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This is just plain not true. There are many e-commerce companies who are profitable and healthy immediately. Start a store with Shopify or Miva Merchant for

This is just plain not true. There are many e-commerce companies who are profitable and healthy immediately. Start a store with Shopify or Miva Merchant for a low monthly cost, work of of your house and sell your goods for more than they cost you. Ton's of folks do this and are very quickly profitable on a small scale. If you are trying to be Amazon or Walmart and sell non differentiated products for rock bottom prices, then you are correct. But there are plenty of companies content to run $2 Million - $20 Million dollar businesses without having to go through the pain of losing money for 3 years.

rdouble 14y ago
I'd be interested in seeing some examples. E-commerce is brutal and it's rare that anyone makes money out of the gate.
- abrudtkuhl 14y ago
  As socalnate1 mentions above this is very possible to scale up a small e-commerce operation and be profitable immediately - especially in niche products. There are several case studies for this. For example I sell cases for mobile bluetooth speakers. Our Jambox case was profitable instantly and I paid for the first batch of inventory with revenue from a pre-launch sales discount. The first batch of inventory was paid for with sales before I had the product on hand. I packaged and shipped them out of my home office until it was a pain in the ass and now we use Amazon FBA. We use profits to purchase additional inventory at greater quantities to increase the profit margin. Rinse & repeat. Granted this isn't Amazon scale but it's working. See Dodocase for another example (they are doing way better than us). http://mixergy.com/dodocase-patrick-buckley-interview/ http://mixergy.com/dodocase-patrick-buckley-interview/ One of the keys is to start small to prove the market so you don't end up with a shit load of inventory in your garage. Or better yet do what I did and sell them before you even have them made. We started with 50 units which I was fortunate to sell almost all of using pre-launch tactics before we ordered the inventory from our manufacturer.
sachingulaya 14y ago
Since I can't reply to the comment below me--Now that we understand ecommerce we're profitable from day one with our new brand launches. It usually takes about 2-3 months before we're doing 20k/mo revenue online with 100% margins.
- davidandgoliath 14y ago
  100% margins? scratches head

rdouble 14y ago

I'd be interested in seeing some examples. E-commerce is brutal and it's rare that anyone makes money out of the gate.

abrudtkuhl 14y ago
As socalnate1 mentions above this is very possible to scale up a small e-commerce operation and be profitable immediately - especially in niche products. There are several case studies for this. For example I sell cases for mobile bluetooth speakers. Our Jambox case was profitable instantly and I paid for the first batch of inventory with revenue from a pre-launch sales discount. The first batch of inventory was paid for with sales before I had the product on hand. I packaged and shipped them out of my home office until it was a pain in the ass and now we use Amazon FBA. We use profits to purchase additional inventory at greater quantities to increase the profit margin. Rinse & repeat. Granted this isn't Amazon scale but it's working. See Dodocase for another example (they are doing way better than us). http://mixergy.com/dodocase-patrick-buckley-interview/ http://mixergy.com/dodocase-patrick-buckley-interview/ One of the keys is to start small to prove the market so you don't end up with a shit load of inventory in your garage. Or better yet do what I did and sell them before you even have them made. We started with 50 units which I was fortunate to sell almost all of using pre-launch tactics before we ordered the inventory from our manufacturer.

sachingulaya 14y ago

Since I can't reply to the comment below me--Now that we understand ecommerce we're profitable from day one with our new brand launches. It usually takes about 2-3 months before we're doing 20k/mo revenue online with 100% margins.

davidandgoliath 14y ago
100% margins? scratches head