After speaking to Bal last weekend, I checked out Zlio, an online webportal that allows internet surfers to set up their own virtual store and earn commission for every sale made through their store. I thought this is an ingenious option for those who wanted to set up store selling goods, yet lack the capital to do it. The rule of the game is simple: Set up ur own personal store, sell anything that is offered by the 600 vendors on Zlio, promote your virtual store on your blog or via Google AdSense - voila! Every purchase made through your store will earn u a predetermined commission rate (say 3%-10%). You do not have to worry about deliveries coz the vendor will do that for you. Your responsibility is to promote the products far and wide.
I tried setting up my own online store, ComFoot, a virtual store selling women shoes. The difficulty I had is that the store will be tagged to the specific product source you select. To date, there are only four countries where vendors are sourced - i.e. Germany, France, USA and UK. The problem was that once you chose the country of origin, you are not allowed to change it. That means the products in your store will only be sourced from vendors in those country. Not unless if you set up another store selling goods from another country - which I did to circumvent the limitation.
The other issue I had was the products of specific brands are not complete - e.g. I may look for Birkenstock - but not all the products in Birkenstock are available. This makes product variation limited. Putting myself in the shoes of an online shopper, I'd like to buy things that could not be found in my country. Similarly, from the point of a seller, I'll like to be competitive by carrying goods that cannot be found in Singapore.
My experience setting up women's shoes store (which is now closed) was met with frustration on the number of shoes I can chose to put on my personal store and the number of brands I can chose from (we all know some brands are more comfy than others). People seldom buy shoes online unless they can find it in their country to try first. It would be price and design that lures people to purchase such items that requires size and fit. To circumvent this, people would by default go for shoe brands that have, in the past, produced shoes that suits them (i.e. cutting and design of the shoes).
If Zlio can bring on more shoe vendors with more product ranges, it would be a significant boost to popularity of Zlio as an online seller.