Very nice site Tomer! Thanks for the pdf, very informative.
Just to clarify, did this site make a loss July 2007 - May 2008?
Aromazing.com :: Unique eCommerce store selling designer fragrances
Annual sales over 30,000 Custom built shopping cart worth thousands Professionally designed
http://www.aromazing.com/
Closed
This listing ended without a winner.
- Bid History:
- 5 Bids (0 Pending)
- Offer History:
- None accepted (0 Pending)
- Listed:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:41:30 GMT
Accepted Payment Methods: Credit Card, Electronic Transfer, Escrow.com
Description
I have created a detailed PDF file with all the sale information. You can view it here.
About Me
Hey guys, my name Tomer. Many of you probably already know me; I'm an active and reputable member on these boards. I have already sold / bought a few sites successfully here on Site Point with no problems. I can be reached by Email, MSN, or here on the forums [PM].
So again, I can be contacted:
By Email: Tomerdean@gmail.com
On MSN: Tomerdean@gmail.com
Or you can message me on the forums.
For serious buyers – phone conversations can be arranged.
OK let's get to the juicy parts!
Some background information about Aromazing
Aromazing is a eCommerce website selling designer fragrances. All the large brands in perfumes & colognes: Ralph Lauren, Dior, Calvin Klein, Armani and hundreds more. Opened in July 2007, Aromazing was a huge hit; we started off smaller, only accepting PayPal. In Nov 07, I added a merchant account and re-optimized the website for the Christmas season. Since its opening 10 months ago, Aromazing reeled almost $30,000 USD in sales. Things cooled down the last few months as I stopped advertising. We already have over 500 loyal customers, many who have / will shop again and an extensive email list of almost 400 interested prospects. Aromazing has quickly become one of the top fragrance websites due to its attractive and inviting design, competitive prices and top-notch service.
Revenue Details
Since its opening 10 months ago, Aromazing reeled in almost $30,000 USD in sales. Please see the linked PDF file for more detailed information.
Attachments 2 public (0 verified)
Questions 28 public, 2 deleted
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:10:13 GMT
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:22:57 GMT
Correct. This is mainly due to the high costs of dropshipping. I have included the part from the PDF about dropshipping
Inventory & Dropshipping
Because I don't live in the states, I cannot buy inventory and ship out everything as is usually done. I rely on dropshipping companies to ship all the products to my customers [almost all in the USA]. I receive orders, then purchase from the dropshipper at "wholesale" prices which then ships the products. My profit is the slim margin between sale price and the dropshippers fees.Dropshipping is NOT a good solution, because of the HIGH costs of the dropshipping company which leaves very little profit. I strongly recommend the buyer buys inventory and ship our products from his/her home. This will decrease inventory costs by as much as 60%, sky rocketing profit! Something I wanted to do very much, but couldn't due to geographical distances. Due to this, I will also include profit figures assuming you buy inventory, so you can realistically predict future profits.
Also note that many of the customers didn't not re-purchase and will most likely do that in the upcoming months.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:44:17 GMT
How much you ask for ?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:51:13 GMT
I invested a lot of time and money into this project. I personally think it's worth a lot, but I'll let the smart SitePointer's decide. I'll post a BIN price soon, after I get a few more bids.
Thank you everyone for bidding! :)
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:03:34 GMT
I forgot to add the revenue proof in the PDF file [Auth.net screen], I've attached it here in the sale thread, take a look. Please note that up until Nov 07, we only accepted PayPal, so part of the revenue is within PayPal. Both of them together equals $30,000.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:55:13 GMT
The new buyer will need to ditch the current suppliers (the pricey dropshippers you mention) and get their own wholesalers to realise a profit. Will this mean extra coding to adapt the automatic feed that updates your product catalog?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:09:20 GMT
Mmmmm you would just need to disable the auto-script and just edit the products manually. Not a big deal.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:28:28 GMT
How many products do you list on the site? If there are thousands, this might be a big deal.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:06:24 GMT
Well there are a few hundred product lines, each one can have a few sizes though [sample, mini, small, medium, large...etc]
I suggest keeping stock of the main fragrances [mainstream ones: Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Dior] all the best-selling ones, and dropship the smaller ones that are rarely bought. Most of them are almost never bought, so keeping the main ones wouldn't be that hard.
I can help the buyer adapt the script to fit his/her needs.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:09:40 GMT
Does that mean purchasing 4,000 products in wholesale amounts?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:16:51 GMT
Not exactly - it means purchasing a few hundred products, and dropshipping the other few thousand rare ones.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:12:00 GMT
Ok, I see. I was just thinking that usually wholesale purchases are in some sort of bulk, like at least a few hundred. So it would still involve the purchase of many many thousands of little bottles and boxes. No? I know it takes money (and storage space) to make money, but I want to know the magnitude. Thanks!
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:04:38 GMT
Yes dreston it would involve that. Probably a few hundred products, and a few of each. But once you have that, you can start clearing amazing profits, as everything else is ready.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:08:14 GMT
I'm curious why you set it up as a dropship business knowing the smaller profit margin. I'm wondering what aspect(s) in particular didn't go as expected. Lower sales, higher advertising costs? Also, you should have the basis now for increased organic traffic, and from where it is now it seems that a modest increase in sales and reduction in advertising could make the dropship model profitable. Do you agree, or are there reasons to think this would be unlikely?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:38:45 GMT
On the one hand: "Dropshipping is NOT a good solution, because of the HIGH costs of the dropshipping company which leaves very little profit."
On the other hand: "Not exactly - it means purchasing a few hundred products, and dropshipping the other few thousand rare ones."The only way for me to make this workable (i.e. not spend a VERY long time manually updating the database) is to use your established dropshippers, but in doing so I run the risk of operating at a loss. It feels like the backend is 'tied' to your current expensive dropshippers. It's too expensive to use them, but it would take too long to maintain the site's database without them. Am I missing something here?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:21:12 GMT
@ scono - My mistake was that I didn't really make a business plan, and didn't know my margins would be that low [20-25%]. Everything else was more that expected. Conversion rate is very high, like 3-5% in high season. Sales are amazing.
Yes you're right, I do get some organic traffic and every once in a while get some orders through that, and word of mouth is starting to kick in. But you will most likely still need paid clicks.
@ hooperman - Most of the products aren't bought much, so there's no need to store them. Only the main ones should be stored, so you can get good margines for the main ones, and small margins on the rarely bought ones. I suggest using the dropshippers as now, and stock the top bought products, and manually update the price for them [you won't have to update every day, only once... shouldn't be more than a few hours work]
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Wed, 04 Jun 2008 23:19:01 GMT
Ok so the way I understand it is you can just keep everything the same (same retail prices) and then simply wholesale the top selling products while still dropshipping the less frequently sold ones.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:55:44 GMT
Exactly! That seems like the best way to work it out. :)
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:58:52 GMT
OK I understand where you're going with this.
Any chance you could list the top 5 sellers, just so I can get an idea of margins using wholesalers? PM if you don't want to disclose?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:06:08 GMT
Yes I have contacted a few wholesalers from China [from Alibaba] and asked for quotes for products to help calculate earnings. They are much lower.
For example, this specific Polo Black product:
Retail price: $70.00
We sell it online for: $57.99
Dropship price: $46.34
Wholesale price: $25.00As you can see, it looks very good. Hope this helps everyone.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:34:41 GMT
Tom, we have no idea if there are like 100 "top sellers" or not. Plus, how many of those Polo Blacks would you have to purchase for that wholesale price. For example, hypothetically, if they're 25 bucks and you need to have 100 different types of them and you have to purchase a minimum 100 each for wholesale - That's 100 times 100 times 25 which is $250,000. For that price I can guy a McDonalds. Probably I'm way off. But MAYBE not.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:47:11 GMT
Hmmm well it's kinda hard to get an exact number, I'll try to write a script that will calculate how many products are in the 90% or so of the sales. But regarding the minimum orders, I remember most of them has like 5 or 10 minimum. Also keep in mind that $25 is for the big bottles, many of the products are smaller [$1 - $15].
So lets say 100 products x 5 [minimum] x $10 = $5,000. Which makes more sense I think. Perfumes have a shelf life of many years if stored right, so expired products shouldn't be a problem.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:51:31 GMT
hi tomer would u be able to supply the winning buyer with information of wholesalers to buy from aswell as the dropshippers and would the winner be able to find out the most popular selling fragrances on your site so they could be bought in wholesale n like you stated dropship the rarer fragrances?
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:54:56 GMT
also if your purchasing in wholesale from alibaba how do you know the fragrances are authentic rather than watered down fakes. Alibaba is 98% scammers or alternative items which arent the original authentic product but they will make out it is.
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:36:08 GMT
Yes of course all my contacts will be trasnsfered. And yes the buyer will have access to see the top prodcuts.
I'm not sure where you got the 98% stat, but like all sites - there are always scammers. You would have to try to filter them out and order some test perfumes to check the quality. Those sites usually have member feedback, if you see someone is a member for 20 years with 99% positive feedback, it's probably OK.
- Tom
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- Posted by:
- Date:
- Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:27:20 GMT
I guess the auction ended too early. I'm still talking to some of the interested buyers, so the site is still available. Please contact me for more info.
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