Ecommerce and the Rise of 3rd Party Integrated Fulfillment Warehouses for Small Business

Some say it is an Amazon world whereby brick stores are falling by the way side. Even the largest retailers in Canada and the US continue to ramp up their online operations at the expense of their traditional retail brick store outlets. Call it a new way of doing business, or call it a retrenchment strategy for retailers getting hurt by their lower cost, more nimble e-tail counterparts. Case in point? Look to the Future Shop and Best Buy who in 2013 announced the closure of 15 of their big box stores in Canada.

Apparently the customer that previously wanted to feel, touch and smell the product before purchasing no longer needs that. Call it the trust factor - that you can readily shop online today with confidence that what you'll get is what is described online. With so much business establishing well regarded operations online with attractive shipping rates and return policies, it's not just Gen X and Y shopping online today.

Ecommerce for Small Business - How to Play with the Big Brand Retailers Online
Small businesses, even retailers that are exclusively online, can enjoy the benefits of selling via the internet. Some have experienced fantastic growth and established brands in their own right - but as the big retail brands have come to the e-tail party, the competition has become stiffer.
How can a small or mid-sized businesses match the distribution prowess, efficiency and know-how the big guys employ with already established distribution networks?

The answer may be "3rd party integrated fulfillment". Rather than warehousing product, marketing and making sales, and then picking, packing and shipping retail orders in-house you CAN, as a small business, achieve scale by leveraging a warehouse that specializes in fulfillment for its client base.

Ecommerce has given rise to such companies and services available to businesses that have outgrown their garage or basement and are ready for their next phase of growth.
How 3rd Party Warehousing and Fulfillment Works
The concept is easy, but of course the details matter when selecting a warehousing and fulfillment partner. In summary, it works like this:

• Your partner warehouses your product, with the benefit in most cases being that you can scale up your space needs or down (depending on seasonality). These warehouses have other clients just like you and typically house several or up to dozens of clients.
• You connect with the warehouse to communicate sales. This can be as sophisticated as an EDI between your system and their inventory management and fulfillment network. Or as rudimentary as faxing over order sheets requiring fulfillment.
• Warehousing staff picks, packs and prepares your order for shipment. This 3rd party staffing, which also means you are not responsible for human resource management.
• The order ships out. The order can "ship blind" which is a key component. In other words, you're the seller and the recipient will see that the order was "shipped from" you. Importantly, you can often leverage your 3rd party partner's preferred shipping rates - be they courier or freight rates. All of a sudden, you may be able to achieve shipping discounts you could never due to their pooled volume which achieves greater discounts of which they typically pass on a portion to you (better than list rates).

The Value to 3rd Party Warehousing and Fulfillment
We've already listed several benefits to outsourced warehousing and fulfillment, but the true value comes in the form of efficiencies achieved and scale that can be achieved with minimal capital investment. Typically, these are a pay-as-you go variable cost arrangement where costs often fluctuate with your revenues. This allows small business to essentially function as a much larger company.

It might be time for your retail operations to think bigger and partner with a warehousing and fulfillment partner. It need not be a new world only for Amazon and the big brands and by contracting services to a 3PL warehouse, small and mid-sized business owners can focus on marketing and sales growth - and leave the fulfillment logistics to the professionals.

Office Storage for Your Small Business

Finding an office storage facility is something that you should look into if you have a small business. Your space is likely limited, and you may have extra items that need to be stored. If your workspace is limited, then you may want to start doing some research. You will want a facility that is temperature controlled, insured for flooding, reasonably priced, and highly secure. You should also make sure that the space is clean.

Keep in mind, it might be important for you to have a temperature-controlled facility. Some items might not be a problem, but humidity and dampness can ruin important papers, electronics, and wood furniture. Too much heat could be detrimental as well.

Flood insurance through the facility is also important. Your items may be insured through your business, but a flood insurance plan might be important to protect your property from possible water damage.

A reasonable price for the facility is probably important to your small business. It is likely that your budget is limited, so you will want to make sure that the office storage facility fits into your plan. You will need to make price comparisons because you might have unreasonable expectations for what a facility should offer for a certain price.

Excellent security is also something that is very important. If you would be storing files or even just nice furniture, then you would want to make sure that your space would be locked and have a security system that you would be able to trust. There should be a gate at the facility, and you should only be able to enter with some type of password or key.

Be sure to take a look around the facility for cleanliness. The space should be clean before you put your items into it, and you should not have to do it yourself. A clean environment discourages pest infestations. It is considered a part of good customer service to keep a clean business.

After looking at these areas, you should know what to look for when it comes to office storage spaces for your small business. Do not cut corners as you search for a space to store items. There might be places that offer low prices but do not offer the cleanliness or security that you desire. It would be better to have a crowded office then to pay for a space that will not be good for the items that you need to store.

3 Key Elements to a Successful Beauty Business

There are three key elements to a successful beauty business. Take action on these three elements alone and see your business transform.

Know Your Market

When promoting your products and services the most important thing to remember is who is your customer? Then discover what type of service they are looking for and offer it.

If you work within a local area do your research. What are the demographics? How many people of each age group and gender live or work nearby? What kind of service would they be most likely to want?

Let's look at two examples. First, are the women who live or work in your area short on time? Women who would love to spend more time on themselves but are just too busy for most beauty treatments. Why not offer mini services to these busy women on their lunch break or straight after work.

Second, are there a lot of retired women around your area who have a high disposable income and more time available to spend on themselves? If so could you offer luxurious pampering sessions?

Put yourself in the position of potential clients in your area. If you lived their life what would help you? What type of product or service would you like?

Share Your Message More

Are your sharing your message enough? Who even knows your business exists?

If you want to get customers you have to be known. Are you hiding behind your business? Are you stuck in your salon or home office wondering when the phone is going to ring or when potential clients will walk through the door? When you are not busy are you making efforts to be known? Really known.

It takes more than one attempt at promoting your products and services for people to remember your name. It is said that it can take 5 or more messages from you for people to even start to take notice. People are bombarded these days with messages: on the T, the radio, their computer, at the shops that it takes a concerted effort for your voice to stand out. What are you doing to be heard?

Build Relationships

Gone are the days of people accepting messages that are blasted at them. People are more discerning. They want to get to know who they are doing business with. Know, like and trust are key elements of the sale these days. Consequently you need to build relationships with people; potential clients and your current clients.

Are you taking care of your customers? It costs a lot more to find new customers than take care of the ones you already have. You want to treat your customers so well that they won't even think about going elsewhere for the products and services you offer. Happy customers will also refer your business more often to people they know and building your business through referrals is the best business growth of all.

There you have it. Three key elements to running a successful beauty business. Know your market, share your message more and build relationships. You can do it!

Small Business Online Marketing Strategies to Become Successful

Nowadays, even the smallest of businesses already have a web presence. Even if you start a small flower shop or sell electronic books, you need smart advertising to be able to create more profit and sales for that small company. There are many small business online marketing strategies that you can use in order to become successful in your venture.

If you want your small business to create a good buzz in the market, you would initially need to make sure that you have a quality product or service to offer to your customers and a web site that could best represent your product or service. From there, you can build a good strategy.

The next thing you would have to do is to aim for your web site or web page to have a good spot in the search engines. If you don't have any idea or in-depth knowledge about search engine optimization, it helps to gather more ideas from the web about it. If not, you can hire an SEO company which would not only help your web site land on the best place on the web when searched but it can also take your web site up for a really good promotion. The aim is to get you a really good traffic so that you can make a good launching of your product or service.

Create and continue to create more content for your web site each day. If this is not something you can religiously do, you can hire someone to write for you on a regular basis. Getting involved in social media would also help. Visit other web sites, leave a comment and a link back to your own as well. Of course, you have to make sure that your comments are sensible enough so you would be able to invite more users to come to your page. Participating in forums and other forms of discussion and submitting well-written articles to various article directories with a link back to your site can really help as well.

If almost all of these sound Greek to you because you would do well if you are only spending your time into improving your product or service than to do all the technical details of promoting them online, then get some outside help. There are small business online marketing experts that are willing to polish your company's image by doing the necessary promotion.

How Outsourcing Time Intensive Tasks to a Virtual Assistant Can Grow Your Business

What is a Virtual Assistant?
A virtual assistant, or a VA, is a business solutions provider who remotely assists with clients' business operations. Typically, virtual assistants are sole proprietors or small business owners who work on a contractual basis. Virtual assistants communicate with their clients through virtual mediums such as VoIP or the Internet. Modern entrepreneurs and small business owners outsource the breadth of their most tedious and time consuming tasks to VAs.

The Difference Between Virtual Providers and an Employee
A virtual assistant differs from a conventional employee in many ways. Commonly, a company would be required to deduct payroll tax from an employee's salary, a VA is required to remit their own taxes. Additionally, since a VA works independent from the company, there are no requirements to provide benefits or health insurance.

What Kind of Things can a VA Do?
A wide variety of tasks can be delegated to a virtual assistant. Depending on the skill level and expertise of the VA, these tasks can range from every day administrative duties to something much more specialized such as legal document tenders or even financial bidding. In most situations, the work delegated to a personal assistant will fall under one of two categories: the work you could do by yourself but have no time (or desire) to do OR the work you know is necessary but lack the right skill sets to complete on your own.

What Types of Professionals Use VA Services?
• Business Start-ups
• Entrepreneurs
• Independent Professionals
• Contractors
• Small Business Owners
• Doctors and Therapists
• Online Companies
• Real Estate Agents
• Tutors and Life / Career Coaches
• Job Placement Agencies and Recruitment Firms
• Marketing and Sales Companies
• Lawyers
• Work from Home Professionals

Why are Digital Assistants are the Next Big Thing
There is not shortage of available help, particularly online. The Business Outsourcing industry is a flourishing market. The primary reason for this comes from the increased use of digital assistants by business owners due to the affordability of tools, services and next generation technology that makes it possible for work to be done in a virtual environment; outsourcing can now be enjoyed by all business professionals. Not just the major Fortune 500 players.

Benefits of Working with a VA
Advantageously, being a client of a VA frees the burden of issues like payroll tax, employee benefits, insurance and more. Additionally, outsourcing projects to a virtual solutions provider means that there is no need invest in additional office space, infrastructure, applications etc. Many employers find that hiring a VA during peak project hours or at any other time where additional help is needed is immensely beneficial. The convenience of having a virtual service provider means that business owners, and even employees of the business, are free to focus on their core business functions - instead of being tied up with time consuming administrative or routine tasks. Contracting a virtual assistant is much more cost efficient than hiring an additional employee. Virtual assistants are small business owners themselves and understand the hard work and dedication that is needed to establish a profitable and reputable business.