The real secret to making money as a retail business is to sell products. While that might sound like a joke, there is a lot of truth and nuance in that statement. Being able to fill demands in the market, particularly when your expenses are low in the case of an online store or a dropshipping business, is a really great way to increase profits. Because you have the freedom to be dynamic and to shift your product offerings and focus quicker than your brick and mortar competitors, paying attention to sales trends and popular products is a great idea to boost your income.
Here are some popular products that you can sell online right now as an existing or new online store.
Personal Protective Equipment
Face masks, both the disposable medical type and the cloth type, latex gloves, face shields, hand sanitizer and any number of other products related to personal protective equipment have seen a massive surge in demand during this year and the demand remains high. Stocking some of these products and marketing them correctly on your existing ecommerce website can supplement your normal sales figures nicely, particularly if you already sell a variety of items or products from different categories.
Jigsaw Puzzles and Board Games
Jigsaw puzzles and board games have always been a popular hobby and way to pass time at home on idle days when the weather hasn’t been great. Evenings with friends have even revolved around these games, with a board game night being a popular social occasion. Given this, and that we’re all spending more time at home than ever before, any kind of entertainment that is affordable and provides hours of entertainment will be more popular than ever before. You can expand this category or create an online store to include home arts and crafts and anything that can provide entertainment or be used for new hobbies for those homebound days – as far out as gardening equipment or homebrew beer supplies.
Home Exercise Equipment
Gyms across the globe have been closed for a while, and while some are starting to re-open, more people are opting to take their exercise routine and move it into the home. This means that there has been a surge in the sale of at-home fitness equipment and associated products. These range from home gyms and weight sets to yoga mats and fitness balls. There has been an uptick in the sale of things like bicycles too, so depending on how big you want to go and your knowledge on how to create an online store, there is a niche for every fitness and exercise market you can think of.
Kitchen Appliances
Another great idea to load up your ecommerce website builder is kitchenware. We’re flexing our home cooking and baking skills a lot more these days too, so selling home kitchen appliances and accessories including baking trays and tins, molds and cutters and any number of other home kitchenware and appliances can turn good profits. Consider expanding this into the realm of things that have normally been a convenience purchase that we’re now opting to make at home, either to save money or because the stores that sell them are less accessible due to our current stay at home orders. These are things like coffee machines and accessories like travel mugs and similar.
Warm Blankets and Winter Accessories
The good long days of summer are behind us as we head into the fall now, so naturally the sale of everything related to keeping warm is on the rise. This covers everything from warm, fluffy blankets and hot water bottles or electric blankets to slippers and thermals. You could expand this to appliances like space heaters or get very creative and think outside of the box and look into providing installation of heated towel racks and similar home devices.
Home Office Equipment
We’re working from home wherever possible right now, so the increase of sales in equipment we need in our home office is on the rise quicker than ever before. That means everything from furniture like desks and chairs all the way down to the humble stapler and stationery is going to be trending. If you’re a technology company, increase your marketing on Wi-Fi devices and backup hard drives because we’re going to need these devices to work effectively at home too. Don’t forget webcams and headsets for video conferencing too!
Build the Right E-Commerce Store
Design is all-important in e-commerce. Customers expect a slick, well designed site. The best place to start if you are a newbie is to take advantage of a website builder, rather than taking on the task of designing everything yourself. There are several to choose from, such as Wix’s ecommerce website builder or WordPress’s woo-commerce plugin. Look for one with a drag & drop interface and excellent technical support.
Once you have built your online store, you can then launch your chosen products and start marketing them to your customer base. Be sure to research where your customers are (for instance, do you need to target them on Facebook or Instagram) and hopefully, you’ll have the right visitors flying in!
There’s a market and a product line for every online business to sell and be successful. Although adapting your product lines or providing one off promotions of products you might not normally sell might sound like a strange idea, it could be a lucrative one. During the COVID pandemic, we saw businesses that would normally sell only IT equipment or car parts, branch out into PPE and other in demand products with good successes.
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