Launched sales of goods on marketplaces in 2022 for 100,000 rubles

At the end of 2022, I started selling products on Ozon. I started with dessert boxes, tried launching socks, and then realized that I didn’t like being in a constant search for “that” product that would bring me money. As a result, I found a scheme that I still work by. Initially, it was a little different, now I have greatly reworked it taking into account experience and mistakes, so I will tell you what my business looks like at the moment. And at the end, I will describe all the pros and cons.

Before I continue, a small digression. I author of the telegram channel “Cat, if not me”is a channel with a podcast about business and the people who do it. I interview the heads of small projects, they talk about their path and how they do their work in reality, without the template successful success

Content:

1. What is cross-docking?

2. How do I control the balance and calculate the sales price?

3. How many people are on my team?

4. My income and expenses

5. Pros and cons of the business model

6. Plans

7. Important links

What is cross-docking?

I work on the cross-docking system. This is when I put product cards on the marketplace, but in fact, they are not in my warehouse, but at the supplier's. When I receive an order for this product, I buy it from the supplier, he brings it to my warehouse, where it is repackaged and sent to the marketplace's sorting center. This is a simplified scheme, in practice, everything is much more complicated.

Let me give you a specific example. Let's say a customer ordered Product A on the marketplace. My warehouses are set up so that I have to ship this product the day after I received the order. This is a small problem, since the final delivery time to the buyer will be longer than if Product A were in the marketplace warehouse. Having seen this order in the system, I buy this product from the supplier. The next day, Product A arrives at my warehouse, where the packing guys accept it, repack it according to the marketplace requirements, and take it to the sorting center on the same day. Then the marketplace takes care of the logistics, and our work is finished.

How do I control the balance and calculate the sales price?

This is a topic for a separate article, but I will try to briefly outline the essence. All control occurs automatically through a complex chain of interactions between me and the supplier and the marketplace via API. In Google Sheets, I created tables that list all the products that I sell on marketplaces. One table for one store. In addition to the names of the products, this table also lists their dimensions, volume, weight, and sales quantum. Next, the table loads the balances and purchase price of each product from the supplier. In a certain place in this table, I specify the conditions for the margin that I want to have for each product. Let's say I want to have 9% of the revenue from each product, but not less than 90 rubles. To do this, I click on the “Select value” button and the script located on the hosting starts to enumerate the target value that suits my conditions. Thus, I automatically calculate the selling price of all products, and I can have several thousand of them. The script works by itself, it starts by pressing a button, and also updates all the data every night according to a schedule. After that, the balances and prices are sent to the marketplace system. Such tables work for me on VB, Ozon and Yandex Market.

1. If the checkbox is checked, the table will transfer data to the marketplace, otherwise – no

2. The “Select values” button, which starts the search by conditions 6

3. This column is used to load the balances from the supplier.

4. If the remainder is less than 10, then 0 is loaded.

5. Not all products require recalculation of the sales price. For those products that require recalculation, indicate “yes”

6. Conditions for selecting a price. In this case, the margin should be at least 9% of revenue, but not less than 90 rubles

7. The selling price before and after the discount and the minimum price are transferred to the marketplace after successful selection of values. We also transfer the remainder

Why Google Sheets?

I decided to use my own developments, and not ready-made solutions like My warehouse or 1C, because I have a lot of specifics and my own requirements that are difficult to implement in the specified systems. But now, I can constantly refine the tables as I want, without looking back at the capabilities of the platform. Plus, there is nothing extra that I do not use. In addition, Google Sheets are free))

How many people are on my team?

I have 3 people working with me on a permanent basis:

• marketplace manager. This employee processes orders from the supplier, posts new products, processes returns of products not purchased by customers back to the supplier. Plus, there are many different small tasks related to the work of stores

• programmer. Works on setting up my tables

• financial consultant. At some point I realized that I calculate the project finances the way I see it myself. But the problem is that I have no competence in this area and because of this there is constant uncertainty about the correctness of my calculations, so I decided to shift this task to a specialist in this field.

I did not include packers in this list because this is a fulfillment company – a company that specializes in shipping goods to marketplace sorting centers. That is, I outsource packaging and shipping.

My income and expenses

Here is a table that we make monthly and quarterly. It shows the figures for one of my stores. As you can see, Yandex did very well in Q1. Wildberries was blocked for me in March for 3 months, so you can see the decline by the end of the quarter. Everything is clear in the expenses, I spent a lot on automation in January, then February and March I did not do any settings for this store

Pros and cons of the business model

Pros:

• Relatively cheap entry. If you start working without automation and employees, updating balances and prices manually, then the costs will only be for the purchase of goods from the supplier, fulfillment services. At the very beginning, I invested about 80 thousand rubles per month in the purchase of goods and paid about 20 thousand for fulfillment services. In total, about 100 thousand rubles were spent on work in the first month. I did not take into account taxes and illiquid returns, but I think the order of expenses for the launch is clear

• No need to invest money in goods. For me, this is a big plus, since I have access to a large number of goods without buying them for my warehouse, therefore, I do not freeze money that may be needed when investing in the project.

• I can work remotely. All my work is done from home, it suits me

• Easy to scale. If you set up the work and automation correctly, you can work in several cities at the same time.

Cons:

• It is hard to work if you control the balances and prices manually. There will be many errors, you will have to cancel a lot or look for other solutions. Sometimes I update some stores manually when for some reason our automation is disabled. And at this time my worst mistakes happen. For example, once when I manually entered prices through a file, the information on coffee machines was posted incorrectly, which should have cost 8,000 rubles, but were posted for 800 rubles. In 4 hours, more than 3,000 orders for them came in, which had to be canceled. For this, I paid a fine of 250 thousand. And this is not an isolated case, this happened before and after, but not on such a scale.

• Marketing is difficult. You always have to look for advertising tools within the marketplace system that allow you to work with many products at once, and there are not so many of them.

• The supplier has a minimum shipment amount, which is not always met. It is clear that no one will bring 1 unit of cheap goods to my warehouse, there is a minimum purchase amount. And if it is not met, you have to look for solutions, or agree to postpone the shipment, which entails a fine and a decrease in my rating as a seller.

• Rare accruals from marketplaces. We sell a product today, and the money for it comes to us in 1-2 weeks, this is the difficulty, if there is no deferred payment from the supplier

Plans

• Search for new suppliers. I always try to diversify everything possible in business.

• Opening of a new city. I plan to start working with Yekaterinburg

• Lots of ideas for improving and optimizing automation. If I can implement all of this as I want, then I can greatly simplify my work.

• Expanding to other platforms, for example, Avito. But there are many nuances there, so for now I think

Important links:

Thank you for reading to the end, I hope that I described my business model in as much detail as possible and this information will help someone in some way. Write comments, I will answer all questions)) I will be very glad to receive your pluses.

Subscribe to Telegram podcast Cat, if not meis a channel with a podcast about business and the people who do it. I interview the heads of small projects, they talk about their path and how they do their work in reality, without the template successful success