A Complete Guide To Start An Online Store Without Inventory

Starting an online eCommerce store is a very expensive business considering the involved products, dealers, website, shipping and so on. But don’t let it stop you from owning an online business. Here is the solution. Start an online store without inventory. 

This online eCommerce store will save you lots and lots of costs right from the website to the warehouse. How? We’ll see this in this blog. But, prior to that let’s take a look at if it is an apt choice to start an online store without inventory.

Pros and Cons

Before we fly high on dreaming of owning an online eCommerce store let’s dive deep into the aftermath to check if it is a good idea. Here are the pros and cons of starting an online eCommerce store without inventory.

Pros

• Exceptionally low ongoing expenses or the overhead costs as the operational costs of managing the inventory are eliminated 
• Elimination of inventory eliminates the storage costs like warehouse and watch-person and hence brings profit to the retailers
• Doesn’t require a permanent premise as the landing page of an efficient website is enough
• Reduces the employee hassles and awards more time to focus on the business growth
• The option of outsourcing avails the opportunity to increase the stock potential

Cons

• The flexibility in product offering is less as there is no control over stock and one might face unpredictable demand
• The brand has almost no control over the supplied products for sale and hence the uncontrollable customer experience 
• The suppliers are unreliable when it comes to the product quality assurance

Options for an online store without inventory

Taking out the inventory doesn’t just save you from costs but challenges your creative mind to take out the business from digital products or services. Let’s bring ease to your research. Here are the available online business options if you decide to drop the inventory.

Print-on-demand products

Print-on-demand products stand as the most popular business option without inventory. You can make the personalised and customised products i.e you can print the customisations on t-shirts, cushions, mugs, keychains, posters, etc. or even corporate printing. 

You can invest in a printer and a place for your print-on-demand business and take online orders. However, this also involves storing the blank pieces to print on in stock in advance. This is where the option of outsourcing enters the picture. Also, you can join hands with a famous brand for brand licensing to print their merch. This will bring even more business than customisation.

Digital Products and Services

Another option or as we can say the option of setting up the most profitable online store without inventory is selling digital products or serving digital services. This might involve educational products like recipe books, diet plans and courses or educational services like online services like tutorship, online lectures, webinars, etc. You can also opt for drop shipping services. These are the services where a business hires a company to ship their products or the seller does not keep the inventory in stock, but outsources it and gets them delivered to their consumers. 

The entertainment sector can be a great choice to invest in with music, movies, podcasts, etc. This offers the other options of licensing and membership as your online eCommerce business store without inventory. For example, the apps like Spotify, YouTube and all the trending OTT platforms are selling a variety of membership deals to get access to specific content. 

Procedure

After embodying your business idea and finalising your niche, commence your journey of setting up an online eCommerce store. Here are the ideal steps to be followed to set up an efficient online store. 

Research

Conducting market research is the first step in setting up your online business. This step avails you with the pre-assessment of your competitors during the analysis of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The research ends where you get enough data to analyse the market trends and conditions. Also, look for the high-performing keywords for your website to rank and overpower your competitors.

Audience

The ideal audience or more popularly known as the ‘Target Audience’ is to be determined as the potential buyers of your products or services. Despite a huge number of online shoppers, this will direct your off-page marketing to generate organic traffic by narrowing your efforts towards these potential buyers.

Source

Define the source of developing your digital products. Most of the time, the online stores without inventory opt for outsourcing. Outsourcing is a profitable option considering the investment of tools, labour and efforts.

Viability

Before launching your business check on the recent trends and styles in the market. This will help you introspect and evaluate the viability of your digital products. You can check the stores of your competitors and go through their reviews and responses to analyse the performance of their products in the market.

Brand Creation

Create a brand identity for your online eCommerce store by creating an eye-catching logo.  Get a trendy brand name that defines the vibe of your business. Make them as creative to present your exquisite website that is to be created next. 

Platform

We’ve seen the steps involved in starting your online eCommerce store. However, building your online store requires the creation of an exquisite website. Here we are to introduce you to the best and a free-of-cost platform to build your online business store known as WooCommerce. Woo Commerce avails you with a customised website to set up an online WooCommerce store. 

WooCommerce has various extensions known as plugins to insert various features into your site. E.g WooCommerce tax plugin, WordPress SEO plugin, etc. These extensions in the form of add-on plugins are for the enhancement of your business website. They help increase your website performance and an efficiently performing website brings more business. 

Final Words

A well-performing website is a master key to a successful online eCommerce store. And when it comes to the online store without inventory, digital efficiency becomes the must-have. Here, at WooCommerce GST, we leg you up with the enhancement to acquire that digital efficiency with our WooCommerce tax plugin called Woo GST. It is a GST invoice plugin that deals with the GST calculations of your online WooCommerce store and autogenerates the invoices. Are you interested in this little enhancement for your online eCommerce store? You can download it now for free!