Revisiting a Venture with Experience after Bankruptcy

When I was 18 years old (I’m now 24) in 2002 I ran an e-commerce store importing specific collectible items from the USA and selling them to customers in the United Kingdom.

I made many mistakes during this first online venture, which were:

Buying as many varied items as I could without thinking whether or not customers would actually want them - I was under the illusion of the more variations I bought, however silly, that I would be able to sell more. This led to thousands of pounds worth of stock sitting in a storage unit that I couldn’t get rid of and had to sell in bulk for way under the price I actually paid for them.

…There was my first lesson in to market research.

There were only a few items that sold well but I ran out of these after a few weeks and business grinded to a halt - the first few weeks things flew - I had $200-700 per day in pure profit, but it didn’t last when I run out of the good stock.

Another problem was I was using Worldpay to take payments and they didn’t send me the funds from payments for 6 weeks so I hit a massive cash-flow problem that I hadn’t planned or made provisions for, as I wasn’t able to re-stock with the items that customers actually wanted.

…There was my lesson in planning finances and the importance of cash-flow.

Due to this error of buying items that simply wouldn’t sell and not being able to afford to re-stock with the hot sellers, it meant I ended up going in to a lot of debt as I was also having to pay $900/month in rent for the office and storage (12 month contract) for all the many swords - also because I carried on living as normal and neglected the problem, which ultimately led to my bankruptcy, which I was dis-charged from last year in 2006.

…There were too many lessons to mention! *groan*

Now that I’m debt free, I’m going to start-up a similar business selling the same items but approaching the whole venture from an angle of experience.

This time around:

• Since I’m debt-free now, I will not borrow or lend any money for the venture from any source whatsoever.
• I will not purchase expensive $1,000 e-commerce software or sign-up to an expensive $900 payment processor that only pays 6 weeks after the transaction, instead I will use PayPal. Money saved and great for cash-flow.
• Instead of buying hundreds of items worth $16,000 in wholesale price including ridiculous items I now know will not sell, I will buy a handful of the items for $100 that I know sell well (because I sold them well in the first few weeks before) through PPC marketing with a high conversion.
• There is also the fact I am now far more experienced in online marketing. Back then, I had no idea about sales copy, building trust, creating value, call to actions and utilizing the back-end and previous customers to generate more business.

You may think I’m insane re-starting up a business that led me to bankruptcy, but the difference is, it’s only costing me $150 at most to test the waters 4 years later in the same industry.. and I won’t be making any of the same mistakes again.

I don’t believe failed business ventures are like ex-girlfriends, and I believe by going about it the right way, by re-visiting this particular one there’s a chance for success that I can’t let slip simply because of some very silly mistakes I made previously.

Here’s a quote I plucked off Google on mistakes which made me laugh…

“Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from” - Al Franken

5 Comments

1. Good luck mate! Sure this one will pay off well for ya.

   Comment by pilkster — April 9, 2007 @ 9:51 pm

2. […] As previously mentioned in my blog this was a venture that led to my bankruptcy. I imported select collectible items from the USA in to the UK and sold them using Google Adwords, which worked briefly until the errors I made in buying a lot of useless stock caught up with me and I headed right in to debt. I’m re-starting this venture with more smarts this time 5 years on - time will tell if it becomes another turd welded on my wall of failed projects. […]

   Pingback by How Many Turds Have You Thrown at the Money Wall? - GADOOD.com — April 15, 2007 @ 1:51 am

3. nice site, very informative, well designed, easy to use … what can i say ? i love it…

   Comment by michigan mortgage — July 9, 2007 @ 8:29 pm

4. A story of a survivor! Thanks for sharing this with us.

   Comment by David Wilding — November 11, 2007 @ 2:17 pm

5. Good luck with this one, I am sure you can make it. As they say you will always learn from you mistakes.

   Comment by Karl — November 12, 2007 @ 9:43 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.