6 THINGS I LEARNED FROM CREATING AN E-COMMERCE PRODUCT

By Ollie Aplin

A SIMPLE IDEA BASED ON A CURRENT AND GROWING TREND.

CATCUS & CO —

1. DEADLINES

I set a stupidly bonkers deadline of 8 weeks from idea to launch and it kept me focused and eliminated any time to doubt the idea.

An impossible deadline makes you cut out all the clutter, streamline your idea, simplify things and just generally makes you get shit done. In hindsight I could

have probably cut my my deadline to four weeks. The outcome would have been exactly the same just less product to launch with, which leads me on to …

Set impossible deadlines

2. BUDGET

Launch with less stock, simplify your idea, work on it for less days.

With Cactus & Co I launched with 200 products! What a tit. I could have launched with 50 or

even 25. I was too blinded by making a profit than I was just launching the damn thing. Customers who want something but see it’s out of stock will wait, if it’s good enough. Demand is a powerful asset. Create demand, build hype. People usually share and

comment on items they want but can’t have.

Whatever you think you need, halve it

3. SUPPLIERS

If you can rely on less people when setting up the better the outcome will be. You’ll also have only one person to blame if it all goes tits up. Make it yourself, take the photos, write the copy, draw it. As soon as I relied on someone else to

make the pots for Cactus & Co it all fell apart, literally.

Some things are best left to the professionals, that’s true, however think carefully about if and why you need outside help. If you do have to deal with suppliers to bring your idea to life, the most important thing you can do is get everything in

writing and get it signed.

Get everything in writing

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4. PACKAGING

The first thing people see when your product arrives is a container, be it a box, tube or envelope. However, once your customer opens it what do they get? How

do they get to the final stage of physically holding your product in their hands? These steps are a crucial experience of not just your product but also your brand.

With Cactus & Co every element was fiddly. So keep it simple. Ask a professional packaging designer to help if you have to. Ultimately it comes down creating the

best possible customer experience.

Keep it simple

5. TESTING

Spending £50 on a prototype to test your idea is better than spending £500 to realise your idea doesn’t work.

For some reason I chose not to create a prototype for Cactus & Co. I did some

basic testing of the shipping which involved packaging it up and sending it to myself. But that was after I’d put in an order for 200 cacti and 200 pots. I should

have tested everything from production to packaging — then tested it again. Instead I went with the first idea that popped in my head and then resolved

issues on the fly.

Test - then test again

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Samuel Beckett

6. GROWTH

Can your idea grow? I don’t mean literally like my cactus plants. Can your product idea grow in scale? Can you go from shipping to 10 customers to 1,000?

Can you ship to other countries? Can you easily sell your product wholesale — have you got the right margins in place to still make a profit if you do?

These are all things I neglected to consider with Cactus & Co. I was limited to selling to customers only within the EU due to laws with shipping organic matter.

Who knew! Well, turns out I didn’t.

Can your idea grow in scale?

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