be more responsive and avoid bottlenecks.

However, while you try to seal one can of worms, you open up another one by scaterring your customer service data all over the place. This gives rise to a host of problems; the lack of management and organization of data may contribute towards unintentional neglect of your customer even if you overlook a tiny message received.

This sort of mismanagement can break your business as customer service is a highly crucial aspect. In fact, 50% of customers are willing to purchase more from a brand with whom they have had a positive customer service experience.  86% of them will pay up to 25% more to experience a stellar level of customer experience.

So, in case you want to avoid any service-related catastrophe and deliver a utopian experience just like Spectrum Customer Service does, you need a customer service software that will consolidate all your customer data in one place and offer you valuable insights into your customers’ patterns via analysis.

  1. Freshdesk

It’s one of the most comprehensive customer service help desk software out there. Freshdesk offers flexible pricing plans and is even available for ndividuals and small teams. It provides with a varying set of help desk capabilities such as support inboxes access to entire teams, information portals or knowledge bases, social customer support, automated ticketing mechanism, and community forums. Its integrated ticket-time tracking mechanism is useful in scrutinizing bottlenecks in your operations.

Moreover, with its Arcade feature, it aims to introduce the concept of gamification by rewarding agents, who successfully resolve a ticket in time.

  1. LiveAgent

This award-winning platform possesses a selection of help desk features such as file sharing, contact forms, live chat, email supports, and social media integration. Moreover, it aims to unify all your multi-channel communication in one place.

LiveAgent’s gamification aspect, POP3 accounts along with its humanization of customer support interactions makes it a real winner.

The software facilitates personalized service to each customer, eliminates spam, and helps agents access a centralized customer data to help solve every issue effortlessly.

  1. Hubspot Service Hub

This Hubspot’s platform is specifically designed to facilitate customer service, while simultaneously integrating with other Hubspot services.

Its feature includes ticket system for tracking customers’ queries and complaints, Portals for easy access to information by customers, Conversation modules that help add context to interactions with customers along with a universal inbox that induces streamlined collaboration among teams.

  1. Zendesk

One of the most popular cloud-based customer support software out there, Zendesk’s popularity is warranted due to its suite of support solutions that offer essential help desk tools such as its ginormous ticket management system operated by 5 to 500 support agents, and its consolidation of varying customer interaction platforms such as chat, email, web and social media.

Moreover, Zendesk comes with a web-interface, which a company can customize as per their branding requirements. It entails a Help Center, where all your customers can come to discuss their issues and find solutions. Its analytics feature is the cherry on top as it tracks and analyzes customer engagement.

  1. Salesforce Essential

The software is an all-in-one platform, which includes CRM capabilities, customer support operations, and sales.

Salesforce Essentials lets you try out all its features via its free trial so you can gauge its usefulness for your business. Checkout its pipeline tracking, multi-channel console, 360-degree customer review, case auto-assignments, ticket queuing, and task management features for effortless team collaboration.

With its self-service features, you can create information portals where your customer can seek information and solutions over your product/services without having to consult an agent.

Bringing it All Together

For the most important aspect of your business, it is essential that you choose a software that is top of the line, offers speedy communication between you and your customer, and spurs responsiveness of your team.

Which software to go for wholly depends on your business type, team size, service, and industry. Make a list of your requirements and issues related to customer service, and choose a platform that best matches that list.

What is Nanotechnology?

Nanotechnology is a word that most of us are familiar with but do not have any idea of what it actually is. There many science fiction movies where the characters use small devices, usually robots to accomplish a task but that is not entirely accurate. Many people have a misconception that nanotechnology is just making devices on a smaller scale. While a part of it is true but it does not define how small a nanotech device is. This is a topic that is around for quite a while but it is also not defined in its entirety.

The idea of nanotech was first proposed by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959 while delivering his talk “ There’s plenty of room at the bottom”. During his speech, he has shared his desire to build things on a smaller scale. In the year 1960 two scientists, Mohammed Attala and Dawon Kahng created a MOSFET that was only 100 nm long. But the term nanotechnology was first used by Norio Taniguchi who worked as a professor at Tokyo University of Science. Just like the various fields involved in its study its applications are also very wide.

Even scientists have different definitions for nanotechnology as they do not know how to put it in simple terms. In easy words, nanotechnology is a technology or a device that is created by synthetic material at a very tiny size. The material or device is created has to be a size between 0.1 to 100 nanometers. To give you a perspective on how small it is, one nanometer is one-billionth part of a meter. It cannot be categorized into any branch of science or engineering because its research involves various fields like molecular biology, organic chemistry, molecular engineering, and energy storage. 

Let’s see what are some real-world applications of nanotechnology.

Medicine

Medicine is one field that can benefit immensely from nanotechnology. There is ongoing research on creating nanomaterials that can be used to treat diseases. The idea is to create nanoparticles that can be injected into a person’s bloodstream to diagnose his body. Researchers are using nanotubes with nano antibodies attached to it to detect cancer cells in the bloodstream. There is also a technique in development that uses gold nanorods with a functioning protein attached to it that can detect early kidney damage. The most fascinating development is definitely nanoparticles that are used for drug delivery. These nanoparticles are designed to detect dead cells. They are engineered in such a way that they find out cancer cells and provide drugs to them. These help in killing cancer cells without damaging healthy cells in the body.

Nanoelectronics

Nanotech will surely revolutionize electronics as it can be used to create devices that are as small as a molecule. This will surely be a huge benefit as the size of the devices is reduced dramatically. With the size of the equipment decreased the power consumption also decreases. Stanford University researchers have used nanotubes to create integrated circuits. Other than circuits and transistors there are nanoelectronic devices that store memory by manipulating the spin of electronics. Wearable electronics will also surpass their current boundaries and reach a whole new level. You can have a temporary tattoo that can tell glucose levels in the body or a nanosensor can be implanted on your tooth to examine bacteria in your mouth.

Food industry

The food industry can benefit largely from emerging nanotechnology as it resolves many complications of sellers and buyers. By using nanotechnology or nanoparticles properties of food can be enhanced. The safety of food is a major concern of consumers while buying food. With advanced nanotechnology, any type of contamination in the food can be detected immediately.  Nanoparticles can also be used to increase the shelf life of food which improves the ease of food storage. Nanosupplements can be injected into foods to improve the nutritional value of the food.

Fuel cells

People can stop worrying about the over-extraction of fuel cells as nanotech is set to replace old fuel cells. Automobile companies are trying to develop fuel cells that are smaller in size and work more efficiently than the fuel cells that are currently in use. The idea is to create fuel cells that contain membranes that only allow hydrogen ions to pass through them while blocking the rest of the ions. Once these fuel cells are created they are going to replace batteries in computers, laptops, handheld devices, and electric cars.

Space

The advancements in space research can be very easy with nanotechnology. The nanotech can be used to build lightweight aircrafts to explore space. The cost of traveling in space could decrease drastically as nanotech will reduce the amount of fuel required for a rocket. Scientists are also researching a new technique to propel rockets called electric propulsion which also uses nanotech. Bio-nanomachines can be deployed in inhabitable conditions to carry out research. This would allow scientists to explore new territories on which a human could never lay his feet.

Conclusion

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of materials at a molecular level. A device cannot be considered nanotech if it is not made by any synthetic material.  Even though there are some achievements in the nanotech industry it is still not at the level as we would like it to be. The nanotechnology is going to define the future of gadgets. Most of the nanotech devices that are used in current times are the products of years of research and development. People need to wait a little longer to witness the full potential of nanotechnology as it is not fully developed

Top 10 Mobile Operating Systems

A good operating system is essential to run any device smoothly. When someone says operating system people immediately think of computers. Well, it is not completely their fault as the majority of them do not think about the mobile phone’s operating systems. People do not realize how important an operating system is in building a great mobile. A mobile phone’s operating system is a software or platform which enables other programs or software to run on it. An operating system is what specifies the features of a mobile phone. It determines how mobile should function when doing specific actions like texting, emailing and so on.

Let’s look at some of the best operating systems that were created for smartphones. 

Android

Android is the most popular mobile phone operating system right now. It is arguably the best mobile operating system that was ever created. Android was developed by Android Inc which was later bought by Google in the year 2005. Its operating system is designed based on the Linux kernel and some other open-source software. Android launched its first-ever device in 2008. Since then android has been unstoppable with the latest version releasing every other year. The latest version of Android is Android 10.0 which does not have any name of a dessert-like its predecessors.

Apple IOS

Apple IOS which was formerly known as iPhone os is an operating system that was designed and developed by Apple Inc. It was specifically designed to only support the hardware that is used in iPhones. IOS was first released in the year 2007 which later extended its support to other apple devices such as iPad and iPod touch. Its app store contains more than 2 million apps. iPhone ios is known for its awesome security features and performance. It is the most reliable operating system present in the market.

Symbian

Once upon a time, the Symbian operating system was the most popular operating system on the planet. It was developed in the 1980s by a company called PSION back then this OS was called EPOC. It was renamed to SYMBIAN after PSION offered its platform to phone manufacturing companies. Nokia, Motorola, and SONY Ericsson are the popular mobile brands that used this operating system in their devices. Nokia used this OS more than any other mobile manufacturer. It also acquired SYMBIAN in 2008. The last version of SYMBIAN was released in 2012, later it was discontinued. Even today many of the phones made in china use its OS.

BlackBerry OS

BlackBerry OS was developed by a Canadian company called BlackBerry Limited to use it for their brand of handheld mobiles. Just like Apple’s IOS, this operating system is specially designed for the devices manufactured by BlackBerry. This operating system is very robust as most of the times it was written in JAVA. It was specially designed for BlackBerry’s Research In Motion devices. Its ability to support trackball and trackwheel features made Blackberry devices more popular. BlackBerry OS is still one of the most secure platforms as its network is separate from other carriers. It was discontinued in the year 2013 when the company released BlackBerry 10 in 2013.

Windows Mobile

We all know windows as the most widely used computer operating system in the world but it also created its own line mobile operating systems in the name of Windows MobileWindows mobile is an operating developed by Microsoft for smartphones. It was Microsoft’s big attempt to get its hands on the mobile phone market but it was not that successful. It seemed a little difficult to operate for new users but soon its popularity started increasing. Its last release Windows 10 was the most loved as it removed its complications. You can find Microsoft Digital Asset Management Alternatives which are highly advanced DAM software that provides its services to businesses in midsize to large industries

BADA

Samsung, the popular mobile phone brand has also created its own operating system called BADA. It was developed in 2009 with the intention of Samsung having its own mobile operating system. In 2010 Samsung released the Samsung wave which was its first phone that integrated BADA operating system. Samsung releases its phones with BADA operating system as wave series similar to its android powered galaxy series. BADA is considered to be one of the most developer operating systems that is available in the market. It was last used in the Samsung wave III.

Sailfish OS

Sailfish is one of the latest mobile operating systems to be developed. It was developed in the year 2013 by a Finnish company named JOLLA. It was initially designed to ship as OS to JOLLA smartphones and tablets. It is widely used as an alternative for Android and IOS due to its strong OS core. It also has strong security and privacy features. Moreover, this  Sailfish OS is compatible with android systems. It can download and run apps from the google play store. Even though Sailfish OS can run apps from google play store it is totally independent of Google. Today Sailfish OS is used by many government and corporate organizations in Europe.

Tizen 

Tizen is another operating system that is developed by Samsung apart from its BADA OS. It is one of the most popular open-source Linux-based operating systems that are present in the market. Tizen was created by merging BADA with its initial version. Samsung now uses this operating system to power its smart TVs and smartwatches. This open-source platform offers more flexibility and better intuitive gestures compared to android.

KaiOS

KaiOS is another Linux based operating system that was created in the year 2017. It was developed by a US-based company called KaiOS Technologies. Its aim was to make smartphones more affordable.  KaiOS wanted to achieve this goal by integrating 4G LTE, GPS and WiFi capabilities into non-touch phones. It also supports the installation of apps like twitter and youtube in non-touch phones. KaiOS is currently the third most popular OS after Android and IOS.

MeeGo 

MeeGo is an operating system that was created by Nokia and Intel in 2010. The main aim of this joint venture was to merge Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin project to create a stronger and more flexible operating system. It was designed for all kinds of electronic devices like smartphones, tablets, computers and embedded systems. Nokia wanted to power all of its devices using Meego but dropped the idea in 2011. The MeeGo OS was discontinued in 2014 after Nokia completely stopped using it.

Conclusion

At present, there are only two or three mobile operating systems that are dominating the entire market but it doesn’t mean that one should only use them. Every user is different and everyone has their own priorities. So one should choose a mobile with an operating system that they are comfortable with.

Accounting: The Backbone of Businesses!

There is a lot that goes into making a business successful. Right from naming the company to deploying marketing strategies, every process is proven to be crucial for the growth of the company. Accounting services are among those tasks that cannot be avoided to steer the business towards productivity. It is an integral part of a business that ensures the financial matters of the business are under control. From everyday bookkeeping to year-end financial statement, every little task related to the finances of the business falls under accounting services. To avail quality services you need to find an accounting firm.

Accounting services that the majority of accounting firm Auckland provides are:

  • Accounting consultancy
  • Bookkeeping
  • Audit and assurance
  • Tax services

Why do you need accounting services for business?

Accounting is the backbone of the business that helps frame financial strategies for the business and steer it towards productivity. It is essential to understand the relevance of accounting services before hiring any accounting firm in Auckland.

Take a look at some obvious reasons why accounting services are important for business:

Create Better Financial Structure

Accounting’s primary aim is to make the best of the business’ money and put it to good use. Accounting services help in creating a better financial structure for the business that is powered by a staunch financial investigation. Every little accounting service adds up to the financial structure of the business.

Professional Financial Analysis 

There’s no better way to get an authentic financial analysis. A majority of successful business prioritise accounting services to get a better financial analysis that no other tool can do. A staunch financial analysis is proven to be beneficial to frame a strong business plan as well.

Expense Tracking

Whether you are dealing in eCommerce or engaged in IT services, your business would have expenses that need tracking. Accounting is essential to track the expenses in order to determine the cash inflow and outflow of the business. Without a proper record of the transaction, tracking expenses can be a headache. Hence, it is important to avail of quality accounting services.

Tax Services

Preparing tax is the most crucial and strenuous task of any business. Calculating the yearly taxes and filing the tax returns can be a daunting task if you don’t have a reliable accounting service at place. You need an accounting expert in your company who can continuously monitor your finances and help in tax services. Make tax paying an easy job by adopting accounting services.

Conclusion

 

The above mentioned are some of the evident yet significant reasons why accounting services are extremely important for business worldwide. Irrespective of the size, structure and objective of the business, accounting services aare necessary.

Without accounting services, you cannot possibly expect your business to be successful. You need to manage your finances and plan your budget, and accounting services help in framing better decisions. If you take accounting services lightly, then it’s high time that you start prioritisng accounting services and relish its benefits.

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