So now we have a niche and a more defined view of who our audience will be - now it's time to select the inventory. Select our inventory Inventory is probably the most important part of getting into the ecommerce game. And an important thing to remember is that you want inventory before you open your store . Serious. Don't try to open a store without inventory or at least a plan for how you'll have inventory available for when someone buys. The made-to-order method will most likely cause you frustration and heartache at this stage of the game. My advice don't.
But don't think you 'll do it if the time is right because you probably won't. Kate and I each pulled a minimum of ten items from our own closets giving us a total of twenty mobile number list pieces to sell . When we thought about which items to pull we thought a lot about niche which items would most appeal to our target audience? What is the widest variety of styles and sizes we can offer within that niche? We also wanted a variety of clothing types as in a good balance of skirts dresses shirts scarves etc. And we also had to consider the time period here as a vintage clothing store we cast a broad net as far as styles go from about (good luck finding something to fit in our own closets from that period) to much easier thankfully.
We had another consideration how will we make these pieces fit in with our thriving film-focused 'brand'? We decided to look for things that reminded us of looks and styles we'd seen in movies we like. This of course required some research. Research can be a necessary part of inventory sourcing. Sometimes research is looking at market trends looking at competitor brands etc. Our research was that. But it was also watching a lot of old movies . Fortunately that's the kind of research we love. This Grace Kelly-inspired blouse became an important part of the inventory In the end we arrived at our twenty pieces.