Chapter 10. Manufactured Product Store

In This Chapter

• What marketing techniques worked for Pacific Pillows and why

• How adding simple features can increase sales

• How outsourcing your task can save you money

• How to use eBay in conjunction with the Yahoo! store to increase orders

In the previous chapter, we deconstructed a digital product store. But the majority of online stores sell manufactured goodsphysical products produced by either another company or you that must be shipped or picked up by customers.

In this chapter, we deconstruct Pacific Pillows (www.pacificpillows.com), a manufactured product store. Before starting Pacific Pillows (see Figure 10.1), owners Craig and Abby Clark owned DealCat.com, selling electronic goods such as digital cameras and computers. While selling electronics, Dealcat.com decided to stock a few hotel pillows. Sales of the pillows started to increase: Pacific Pillows was born and proved to be a much more successful business. Owners Craig and Abbey later shut down the online electronics store and focused on their new niche selling pillows and bedding that luxury hotels use.

Figure 10.1. Pacific Pillows sells pillows and beddings used by luxury hotels.

One of the great benefits about selling online is that you can inexpensively test whether there is a market for your product. By using such methods as pay-per-click advertising, you can get immediate exposure of your product and online store. Like Pacific Pillows, a lot of companies have also changed their product line. What they thought was the hottest thing on the market did not perform as expected; the product that was added as a filler unexpectedly made the most amount of money for the store. Because most of your store infrastructure is already in place, changing products is as easy as adding new products.