I spoke with a supplier on Sunday and I did something I never do.  I told him that I would make sure to have at least 40 products up from his company by Tuesday morning.

Doesn’t sound like a big deal does it?

I get minimal info on the products, and the biggest worry for me is always shipping.  See, I like to make sure shipping is included with the price you see at the site.  It saves people from having to worry about a “suprise” in the shopping cart.  So, I have to make an educated guess on how much the shipping is going to cost.  If I guess under…well then I usually get stuck having to pay the difference and losing money on the sale.  That’s not good when your company is only in its second year.

So…I had to go through, add all of these products, look up an estimated shipping cost, add the product to the site as well as the OpenOffice Calc sheet that I use to keep track of how much I should be charging to keep my margin low but make a small profit.

It quite literally took me all day staring at the computer screen with minimal breaks.  At the end of the night I had to go out somewhere and I ended up at 37 products.  Just to keep a promise…the next morning I added a few more.  I didn’t make the full 40 since I was hurting so bad yesterday I was only able to add a couple products and then had to lay down since I was sick to my stomach.  I took some medicine and made it through dinner….after that I was out of it for the rest of the night.

Today I get to add more…..

Here’s to a new headache!

~NFM

Last year we opened our store Serendipity Deals.  We did it without a lot of money…but with a lot of knowledge.

See….I worked in retail for a good chunk of my life.  I spent a lot of time with customers…in fact that got me into a little bit of trouble at a few jobs really.  I was always told that I shouldn’t be friendly…I should just get them what they want and move on to the next customer.  I didn’t like that idea and was always repremanded about how long I would help a customer.  However, in the long run those customers refused to shop in the store unless I was there to help them.  Which again would get me into trouble because I’m very friendly and I want to be sure you get what you want and you get it at the price you want it at.  Again….it seemed as if the stores I worked at (most of them are big name stores too) were only interested in me spending 2 minutes at most with the customer….getting the sale and getting them out.  Their service sucked…..

I eventually worked for a distributor.  I’d sit at my desk and take orders for luggage (high end luggage).  We would have a few small online stores contact us and tell us that they just sold a piece of our luggage and they need it shipped to “so and so”.  That’s what is called “dropshipping”…it’s one of the largest “businesses” online today.  I would sit at my desk and process an order….for instance.

Luggage Store A sells a piece of luggage to customer A.  Customer A pays Luggage Store A $440 for this piece of luggage.  Luggage Store A sends us the order and we charge them $195 plus about $17 shipping for this piece of luggage.  $200 profit????  Why was I sitting behind the desk????

I had the computer knowledge, I’ve run web sites before…several of them.  I have the customer service abilities and the friendliness.  I should be on the other side of that order…I should open my own store.

But…with what money?  It was tight at the time….

Push came to shove and my boss (there are no words to describe him…trust me) caused me to leave that position.  I talked to my wife and her and I agreed…I have the abilities…I have the know how….let’s open a store!

Again….abilities and know how don’t get you products.  Money does….

I learn about “drop shipping”.  Which simply means that I don’t have to buy the product up front…a “reputable” supplier or the direct manufacturer will ship it straight to my customer for me for a small fee on top of the products price and shipping.  Not bad right?

So I thought….

I made one simple mistake right after I opened the store.  I found a company called Doba (I’m not going to link to them since I don’t want to see others get hurt, nor do I want to drive traffic to them).

Doba “claims” to be an easy dropship supplier for “millions” of products with “brand names” and such.  Okay…I can give them the “millions” of products and some “brand names”….but easy?  No…I can’t give that to them.

For $369 I signed up for 15 months of their “service”.  I went through their catalog and added A LOT (close to 500) of their products.  I have to do this one at a time since I’m picky about what I sell.  It took me a VERY long time to get products up there.  As I added products I started to slowly get sales….and things were looking up.  More and more people were coming to the store and buying things, all sorts of things.  Eventually though I got to know the underbelly of Doba….

See…while I was getting these sales and adding more products Doba was getting new “suppliers” and new products on their site.  However….during this time they would randomly “drop” suppliers.  Which would mean that any products that the supplier had on Doba’s site would be gone and no longer available.  Does Doba tell any of their customers?  Do they say…”Hey Serendipity Deals this week we’ve dropped supplier A, C, and G because they…”?   No….they don’t say a word, not even in their monthly newsletter about how great they are and about how they’ve added these other suppliers.  Suppliers which they hide the names of by the way….

Okay….so is that my only complaint?  Hell no….

Not only do they drop suppliers randomly causing me to have to tell customers that have already PAID for the product that I can’t get it for them and causing me to look REALLY bad in the process….but…they also randomly remove or discontinue products without any notice.  Yup…that’s helpful.

Now…I can understand it a product sells out.  Sure…I’ll have to let my customer know that the warehouse is out of them.  I give my customer an option, they can either get an immediate refund or if they want I can put it on back order and ship it when it comes in.  Most customers are understanding when that happens.  Here’s where Doba kills me again.  No notifications on when a product is coming back into stock.  I can send an email to the supplier through Doba….but don’t expect an answer for at least a few days.  My customers don’t want to wait that long, especially when I have their money.

Want more?  Sure….here is one of the best ones yet.  The final straw that caused me to remove every single product I had listed from Doba….

Just before Christmas this passed year (2008) I had a customer that wanted an external hard drive.  However he wanted two of them at a certain price.  I checked Doba and found a really good one at a great price.  Now…I wouldn’t normally tell you my costs and such but let me give you an example on how much I actually make on most of the items at Serendipity Deals.  This customer wanted an external Hard Drive for no more than $80 a piece.  I checked Doba and found a 320GB External HDD for $67.95 plus shipping.  Shipping cost about $7.00 which would make the total “cost” for me $74.95.  I sold two of them to this customer for $79.95 each, my profit was $5.00 a piece.  $5.00 PROFIT A PIECE Yes….my mark up is very low…and I’m proud of that.  My customer was very very happy and paid me for two of them.  I immediately went to Doba and ordered the hard drives and even got a receipt for them…..

A week went by with no tracking at all from Doba…Christmas was getting closer and my customer was still waiting.  I typically keep in touch with my customers and tell them whatever I know so that they know I’m watching out for them….because I am.

Finally a little after a week later I get an email from Doba telling me that the order has been canceled and I’ve been refunded my money.  What?  Why?

Would have been nice to have been told why my order was canceled….but they don’t do that…great service right?  So…I figured….maybe they did their usual and dropped the supplier even DURING my order (they’ve done that twice)….or maybe they discontinued the product.  I went back to their site and looked it up….the product was still there and in stock.  So….why was it canceled and I was refunded?  Oh…that’s simple…they raised the price to $87.95 a piece plus shipping.  They canceled my order and told me that I can re-order it at the higher price instead.  WHAT???? I had to refund my customer and let them know what happened.

So…that’s Doba for you….greedy, uncaring, and absolutely NO SERVICE at all from them.

Let me give you the run down of what you get for your $369.00 a year…

• Products that can disappear at any moment
• Suppliers that can disappear at any moment
• Bait and switch tactics for pricing
• No answers for days to your emails
• No out of stock notifications
• No low stock notifications
• Plenty of sales calls from their marketing friends

What did I finally do?

Well…I found new suppliers….REAL suppliers.  Most of them are the manufacturers for the actual products…which means no middle man…and lower costs.  I removed the hundreds of products from the store and filled it back up with newer better stuff.  I get new suppliers on a weekly basis…and never ever will I go near Doba again.

That’s my rant…

Let’s start with why I disappeared…..again.  My last post was back in June of 2008.  The campground (Kymers Camping Resort) I have been going to for 20 years would be in “full swing” at that time.  That means I would be there every weekend.  In other words I had no “spare” time.

During this time though I did more work at the store Serendipity Deals adding more products and categories….and removing crap from a shitty supplier.  Speaking of….if anyone out there is planning on starting their own online store….STEER CLEAR OF DOBA.  I can’t stress that enough.  Wait…on second thought….you would then be competition wouldn’t you?  In that case….by all means….go get screwed!  However….my Doba rant is enough for another post all on its own.

How about the Castle?  Castle No Fear had one hell of a year last year getting tons of new users and we have over 1100 games for you to play for FREE.  I try and add about 6 new games a week now…typically on Fridays.  Stop by and have some fun.  We upgraded the gold system (which we refer to as Dole) as well as the arcade…and added an AWESOME casino to spend your not so hard earned dole on.

Let’s not forget that Fired Up Radio also celebrated it’s first birthday this passed February 1st!  Wooo!  Go drama free radio!

Oh….yea….my latest triumph?  After a stale, stagnent year with NFMDesigns.com I finally destroyed the “brick wall” page that I had that was difficult to read.  I dropped Joomla from the site and installed Drupal 6.1 and now it has new life!

So….expect to finally see some more activity at these sites as I’m on a full press (I know I left out “court” but I hate basketball) to bring my madness to the world!

(queue evil laugh)

~NFM