Furniture ecommerce business feedback

[Wantinglegaladvice]

Furniture ecommerce business - will it work?

I currently own an agency but have an idea that is to build an ecommerce business focused on homeware and furniture.

I’ve been speaking to a few locally (UK based) suppliers who are willing to work with me on a dropshipping model. The benefit for the customer being fast and often next day shipping times.

We will then rebrand the products with our own name, description and photography and attempt to build a brand making the products appear exclusive. We have access to 2000 products from homewares to furniture so our range can be quite vast, and many of which are high end with larger markups.

Would this work is is the niche too saturated?

 

[Mark T Jones]

Pretty much any business model can work.

And absolutely any business can fail

The difference lies in the execution - in this case starting with market research and finely identifying your customer

 

[Free Stuff For Startups]

It is always an idea to view your business from the other end of the telescope. What is the buyer's journey ? Where do they look for their own research and what " trust" elements do you need to satisfy before they will commit to a purchase. I mentor an Oriental Carpet dealer, so not dissimilar to your proposal. He has found success with eBay to identify active shoppers for his products, backed up with a very professional web site and ultimately served by the opportunity to visit a retail outlet. Because the journey starts online, he can have a relatively cheap shop / warehouse in order to close the deal in person.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

As a business model it seems to have worked well for these guys: https://www.made.com/

I think they were advertising along the London Underground for a while, which suggests a significant marketing budget was required.

 

[Washington]

As a business model it seems to have worked well for these guys: www.made.com

I think they were advertising along the London Underground for a while, which suggests a significant marketing budget was required.

'Made.com' is on a totally different journey, it is around 10 years old and has rarely made a profit as it constantly reinvests on growth and marketing. From a quick look online it employs 650 people and in 2020 had a turnover of £247m. It runs in several European companies and like many furniture businesses, it has seen major growth since Covid as people don't go on holiday and invest in their homes. Clearly, that does not mean a start-up cannot do better but if the original poster is discussing dropshipping or going upmarket, these are not really that comparable

 

[Washington]

Furniture ecommerce business - will it work?

I currently own an agency but have an idea that is to build an ecommerce business focused on homeware and furniture.

I’ve been speaking to a few locally (UK based) suppliers who are willing to work with me on a dropshipping model. The benefit for the customer being fast and often next day shipping times.

We will then rebrand the products with our own name, description and photography and attempt to build a brand making the products appear exclusive. We have access to 2000 products from homewares to furniture so our range can be quite vast, and many of which are high end with larger markups.

Would this work is is the niche too saturated?

I know people working in this space, there is very little margin with the main dropshippers as there are still people working from home who can take little or no margin, and in that business you will not survive long term without some margin

It sounds like you already have a good technical base to start from, however, have you considered how you might deal with customer returns ? Can you resell it ? They are bulky items...can you store them ??