Turnkey Boutique Website FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions About Turnkey Boutique Websites from Modern Sugar
What is a turnkey boutique?
A turnkey boutique is the easiest and most cost effective way to start an online business. The turnkey boutiques offered by Modern Sugar include a custom website designed specifically for the category of products the site will carry. Careful consideration has been given to the quality and selection of products for the boutique, all from reputable drop ship suppliers, and 350 products are loaded on the site and available for sale as soon as you purchase the boutique. In addition, Modern Sugar’s turnkey boutiques include a blog template, Twitter and Facebook accounts and backgrounds, business card design, newsletter design and set up, and most important all turnkey boutiques include unlimited email support. That adds up to a complete turnkey package that gets your boutique up and running as soon as you purchase the boutique.
Is a turnkey boutique better than building my own boutique from scratch?
Modern Sugar offers some excellent custom design packages as well as professional and affordable premade templates, both of which are great options for setting up a boutique on your own. The benefits of our turnkey boutiques is the package pricing, all those individual components priced separately would be considerably more than the package price, the ease of set up, just about everything has already been done, and the speed with which you can have your boutique up and running.
Do I have to buy inventory for my turnkey boutique?
All of our turnkey boutiques are set up with products from reputable, pre-screened drop ship suppliers. You do not have to purchase any inventory up front for your boutique unless you want to.
What is drop shipping?
In a nutshell, drop shipping is when a retailer offers a supplier’s products for sale on their website, and when a customer purchases a product the retailer places the order with the supplier and the supplier ships the sold products directly to the customer.
Benefits for a retailer:
- No inventory to stock
- Ability to offer a wider selection of products without upfront costs
- Photos, suggested pricing, and often descriptions are provided by the supplier
- Flexibility in retail pricing, though a minimum retail price is normally set
- Test products prior to ordering wholesale quantities
- Frees up capital to invest in marketing which is essential
- No long term commitments to manufacturers or suppliers
- Many suppliers and manufacturers will provide tracking numbers for shipments
- Most suppliers will include your packing list (if supplied) or they will ship without any information identifying the order as having come from the supplier and not your boutique
Potential Cons for a retailer:
- Drop ship discounts are normally lower than wholesale although there are exceptions (keep in mind there is less financial risk and less work involved on the retailer’s end)
- Limited control over order fulfillment (select quality suppliers and this won’t be an issue)
What discounts can I expect if I use drop shipping?
Discounts vary between suppliers, but most fall between 25% and 50% with 30% being an average discount. Shipping charges are additional and some suppliers charge a nominal drop ship fee per order.
Can I make money using drop ship suppliers?
Yes, you can definitely make money using drop ship suppliers but you’ll need to make sure your pricing and shipping costs are in line with your competition and your supplier’s charges. If you offer free shipping and your supplier charges for shipping you could see your discounts (profit) disappear once the supplier adds the shipping cost to your order. Most suppliers will allow you to charge a higher price (though not a lower one); however you don’t want to overcharge and risk losing customers to your competitors.
How is shipping and handling charged?
Vendors shipping charges vary from vendor to vendor, some do not charge shipping, some charge a flat rate and some have a more traditional tiered rate depending on number of items ordered or cost of order. We recommend setting your shipping as a tiered rate (all Turnkey sites come with shipping already set at the levels we recommend) that is slightly higher than your shipping rates to take into consideration 1) the variation in shipping from the different vendors and 2) the chance that you will receive an order that has items from multiple vendors.
Occasionally you will find that a vendor’s shipping price is too high to be covered by your store shipping fees. In these cases, which are typically rare, you would bump up the items from that vendor slightly to cover the high shipping and handling charges.
How are returns handled?
Return policies vary by supplier so it is important to review each supplier’s terms and conditions to ensure you are complying with their policies. Most suppliers offer returns, but custom items are almost always final sales. The most important thing to remember is that the customer is your customer and communication will be between you and the customer not the customer and the supplier. Do what you can to keep your customers happy and coming back to your boutique.
How will I know if an item I have listed on my site is out of stock with my vendor?
Vendors handle stock outages differently. Some vendors send regular email updates, some post it daily on their website (but you have to look), and some only note it on the individual item so you'd need to check your active products. Not providing easy access to inventory updates isn't all that common because the vendors want to keep their customers happy and no notice of out-of-stock products isn't a good practice. We recommend that you stop by a vendors website at least once a week for stock reasons and also to see if they have any new products. Not all vendors send out updates when they get something new so if you see if before anyone else you can start promoting it fast.
Can I add products to my turnkey boutique?
Absolutely. There is no limit on the number of products you may offer for sale on your site, and the best part, it is very, very easy to add, edit, or remove products on your site.
How quickly can I expect to make sales?
There are a lot of factors that go into establishing your boutique on the internet and fortunately, Modern Sugar’s turnkey boutiques include a lot of the initial work. It’s impossible to predict exactly how long it will take to begin receiving sales, but as a general guideline you should anticipate a 1 to 2 month period of marketing before you begin to see sales. With consistent marketing you should see your sales increase steadily over the course of the year.
When you open a business on the internet you have a lot of competition and without a marketing strategy, and SEO (search engine optimization) your site can be out there on the web but no one will find you. You need to let the major search engines know your boutique is up and ready for sales and our turnkey boutiques include initial optimization, making it easier for search engines to find your site, and most turnkey boutiques have already been indexed (found) by the major search engines at the time the boutique is sold. This initial SEO is a great start for your boutique.
In addition to the initial SEO you will need to market your site by submitting it to directories, perhaps purchasing an ad (your turnkey boutique includes banners for advertising) on a blog or directory, sponsoring a giveaway on a blog, utilizing Twitter and Facebook. Basically, you’ll want to take advantage of every opportunity to promote your site. Your hard work will pay off with sales.
Modern Sugar offers affordable marketing and SEO packages that can assist you in getting traffic to your boutique whether it’s a new boutique or an established boutique looking to increase traffic.
