This morning saw two very large boxes and a slightly smaller one being ticked:
- Thanks to a generous cash injection from my father, I was able to finally order a whack of products from the dropship/print-on-demand supplier I have settled on, HugePOD. Just over $300 worth, after shipping, 12 items in total. This includes a couple of bucket hats, three umbrellas, four "Hawaiian" shirts (as close as I can get with them, a basic short-sleeved, collared, button-up), and a few t-shirts for the family. Now, the waiting.
- That same influx allowed me to order some business cards (see the proofs below) from VistaPrint. It probably cost a little more than strictly necessary - 100 cards for $50 (after shipping) - but I really liked their design interface, and now that I am satisfied with the design I can replicate it as a JPG and upload it to a cheaper printer in the future. As evidence of how much I liked the finished product, I used the back side of the card as my digital card for Social linking (see above), the making of which constitutes the third and slightly smaller bucket.
At this point, I'm going to work under the assumption that I'm going to be happy enough with the products I've ordered that I'm making HugePOD my main supplier. I should note that I have ordered around a half dozen items from them before, and so far I've been satisfied. That means I have two major tasks ahead of me:
- Connect my store to HugePOD's shipping. Nobody can order anything until I accomplish this step, but it's a rather complicated one that's important to get right. This will be my first priority tomorrow morning.
- Replace all the InterestPrint designs with their HugePOD equivalents. This has already been done a bit, but probably involves around 60 items or so to do. A bit time-consuming, but at least I created an organized file system for the designs with each one getting its own folder, so the job is as easy as it could be.
Other things I have to do include:
- Finish writing all the text for the various pages of the store. I suspect this is more important than I think it is, and I already think it's important.
- Register with the Canadian government as a Sole Proprietorship and register as a business, thus getting my GST number. I have a lot to learn about this incredibly important end of things.
- Prepare an email and social media campaign for when I make the soft launch and then the hard launch.
- Once the stuff I have ordered has arrived, take a lot of marketing photos, with and without people modeling them. [I'm looking at you, Femke! :-)]
- Devise a marketing plan. A complicated and extremely nuanced endeavour that I have very little experience in. At least the space is crowded with charlatans and scammers (eye-roll emoji goes here).
- Oh yeah, and keep coming up with new designs so that I have at least a couple hundred items in my catalog by the time of the hard launch. Variety and choice are absolutely key.
What's that? Rowan is stirring? I'm off!