Today I have a great video to show you, however I am reluctant to deem it an episode of The Entrepreneur Road Show (ERS). The reason I don’t want to call it an episode of ERS is because ERS is about my adventures as an entrepreneur and about the often unexplored ways people make money, and although I have had plenty of adventures recently, I have just not edited the footage into episodes of ERS. Today’s video is not adventurous and not about any intersting way people make money, but it is informative and gives a great insight into my life as an entrepreneur and how I go about my operations at Sand Shack.
And yes, I know this is now the second Tuesday in a row without a new episode of The Entrepreneur Road Show…at least I have a video up, right?
Introduction
Small business owners are faced with a variety of issues on a day to day basis. One of the issues that many product based business owners face is the issue of storing their inventory. So if you need to store your inventory do you need to buy or rent a warehouse? Here is a simple, cost-effective answer.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Good topic today Brian, I was actually planning to ask you about what you did as far as storing your products. But I do have another question that goes along with this topic…where do you get your products shipped? To your apartment? What do you do if you have a very large shipment or they can not deliver to an apartment? Thanks again man.
-Adam
@Adam,
Thanks for the comment! I have had anywhere from very small shipments of jewelry to shipments of thousands of hats (this upcoming spring I will be bringing in over 10k hats, 10k belts, and 5k flip flops)…so where and how I have shipped products varies. I get the smaller shipments sent directly to me at my apartment (jewelry), as I do not hang out at the storage facility. However, if there are large shipments, all I do is talk to the storage facility and make sure I can receive a shipment there…however, then I have to hang around and wait for the shipment to come (I set a time with them but you know how things go). I have to get products sent directly to storage because it would just be way too much to even think about getting in my apartment… Earlier on I would get fairly large shipments sent to me at my apartment and my living space was quickly becoming a warehouse, not something I wanted. Hope that helps – let me know if you want to know anything else about shipping.
As I live in a very relatevly “small” town (250k ppl), we have a lot of empty warehouses or old fabric facilities. You can sometimes get a few squarefeet of space in someones warehouse for under 50 bucks. Your access is then very limited but its cheap. If you don’t mind going there only during the normal office hours it’s a great deal (and sometimes they are ok with recieving shipments for you). Unfortunately you got to have trust to them. But I don’t think that this is possible in downtown Philadelphia or any other big city. Some folks are really happy when they are approached if they have some space left, that would otherwise be left unused. So Brians storageunit is more like the presidential suite of the cheap storage possibilities.It reall depends on what you have to store.
@Jens – Wow, that’s awesome to hear you can get such cheap space for storage! And because you are in a small town I am sure you can trust people pretty easily — Philadelphia also has a lot of old factories where I am sure I could get some cheaper space, however, Philadelphia is not the ’safest’ of places (I have been robbed before), and I am willing to pay a little extra for a nicer facility. Thanks for your international perspective from Germany!
Brian
Hi Brian,
My doubt is very similar to Adam’s.
The way I understood, you’re the only employee of your company right? How do you have the products? I mean, do you buy from suppliers in Asia that already ship you the products with your brand in it and you just sell it in Us? How does it work?
Awesome post, I’ll check out if I can get some info about storage in Brazil.
Best regards!
Actually in the following blog I was reading today, I found this site: http://www.shipwire.com/
Maybe it’s a really good help for those who want some help in shipping & storage;
Best regards!
@Millor,
I have alot of sales representatives and freelance workers doing various tasks for Sand Shack, but if you look at the legal definition of a full time employee, yes, I am the only one. Freelance designers and myself design our jewelry and apparel products which we then outsource to our manufacturers in Asia….these are our unique, Sand Shack brand merchandise. I then have all my customers in the US who carry our products place orders for new Sand Shack products…after shipping them in from the manufacturer, the products on order are distributed to the stores, and the remaining inventory is put in storage and is ready to be shipped when an order for it is received. One of the things I have managed to do very well as a small business is successfully outsource the manufacturing of my products to Asia, and that is why I will be coming out with an ebook (almost done writing it) and a website on this topic in the near future…if something like this interests you, be sure to keep an eye out for it when it launches. If you have any other questions about my operations at Sand Shack, just let me know and I would be more than happy to answer them! –It helps to make the questions specific though.
Thanks for the great comments!
-Brian