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Hi
Am tired of poor customer service, and with a partner we are going to try and start our own shop. We are going start small as we don't have a massive bank roll behind us.

I want to ask the forum what they expect from a online seller.

Would you prefer a 10% discount and free uk postage, or 15% and you pay postage.

Were going to be honest and we know we can't have all the range of products in the GW catalogue in stock, but we are going to try and have it in stock with five days and dispatch on all orders the same day, but thats not always possible so were limiting it to 48 hrs max.

We will try and keep the buyer informed and have late hours contact number 7 days a week backup with 30 years industry knowledge.

25%+ Off and free shipping on a certain order size is pretty standard these days.

Not in the UK. Those rates of discounts are unrealistic.

Magnamaniac wrote:Not in the UK. Those rates of discounts are unrealistic.

Well the rates that Emerett mentioned (25% discount) are what the cheapest stores in the UK are offering, Dark Sphere for example.

If you're not planning a bricks and mortar shop you may have problems getting GW to supply you.

If they do give you a trade account you'll need to spend a lot on stock to get the better rate of discount that the larger indy traders get (which allows them to give their own healthy rrp discount), plus from what I understand, they have minimum restock value so you'll need to have strong sales from the get-go...

I looked at this route a year or so back, but it was a non-starter and that was before their internet and geographic restrictions for sellers came into force.

Magnamaniac wrote:Would you prefer a 10% discount and free uk postage, or 15% and you pay postage.

While I respect what y'all are trying to do, I wouldn't even bother clicking on a banner that advertised 10-15% off.

If I'm buying on the Intenet, I expect 20% and free shipping, or possibly 30% and I'll pay domestic shipping.

I don't know about over there, but here in the US I can get any GW item at least 25% off with $6-8 flat rate shipping. I get 30% off on plastic sets.

Small companies don't do the volume needed to compete on price, so a store with gaming space and such is the only way to carve your place at the table. People will pay a little more to support a local gaming space.

That and in this economy starting a company so small is almost bound to fail. Sorry.

Magnamaniac wrote:Hi
Am tired of poor customer service, and with a partner we are going to try and start our own shop. We are going start small as we don't have a massive bank roll behind us.

I want to ask the forum what they expect from a online seller.

Would you prefer a 10% discount and free uk postage, or 15% and you pay postage.

Were going to be honest and we know we can't have all the range of products in the GW catalogue in stock, but we are going to try and have it in stock with five days and dispatch on all orders the same day, but thats not always possible so were limiting it to 48 hrs max.

We will try and keep the buyer informed and have late hours contact number 7 days a week backup with 30 years industry knowledge.

Here is a freebie ;3
This is what you need to do. Look up and study prices discrepancy for different countries and zones you'll be selling to,
and adjust your shops price and shipping rate accordingly.

If you don't do that, you will fail.

Magnamaniac wrote:Not in the UK. Those rates of discounts are unrealistic.

Not really, do a bit of looking around.

I have looked into this recently, and as menitoned, I would not able to buy enough stock on a reguler basis, in order to qualify for the best rate of discount i would need, to compete with other online traders.
This was just for my small scale ideas though and for all as i know the OP might be in a different boat.
From my research i found that a 25% discount is the cheapest rate that the online stores in the UK offer, There were also quite a few operating around the 20% mark, most of them offer discounted postage over a certain amount too.

Well you could get away with the 10% off and free shipping even compared to all these cheaper places if you can provide exceptional CS. Have a starting promotion (I don't know, maybe include a free paint or glue with an order of a certain level) to build up reputation within the community then when possible try to get an actual store so you can have increased support. The actual store then will gradually become the main income source with the online store to complement it, this will let you drop the prices more if you wanted to fit in line with the other 25% off stores.

More often than not the start up will be the hardest as you need to build up trust first. What you do need though is to have business sense. It's harsh, but if you don't know what you're doing I'd advise against starting up a store as you're looking at just throwing away money in the long run. Additionally if you're going to go by it as a small side thing, maybe just sell through Ebay or somewhere like that as a store.

US customer so YMMV and all, but...

1. At least 20% and free shipping or I walk. There are folks that do that here. If an unknown quantity won't give me the deal that I'm already getting...yeah, not doing business with them.

2. Ship in a timely manner. If I order Monday morning, it would be nice if it went out Monday afternoon; if not, it had better go out Tuesday. When you're running a business, you're not just selling on Ebay any more. If I place an order say, now (Sunday evening) and it ships the following Friday, don't expect to see me again. Someone's selling the same thing for almost the same price that goes to the post office every day.

3. Live inventory. If you're selling it, you'd better have it. If you don't have it, let me know before I place my order. Don't send me an email the next day apologizing for not having it. I'll send you back an email saying not to bother, I'm going someplace else with an accurate website. I won't be back to yours.

4. Non-existent shopping cart / weird ordering system / don't take Paypal or debit card. I'm not looking for an online struggle with a crappy website and I can't use my phone during my working hours, which probably coincide with your working hours. If I can't place an order in a timely manner from my own home, guess what? I go someplace where I can. Several already exist.

These are basic rules for online commerce really. There's enough competition out there in whatever market you choose that unless your prices or your services are simply outstanding (or you're selling something that no one else has) you had better not violate these. Note that one of these rules is tied in to price and three are tied in to service, so really you'd better have good prices and good service if you want me back again.

Again, there are plenty of good, established vendors to choose from already. Even that Chinese recaster that we don't like to talk about offers three of these four things, and as their prices are stupidly good and they're shipping from halfway around the world, they get a pass on the timely shipping issue. If you're looking to make your mark here, you had better be doing everything that the existing vendors are already doing, and something better. Otherwise you will fail.

Hi
Appreciate the help.

As to being a seller its not how much you sell its what your website offers in the way additional information and brands that effect price. Only selling a hell of a lot of stock gets you the best prices, which with my business model would take a little to to acquire.

Its keeping stuff instock and keeping people informed which is important to me. I phoneed the big three on Saturday to see what they had instock, to see what differences there was between online and actual stock. No one stock level was correct and out of 15 40K lines the best was 7 lines instock.

As to discounts firestorem, maelstrom and wargame store offer a 10% discount dark sphere offer a better 25% but hit you for postage.

As to discounts that is the only thing I cannot put my finger on before the opening of my store.

We have plans for a opening promotion, but were in discussions to what we'll be doing. for it.

Its customer service we think we'll make our mark on.

You will have to wait and see, but I think the nay sayers will be surprised.

Live stock levels

I ordered off wayland recently, all the stock buttons were green but it was still awaiting stock for 2 weeks, then shipped without the key part I wanted.

That annoys me

30% off and free shipping.

We will have live stock levels, and we will also contact you that day if we make a mistake with our stock levels. Also worse case we will have it in the post within 7 days.

We will always keep our customers in the loop.

We will also be contactable up to 2000 monday - Saturday.

Could people fro the UK only leave discount levels please as its confusing people.

It's easy to say all of that when you're not running a store.

Eiríkr wrote:It's easy to say all of that when you're not running a store.

Don't know what to say to that post. Possible the most negative I have heard lol.

Well Between me and my partner we have nearly 2 decades of retail experiance both in small and large business. And someone everyday will be available checking thiese figures and dealing with customers.

Its easy to be a nay sayer, but you have to give our business a chance, and be constructive with any ideas or concerns.

Sorry, I did not mean to give the impression of negativity. I wholly welcome and support your endeavour in this. More competition for current stores in the UK is only ever a good thing!

However, you'll have to offer something fething amazing for me to stop using Maelstrom. This is probably the same for many others here, including those whom use Wayland & Dark Sphere. I'll give your store interest if you can offer more discount than Maelstrom, beating even their voucher offers and moneyback scheme, keep stock levels constantly up in the green and a nice clean website. Free shipping also helps...

Thank you Eirikr. Something we can aim for.

We hope to beat or equal all online seller except dark sphere for discounts. Dark sphere is different as there postage charges mean their real discount is 15%ish after postage.

As I have said in previous posts we have software to keep out stock levels current, and if we make an error we will contact you, and either tell you when we will have it. For example out of stock Monday, should be received by us and out in the post by Friday

We know we have challenges to over come, and we openly acknowledge that we will start small, but we are not going to offer anything we cannot produce.

We have taken our time, done research and we have used the top 4 shops to purchase off of to see how we can improve the service, and the biggest two issues we have found is stock levels wrong, and poor customer service. Also after 6 days we still haven't received a single order.

We might not be the biggest, but we hope to offer the best customer services we can

FM Ninja 048 wrote:Live stock levels

I ordered off wayland recently, all the stock buttons were green but it was still awaiting stock for 2 weeks, then shipped without the key part I wanted.

That annoys me

This is the reason why I, despite great variety of stuff offered, good prices and excellent customer service, don´t really order much from Wayland anymore...

Now I simply support my FLGS and order anything I need through them. Might take a while, and the discount is not as good, but I know that I´ll get what I ordered and I know how long it will take in advance.

I didnt mean to sound negative, I was just thinking of it from my (a buyers) point of view, and unless I could beat the prices of Darsksphere, giftsforgeeks or ebay sellers, I wouldnt be getting my custom, and i doubt im the only one that thinks like that.
Most people i know dont care about customer service, just getting stuff for cheap, but as this is one of the reasons you chose for this venture, i know everyone does not carry my views.
Best of luck.

Well, we hope to beat gift for geeks, we equal darks sphere, and as to ebay seller, I don't see how a ebay seller can beat any online seller for genuine products, as GW terms of sale forbid a reseller using auction sites.

All I want is when we are up and running everyone gives us a fair chance.

Magnamaniac wrote:Well, we hope to beat gift for geeks, we equal darks sphere, and as to ebay seller, I don't see how a ebay seller can beat any online seller for genuine products, as GW terms of sale forbid a reseller using auction sites.

All I want is when we are up and running everyone gives us a fair chance.

Fair chance doesn't come into it when money is involved. It boils down to who sells for lowest accorded to the customer.

Eiríkr wrote:

Magnamaniac wrote:Well, we hope to beat gift for geeks, we equal darks sphere, and as to ebay seller, I don't see how a ebay seller can beat any online seller for genuine products, as GW terms of sale forbid a reseller using auction sites.

All I want is when we are up and running everyone gives us a fair chance.

Fair chance doesn't come into it when money is involved. It boils down to who sells for lowest accorded to the customer.

Very valid.
Some people want it dirt cheap and no customer service - Lidels

Some people want good service and whatever the want either instock or quickly orderable - Waitrose

Truble is Lidels is always having stocking issues

Magnamaniac wrote:Hi
Appreciate the help.

As to being a seller its not how much you sell its what your website offers in the way additional information and brands that effect price. Only selling a hell of a lot of stock gets you the best prices, which with my business model would take a little to to acquire.

Thats why I said dont just look at how much, but where at .
If your % of discounts cant be changed, if your stock cant be that high...
if you cant keep up against the veteran popular stores out there....

Then do what they arnt doing, and sell it to whom they arnt selling, by offering service many of them arnt doing.

Open the products, break the embargo limitations, sell at your limited 10% off that is still 40% off for aussies for example. or even, CANADA
omg me~
.

FM Ninja 048 wrote:Live stock levels

This.

Some sort of actual indicator about whether or not you actually have the product in stock. And not some bs green circle that says "regular stock" but doesn't mean anything because you don't actually have the product. I ordered "regular stock" items from Wayland and had huge delays while they ordered the product. It's not fething regular stock if you take a month to get it.

That was the first and last time I ordered from them.

Magnamaniac wrote:Hi
Am tired of poor customer service, and with a partner we are going to try and start our own shop. We are going start small as we don't have a massive bank roll behind us.

I want to ask the forum what they expect from a online seller.

Would you prefer a 10% discount and free uk postage, or 15% and you pay postage.

Were going to be honest and we know we can't have all the range of products in the GW catalogue in stock, but we are going to try and have it in stock with five days and dispatch on all orders the same day, but thats not always possible so were limiting it to 48 hrs max.

We will try and keep the buyer informed and have late hours contact number 7 days a week backup with 30 years industry knowledge.

Don't charge aussies more... Personally I find cheap bulk better (i.e. charge for postage but cheaper as you buy more) as for one offs I go to ebay for 2nd hand and the stuff.

FeindusMaximus wrote:30% off and free shipping.

Where the hell are you guys ordering from?

What do I want in an online store?

1. Live stock levels
2. Free Shipping
3. 20% discount.
4. Paypal
5. Prompt shipping
6. Clear website with a decent search engine.

If you can't offer me all of these things, I'm unlikely to use you.