Last week Saturday we spent the day having a meeting planning the way forward looking at various business options. The good part is the word options as we can then select which business model suits our needs. Many things have changed which I cannot divulge right now but the changes are all good and at some point knew this would happen. This was Plan B and has happened far sooner than anticipated. Many retailers/clients are changing their business models which is leaning more heavily to online sales for certain items and this is going to impact our business long term in a good way.
Moving into the unknown and possibly out of your comfort zones is scary, but the only way to challenge yourself is to face new challenges head on. I kind of like it because it is a sink or swim scenario so you just make it work because you have to. You only know what you are capable of doing when you try and all this is doing is adding to the work load and not much else.
Currently we are solely a pick and pack warehouse distributing business which is fine as this is a specialist industry supplying to the various online sales platforms. The problem is each sales platform has different requirements and knowing what you can and cannot do is a mind bender and this is only learned through experience over time.
There are many pitfalls which we encountered in our first year and now know how to get around the seasonal periods which are challenges on their own. These will end up with financial penalties and frozen accounts and a huge learning curve required.
We have been offered the ability to add new clients and have businesses looking at joining our pick and pack warehouse. Our prices are more than competitive and why it is very appealing for the companies as I am sure they have already been quoted and been put off, but we offer them some hope. This is the obvious route to expand the business as we are already visiting these online sales platform distribution centers multiple times weekly.
The other alternatives are actually more appealing to myself as we have been offered lines of ourselves to purchase and sell online so we would be pick and packing our own products. The lines we have selected are low return items and we can dominate these particular category sectors with a vast range that is currently not available.
This is where we would like to explore the future growth and can combine all the opportunities if there is space. Maybe adding two more clients and then doing our own products is the best option for now and growing it slowly over the next 6 months.
We were offered the logistics side of the business and I am not a fan of getting into the trucking side of things. Who knows this may grow organically in that direction, but it is far more complicated and the risks are far higher.
The good thing is having our own lines is that we could live abroad and still control things as everything is done online today. The family and I do not see the long term future here in SA and why setting this up properly so it could function with trusted staff is the end goal.
As a business we have come along way in a very short time and there is still so much more learning that needs to be done and taking 1 week at a time is the only option. Baby steps making sure everything is right so the entire business can expand seamlessly.
