Tough Business..

I just started to do an online/word of mouth business recently just to humour myself (since project baby is not going too well, I'd might as well find some kind of activity to distract myself). I found a great indie company based in the US producing vegan and all natural lip balms and lip colours. The products are all made of natural ingredients and they 85% of them are organic. These lip products are moisturizing and they are also animal cruelty free.

So I ventured into this business head on without thinking too much about it. Heck! I didn't even get much profit out of it either. It is just a hobby for me to do since I do like these products and wear them, so I thought, why not share them with whoever's interested? To promote my small non quite profitable business, I engaged some of my dear friends to spread the word about them. I do have good faith in my friends that they are helping me out of the goodness of their hearts.

I guess trying to sell an idea and the actual product itself is kind of difficult (especially when you are a shy person). But in my heart, I feel that a wonderful product will sell itself one day. But not at the moment though. So, for the first week of trying to sell, I encountered the answer to why online sellers DO NOT accept nor entertain requests for exchange. The reason being is that a customer may want to change a product she/he had bought because she/he didn't like it or it didn't meet up to her/his expectations. BUT, in giving in to requests to exchange bought products, the seller may received an opened/used product in return.

For example, a seller just sold a tube of lipstick in a certain shade to a customer via her good friend. The lipstick is unopened and safely sealed. Suddenly, the customer who bought the lipstick decided that she didn't like the shade she had chosen and requested for an exchange of another shade more to her liking. The seller asked whether the tube of the original order had been opened or not? The customer said no, it hasn't been opened. So the seller, not wanting to disappoint her customer agreed. The exchange took place. The seller just put the returned tube aside to attend to other matters. Later on when she wanted to put back the returned and supposedly unopened tube inside her stock carton, she found that the tube indeed had been opened because the seal is no longer intact!

Now the seller is left with the dilema of telling her good friend to tell his friend who bought the product that the safety seal on the dang thing is broken and cannot be sold anymore to any other customers. So, in the end after a loooong battle with herself, she decided to tell her friend about the whole fiasco and hoped that her friend could understand her dilema. What about the opened lip color? Well, since it had been opened, it can no longer be sold to anyone anymore. So it has become a loss to the seller. Tough business.. I sooo pity her.

So there.. I learned the lesson of why "Goods sold are not returnable!" is an important policy for online/small time business owners especially when the products they are selling involves cosmetic, innerwear, and food (plus other stuff I can't think of at the moment).

Hmm.. let's see what I can get my hands on next to sell in a small scale..