Business General

Why I Feel Selling Products Is Not Very Smart !

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Out of all the businesses I know of, selling products doesn’t seem to augur well as the best possible business to do, although it happens to be one of the oldest businesses around. Well, the products were needed then and there used to be this ‘I make products, you buy them’ approach to marketing of these products. Today customer’s have choices and any slight imperfection in the product features, dimensions or anything for that matter is bound to bury the product’s future right there 6 feet below.

While that is still speaking on the broader terms, it so happens that the margins ( Unless we are talking about a product that is really in demand and you happen to be the only trader enjoying access to abundant supply) are really low and it all seems to be a number’s game to me. I have a feeling that people who are in this business are in the business because of the fact that it has been their family business for years and they just need to keep up with the tradition or the fact that they did not get anything else to do and hence they know what is best left for them to do - Buy low, sell high.

There is tremendous competition in almost every segment of products known so far and It beats me as to how you could differentiate your products from that of your competitors, given that most of the products you showcase are more or less similar. The margins are low as I had already mentioned and you ‘d have to sell in really large numbers to make a decent amount of money. You would have the trouble of sourcing products and for this you’d have to find reliable, trust worthy and efficient suppliers, who are in short supply or are really difficult to find.

If you thought ebay was magic and that you would make a lot of money on it, you aren’t entirely right. Maybe you can do great business, but most of them are barely making any money and on top of that trading on ebay is way to expensive than putting up your own website that is e-commerce enabled. However, you might end up spending money on trying to market your e-commerce site while an ebay listing would have millions of shoppers looking at it just because it is on ebay.

Traders have a nasty habit of under-cutting prices and selling real low, even lower than their own buying price ruining the whole essence of trade. Fair practices are rare to find and products would inadvertently need to have proper packaging, shipping and tight logistical controls in place to gain customer retention and loyalty.

If you ask me, services are a better bet than products. However, there are some other problems associated with services which are beyond the purview of this post.

This is not to discourage you from trying to sell products. Sell them if you have to, but it helps if you know this much.

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