Ecommerce Experiment

Missing the Christmas rush might seem like madness but we decided not to launch Eliot Turner until the New Year. This was a tactical decision as we identified a risk which was not worth taking. The risk was regarding our stock management or the lack of it.

As we have a limited amount of capital in Eliot Turner we have to consider our expected sales. We recently launched an ecommerce website for one of our clients an award winning beauty salon in Newcastle. The launch of this site was so successful we had a slight panic about how to manage our own stock with very little sat on the shelf and little capital to order more. This particular website has only been soft launched as the owner is still uploading all the products. It proved our marketing formula and tactics when launching an ecommerce website are effective. If we launch the Eliot Turner website using this same formula we would face a short fall in stock.

So why not just re-stock?

Our suppliers are what I refer to as cottage industries that have few resources and little stock sat on the shelf. These suppliers during the Christmas period are themselves under huge pressure to meet the order requests from other retailers. This left us in a position where we would not have the capital to reorder in sufficient quantity and our supplier would be unlikely to meet our demands.

We are now building into our business plan a stock management structure which will allow us to ramp up stock levels in time for Christmas. The previous year’s trading history will also give us an idea as to the best selling stock so we should order the correct levels of each item / set.