Selling brand cosmetics on Facebook ~ Next step? HELP

[piperthea]

Hi Everyone,

In need of some experienced business minds.

Okay I have recently stocked up on some brand cosmetics (makeup, skincare) I set up a business Facebook page about 1 month ago to sell the stock at lower prices than RRP.

So far so good but I would like it to be going better. Here is my stumbling block, I haven't set up a Facebook shop as I wanted to see how things went first, now I feel like I want to advertise more etc but I would like the buying process to be simpler for customers, so do I :-

~Set up a facebook shop (free) see how it goes first, or
~Take the plunge and smallish expense of an ecommerce site that I can link to both my facebook & instagram pages?

Thanks in advance.

Steph

 

[Mr D]

Why not do both?
Plus perhaps other sites too.

Be warned, selling below RRP can end up costing you considerable profits.

 

[piperthea]

Why not do both?
Plus perhaps other sites too.

Be warned, selling below RRP can end up costing you considerable profits.

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate the feedback and advice.

I have been reading up on the pros and cons of each and it sounds like the e-commerce shop option enables you to easily manage the whole process - inventory, stock, orders, dispatch a lot easier than the Facebook shop where it is all manual. As I am going to be doing this alongside my part time job (and 2 young children) I thought that it may get a bit too time consuming with doing both and I’ve got to way up time with the profit scenario also.

I am getting the cosmetics in bulk from a wholsaler so I am ensuring I make a profit on each item (at least 60%) ? I decided to sell lower than rrp (shop prices) due to the competition online already offering low prices and also I am passionate about things being affordable.

I am open to any constructive criticism and suggestions as I am new to this and need to learn but I am determined to make it work.


Thanks again, I am open to anymore feedback

 

[AndyMuir9]

Have you considered just selling on Ebay or is there too much competition on there, with the products you sell?

 

[piperthea]

Have you considered just selling on Ebay or is there too much competition on there, with the products you sell?

Thanks for your time.

I did look into this as I’ve sold on eBay personally a lot over the years but yes quite a bit of competition offering similar prices but with free postage so I wouldn’t be making much of a profit If I had to compete with lowering my price plus free postage. Plus then selling fees from eBay and paypal.

 

[Mr D]

Thanks for your time.

I did look into this as I’ve sold on eBay personally a lot over the years but yes quite a bit of competition offering similar prices but with free postage so I wouldn’t be making much of a profit If I had to compete with lowering my price plus free postage. Plus then selling fees from eBay and paypal.

Fees? As compared to the amount you'll be spending to market the site elsewhere?

You can set a site up. Does not mean people will be aware of it.

You can spend many hours and a lot of money telling people about the site. Or go where people already shop.
The smart ones appear to do both - funding one from the other.

No one is suggesting you have to copy other sellers. Price how you feel you need to in order to make money, Not what some competitor who is buying a hundred times your total stock every month is pricing at.

 

[ecommerce84]

Does Facebook operate shops in this way?

The last time I looked they did in the USA but in the UK you could add products that then redirected to your own platform when someone clicked ‘Buy’.

 

[piperthea]

Fees? As compared to the amount you'll be spending to market the site elsewhere?

You can set a site up. Does not mean people will be aware of it.

You can spend many hours and a lot of money telling people about the site. Or go where people already shop.
The smart ones appear to do both - funding one from the other.

No one is suggesting you have to copy other sellers. Price how you feel you need to in order to make money, Not what some competitor who is buying a hundred times your total stock every month is pricing at.

Very true thanks for highlighting that, this is why i wanted to discuss on here as I don’t know anyone that has successfully built a business let alone an online business.

I will do some more research on setting up an eBay shop, great advice for using one to fund the other.

With the pricing I suppose I was thinking why would anyone buy my products if the seller next to me on the list is offering the same item for cheaper with free postage ?

 

[Mr D]

I've met a few who have built online businesses that are still successful.
Have had one myself for a while before I crashed it.
Now I have another that is doing almost too well - but with the kind of problems we want to have! Too many orders, not enough time on a Saturday...

Don't focus on the buyers who will go for the cheapest items. You will find other sellers who also want to be the cheapest and in the end it means selling at low or zero profit. Price wars benefit buyers, not sellers.

My current sales are - in last 5 days - what we projected as selling for June for the entire month at the start of the year. And I'm the most expensive seller on ebay for most of my top 10 best selling items.
The cheapest seller of each of those items may be outselling me 5 or 10 to 1. He's also doing more work for the same profit, considerably more work.
Which would you prefer? Making a certain profit with one sale to pack and send or 10 sales to pack and send?

There is a large chunk of the population who will always buy the cheapest. Compete for their money if you want, however you will be competing with far bigger outfits and with sellers who have much lower per unit costs than you.
Or choose a different demographic and compete on every aspect of selling except price.

Have a look on multiple 3rd party sites. See how the products that sell well are presented. See what the feedback of the sellers suggests. Figure out what they are doing right.

Look offline (as of Monday). Look at what the shops are selling. Look at how they present the goods you are carrying or plan to carry. Figure out how to do similar online.

Your product page is your sole sales rep for that product, it has maybe a couple of seconds to grab the buyer or its gone, perhaps never to be looked at by that buyer again.
Abra abra cadabra, I want to reach out and grab ya - is what the page should be singing to the customer.

A Lot of sellers focus just on price. Can end up too cheap to be able to expand, to be able to afford to market, to be able to buy in bulk. And working 10 times harder for the same profit as someone else who isn't focused on price!

 

[piperthea]

Does Facebook operate shops in this way?

The last time I looked they did in the USA but in the UK you could add products that then redirected to your own platform when someone clicked ‘Buy’.

Yes, However I believe it was only launched from last month in the uk?

 

[ExoPaul]

Is Facebook Shops available? I believed I read it was being rolled out slowly over the course of 2020.
If it is available I would definitely go that route as Facebook own Instagram and Whatsapp as well as a ready-made audience of, well, billions I guess, across both platforms.
Facebook/Instagram ads are hit and miss, some people say they make 3:1 return from advertising, others say that they get no interest, it could be the type of advert or target as to why they struggle though, there are so many other factors.

I would also do research into Pinterest. Last time I looked (a few months ago now admittedly), 75% of users were female, and I used to run a blog that had funny photos and the viralness on there was incredible. For one like of a post on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, I was getting 200 on Pinterest. It is the perfect market for a makeup brand and if you sign up a business account with them you get a lot of great tools to advertise your brand and products and can link straight to the product for purchase, so they can buy from your post. The sharing of stuff on there is ridiculous or at least it was last year, so for you I would definitely make the effort on there, and hit up a few makeup audiences.

Most ecommerce sites, whether it is Shopify (probably the best and who helped develop Facebook Shops) or Squarespace or whatever, are generally about £20/month so you would need to factor that in to your costings.

As for the price. I would say sell for as high as you can go without ripping anyone off. I know people want a bargain but there are people, like me, that never go for the absolute cheapest unless its a well known retailer. In fact when I look for something I want, I tend to go for the second cheapest, or even more expensive if the bottom two cheapest are small time retailers with no really strong ratings. If you are competing against other ebay sellers or amateur sellers rather than the big boys (superdrug, boots, etc) then the chances are they have no real reputation outside their small regular buyers and are fighting for dominance, and are doing it on price discounting. In that case you need to work on professionalism to beat them. Build up trust, get rave reviews, offer excellent customer service, look professional rather than cheap, ask suppliers if they have sample products or reduced clearance stock you can get dirt cheap and throw it in the delivery box as a sample treat. Everyone loves a free thing and you can raise your prices a few pence to accommodate it, as people will notice that they got a nice business card and a free sample in the box along with the product, than they will over the cost of the product is 99p more than "Bobs Cheapo Lipsticks!"

If you would like to really grow it, you could consider whether to offer an affiliation system where you get others to do the marketing for you. Shopify may offer this (not sure, check) but there are ways you can get something where you can offer a 5% share of the profits for each sale that is done through an affiliate link belonging to that affiliate. Again, 5% on the asking price is not too difficult to increase or soak up out of your own profit if you have someone else doing all the marketing work for their commission, especially if you contact a few makeup vlogger/influencers and ask if they would like a free sample and an affiliate account to earn 5% on any sales through their social network platforms.

Hope some of that may give you food for thought, but I am happy for you to message me directly for any other advice I might be able to offer.

 

[piperthea]

I've met a few who have built online businesses that are still successful.
Have had one myself for a while before I crashed it.
Now I have another that is doing almost too well - but with the kind of problems we want to have! Too many orders, not enough time on a Saturday...

Don't focus on the buyers who will go for the cheapest items. You will find other sellers who also want to be the cheapest and in the end it means selling at low or zero profit. Price wars benefit buyers, not sellers.

My current sales are - in last 5 days - what we projected as selling for June for the entire month at the start of the year. And I'm the most expensive seller on ebay for most of my top 10 best selling items.
The cheapest seller of each of those items may be outselling me 5 or 10 to 1. He's also doing more work for the same profit, considerably more work.
Which would you prefer? Making a certain profit with one sale to pack and send or 10 sales to pack and send?

There is a large chunk of the population who will always buy the cheapest. Compete for their money if you want, however you will be competing with far bigger outfits and with sellers who have much lower per unit costs than you.
Or choose a different demographic and compete on every aspect of selling except price.

Have a look on multiple 3rd party sites. See how the products that sell well are presented. See what the feedback of the sellers suggests. Figure out what they are doing right.

Look offline (as of Monday). Look at what the shops are selling. Look at how they present the goods you are carrying or plan to carry. Figure out how to do similar online.

Your product page is your sole sales rep for that product, it has maybe a couple of seconds to grab the buyer or its gone, perhaps never to be looked at by that buyer again.
Abra abra cadabra, I want to reach out and grab ya - is what the page should be singing to the customer.

A Lot of sellers focus just on price. Can end up too cheap to be able to expand, to be able to afford to market, to be able to buy in bulk. And working 10 times harder for the same profit as someone else who isn't focused on price!

Great, this is all really helpful thank you so much! Lots to think about, for now I am going to attempt to set up the Facebook shop on my page.

When doing some research into selling on eBay today it became apparent that you don’t HAVE to have a eBay store to sell “stock” so could I use my current eBay account to sell the products and in time if all is going well set up a eBay store? But then would I have to start from scratch with reviews etc in the store ?

I hope you don’t mind as you seem to now your stuff, could I ask a question about tax? As I have always been employed I did a bit of reading up, the last thing I wanted was to be taking in money that I was supposed to be paying tax on. Government website was very vague, so Becoming self-employed and it being a second income is there a bracket to reach or a timescale before you need to let the tax people know?
Thanks again
Steph

 

[piperthea]

Is Facebook Shops available? I believed I read it was being rolled out slowly over the course of 2020.
If it is available I would definitely go that route as Facebook own Instagram and Whatsapp as well as a ready-made audience of, well, billions I guess, across both platforms.
Facebook/Instagram ads are hit and miss, some people say they make 3:1 return from advertising, others say that they get no interest, it could be the type of advert or target as to why they struggle though, there are so many other factors.

I would also do research into Pinterest. Last time I looked (a few months ago now admittedly), 75% of users were female, and I used to run a blog that had funny photos and the viralness on there was incredible. For one like of a post on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, I was getting 200 on Pinterest. It is the perfect market for a makeup brand and if you sign up a business account with them you get a lot of great tools to advertise your brand and products and can link straight to the product for purchase, so they can buy from your post. The sharing of stuff on there is ridiculous or at least it was last year, so for you I would definitely make the effort on there, and hit up a few makeup audiences.

Most ecommerce sites, whether it is Shopify (probably the best and who helped develop Facebook Shops) or Squarespace or whatever, are generally about £20/month so you would need to factor that in to your costings.

As for the price. I would say sell for as high as you can go without ripping anyone off. I know people want a bargain but there are people, like me, that never go for the absolute cheapest unless its a well known retailer. In fact when I look for something I want, I tend to go for the second cheapest, or even more expensive if the bottom two cheapest are small time retailers with no really strong ratings. If you are competing against other ebay sellers or amateur sellers rather than the big boys (superdrug, boots, etc) then the chances are they have no real reputation outside their small regular buyers and are fighting for dominance, and are doing it on price discounting. In that case you need to work on professionalism to beat them. Build up trust, get rave reviews, offer excellent customer service, look professional rather than cheap, ask suppliers if they have sample products or reduced clearance stock you can get dirt cheap and throw it in the delivery box as a sample treat. Everyone loves a free thing and you can raise your prices a few pence to accommodate it, as people will notice that they got a nice business card and a free sample in the box along with the product, than they will over the cost of the product is 99p more than "Bobs Cheapo Lipsticks!"

If you would like to really grow it, you could consider whether to offer an affiliation system where you get others to do the marketing for you. Shopify may offer this (not sure, check) but there are ways you can get something where you can offer a 5% share of the profits for each sale that is done through an affiliate link belonging to that affiliate. Again, 5% on the asking price is not too difficult to increase or soak up out of your own profit if you have someone else doing all the marketing work for their commission, especially if you contact a few makeup vlogger/influencers and ask if they would like a free sample and an affiliate account to earn 5% on any sales through their social network platforms.

Hope some of that may give you food for thought, but I am happy for you to message me directly for any other advice I might be able to offer.

Is Facebook Shops available? I believed I read it was being rolled out slowly over the course of 2020.
If it is available I would definitely go that route as Facebook own Instagram and Whatsapp as well as a ready-made audience of, well, billions I guess, across both platforms.
Facebook/Instagram ads are hit and miss, some people say they make 3:1 return from advertising, others say that they get no interest, it could be the type of advert or target as to why they struggle though, there are so many other factors.

I would also do research into Pinterest. Last time I looked (a few months ago now admittedly), 75% of users were female, and I used to run a blog that had funny photos and the viralness on there was incredible. For one like of a post on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, I was getting 200 on Pinterest. It is the perfect market for a makeup brand and if you sign up a business account with them you get a lot of great tools to advertise your brand and products and can link straight to the product for purchase, so they can buy from your post. The sharing of stuff on there is ridiculous or at least it was last year, so for you I would definitely make the effort on there, and hit up a few makeup audiences.

Most ecommerce sites, whether it is Shopify (probably the best and who helped develop Facebook Shops) or Squarespace or whatever, are generally about £20/month so you would need to factor that in to your costings.

As for the price. I would say sell for as high as you can go without ripping anyone off. I know people want a bargain but there are people, like me, that never go for the absolute cheapest unless its a well known retailer. In fact when I look for something I want, I tend to go for the second cheapest, or even more expensive if the bottom two cheapest are small time retailers with no really strong ratings. If you are competing against other ebay sellers or amateur sellers rather than the big boys (superdrug, boots, etc) then the chances are they have no real reputation outside their small regular buyers and are fighting for dominance, and are doing it on price discounting. In that case you need to work on professionalism to beat them. Build up trust, get rave reviews, offer excellent customer service, look professional rather than cheap, ask suppliers if they have sample products or reduced clearance stock you can get dirt cheap and throw it in the delivery box as a sample treat. Everyone loves a free thing and you can raise your prices a few pence to accommodate it, as people will notice that they got a nice business card and a free sample in the box along with the product, than they will over the cost of the product is 99p more than "Bobs Cheapo Lipsticks!"

If you would like to really grow it, you could consider whether to offer an affiliation system where you get others to do the marketing for you. Shopify may offer this (not sure, check) but there are ways you can get something where you can offer a 5% share of the profits for each sale that is done through an affiliate link belonging to that affiliate. Again, 5% on the asking price is not too difficult to increase or soak up out of your own profit if you have someone else doing all the marketing work for their commission, especially if you contact a few makeup vlogger/influencers and ask if they would like a free sample and an affiliate account to earn 5% on any sales through their social network platforms.

Hope some of that may give you food for thought, but I am happy for you to message me directly for any other advice I might be able to offer.

I love your enthusiasm! I am always brainstorming and coming up with so many ideas everyone gets fed up of me. Glad to see someone else is the same! I will let you know about the Facebook shop as I read that from beginning of May they were allowing certain business Pages to set up a store however my page might not qualify.
Brilliant idea about Pinterest I use it already just didn’t occur to me to use it for business!
I really thought that I would have to go cheap to be able to compete and get custom but yourself and Mr D have said the same about not cutting on price so that is more to think about.

As a part of my research and plan prior to starting I asked around to friends and family to see what they appreciate or would like to receive when buying online and from all of the feedback I have stocked up on little freebies / extras (At not much cost) to hopefully like you say beat competitors on customer experience.

Thanks
Steph

 

[Mr D]

Great, this is all really helpful thank you so much! Lots to think about, for now I am going to attempt to set up the Facebook shop on my page.

When doing some research into selling on eBay today it became apparent that you don’t HAVE to have a eBay store to sell “stock” so could I use my current eBay account to sell the products and in time if all is going well set up a eBay store? But then would I have to start from scratch with reviews etc in the store ?

I hope you don’t mind as you seem to now your stuff, could I ask a question about tax? As I have always been employed I did a bit of reading up, the last thing I wanted was to be taking in money that I was supposed to be paying tax on. Government website was very vague, so Becoming self-employed and it being a second income is there a bracket to reach or a timescale before you need to let the tax people know?
Thanks again
Steph

You can earn up to a thousand pounds before having to register. Then you register with HMRC and basically income minus costs associated with business equals profit - and its profit you are taxed on.
If like many you use your personal allowance fully in your employed job then your profits would be taxed at 20% or 40% as appropriate.
However you have a little time to pay - if you registered this tax year (by April 2021) then you'd have until January 2022 to complete tax return and pay tax.

More complicated than that in reality with national insurance - whether its payable, if its payable the amount (not a lot) and so on. A tax guide book will help, major bookshops sell them or can order them.
Many people do their own self employment annual accounts - using excel or one of the many pieces of bookkeeping software around these days. Or pencil and paper.
Or can get an accountant to do the accounts (and personal tax return if you want) for a relatively low sum.

 

[Mr D]

I love your enthusiasm! I am always brainstorming and coming up with so many ideas everyone gets fed up of me. Glad to see someone else is the same! I will let you know about the Facebook shop as I read that from beginning of May they were allowing certain business Pages to set up a store however my page might not qualify.
Brilliant idea about Pinterest I use it already just didn’t occur to me to use it for business!
I really thought that I would have to go cheap to be able to compete and get custom but yourself and Mr D have said the same about not cutting on price so that is more to think about.

As a part of my research and plan prior to starting I asked around to friends and family to see what they appreciate or would like to receive when buying online and from all of the feedback I have stocked up on little freebies / extras (At not much cost) to hopefully like you say beat competitors on customer experience.

Thanks
Steph

I keep plenty of notebooks around. Always one by my desk for noting ideas in.
Surprising how many people give ideas or something that sparks an idea - without writing it down I'd lose it.

Inspiration strikes, sometimes it is a love tap sometimes it knocks you out for the count. Take advantage of the strike!