7 tips to start
selling online
on Amazon
According to Jean-Philippe Fortin Cantin, Marketing Director at Elite Tools, the best way to find out if your business should launch a transactional website is to open an account on Amazon.
This article was revised and updated in November 2018!
The family business that Jean-Philippe works for initially specialized in saw sharpening. After opening a sales counter, the owner expanded the store and eventually started selling online. That’s when his business exploded! Right now, e-commerce accounts for more than half of Elite Tools sales.
The following 7 tips were inspired by this success story which began on Amazon. They are drawn from our discussion with marketing director Jean-Philippe Fortin Cantin.
If your goal is to test buyer receptivity on the Web, you don’t need to start by opening a paying account. With a free account, you cannot sell more than 20 items a month, which is enough decide which type of account is best. However, expect to pay a fee of $1.49 per item sold.
TIP
If your business is Canadian, open your account on Amazon.ca and not Amazon.com
As a general rule, products that sell well in your store should also sell well on the Web. Start by creating a file for the ten products that sell the best in your brick and mortar store.
Do your products have a bar code? Amazon gives you the possibility to enter it when you create your product file. Amazon has a huge database that contains information sent directly by suppliers. In a single click, you can recover a description of your product and its photo, of which Amazon owns the rights.
The faster you send a product that was ordered, the more your referencing on Amazon will improve, hence the interest in being alert. At Elite Tools, every morning the person in charge of invoicing looks at the previous day’s sales on the Web, creates invoices in Acomba, and manually adjusts the inventory in Amazon.
DID YOU KNOW?
The inventory of an online store created with Acomba e-commerce is synchronized in real time with your accounting management inventory
Among the 10 products selected in step 2, you will quickly see which ones are successful and which ones consumers will ignore. For example, bigger products may not be as popular on the Web as in store, while other products become more popular. Remove products that sell less and replace them with types of products that sell better, until you find the ones that sell best on the Web.
To remain competitive on Amazon, you may have to reduce the usual profit margin on some of your products. However, keep in mind that if one of your products sells particularly well on the Web, you will buy a larger quantity and you could benefit from a lower unit price from your supplier, which will increase your in-store profit margin.
TIP
As soon as you sell more than 20 items per month, the Amazon professional account becomes more economically advantageous than the free Amazon account.
The store that Jean-Philippe Fortin Cantin works for, Elite Tools, is in the city of Lévis, which does not prevent it from selling in the United States by adding an Amazon.com account to its Amazon.ca account.
But multi-channel sales are not limited to Amazon. For example, you could register on other platforms, such as E-bay.com, Shop.ca or Newegg.ca, a new platform that focuses on promotions. This is the choice that Elite Tools made in addition to selling its products on its own transactional website.
According to Mr. Fortin Cantin, there is no minimum volume to start selling on the Web, and there is practically no risk in testing the Web potential of a store on Amazon. All an entrepreneur needs is willingness, time and courage, three investments that generally provide a strong return, from both a financial and a personal standpoint.
Ready to talk with an e-commerce specialist about implementing your web store? Give us a call and let's talk about your project.
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With the participation of
Jean-Philippe Fortin Cantin
directeur marketing de l’entreprise Elite Outils
www.elitetools.ca/en