18 years ago, there were only a few Indian grocery stores in Stockholm. My shop and the grocery stores had the same closing time and it was not possible for me to leave my shop to get groceries. So I searched online grocery store that does home delivery and I found one but it was in London, so I started ordering groceries from there. Goods were delivered at home at a very reasonable price. After a couple of orders, I was thinking why not I start my own online shop of SouthEast Asian (Indian, Pakistani and Bengali) spices. Because of the lack of Indian grocery stores in other cities of Sweden, people used to come to Stockholm.
IDEA
My shop had become a quick office for S.R. He often held his meetings and office work at my shop. I shared the idea of online Indian grocery with him. He liked the idea very much.
As I was selling DVDs and handicrafts, I did not have a licence to sell food items. I had to upgrade my licence to start doing this. Initially, my idea was to open an online spices shop only. But S.R offered to start this online shop in partnership. And not just spices, he suggested a complete online Indian grocery store.
I used to order Pakistani Indian sweets from London. So, to see the market demand, I ordered 80 packets of 500 grams of Ambala Ladoos from London. Ambala Lado are very tasty but also expensive. 4 times more than the price of a Lado sold in Stockholm.
I sent a message to all my customers and I was shocked. Within two hours, all the sweet boxes were sold. Not a single packet is left for my family.
Sweden's First Indian Spices Online Store
And then I formed a partnership company with S.R and developed another web shop on OSCommerce. We started this Indian Spices webshop from a small room with an inventory of 12000 SEK and within a few months we had to get a warehouse. Apart from Stockholm, we started getting orders from all over the country. It was Sweden's first Southeast Asian online grocery shop www.indiskkryddor.se . In addition to just selling products, we translated each spice into Swedish and started writing blogs about it. Translated Recipes into Swedish. Make recipe videos in Swedish on YouTube channel. And very quickly we also started getting orders from hotels and restaurants.
We have never done paid marketing on this webshop of Indian spices. However, on a content basis and with no competition, we were doing very well.
LEARNING
Expiry dates are a problem for food items. Which we didn't notice and when some orders started returning we checked the entire warehouse. There were some spices which had very low shelf life and were expiring while being kept in stock.
I then construct a strategy after learning how to conduct e-commerce analysis and product research, which includes e-commerce tracking data such as bounce and exit rates, average order value, checkout flow, and conversion rates.
DROPSHIPPING OFFER
Meanwhile, the owner of the city's oldest grocery store in the center of Stockholm approached us. They wanted to sign an MoU with us according to which we would buy the goods from them and not import the products ourselves, in return they would not open their online shop.
We were growing quite fast and it was obvious in the future we could start a wholesale business and I think that was the reason why they were getting us to sign the MOU. While I was not in favour of signing any MOU. We didn't sign any MOU but we had a verbal contract with them. And from here our drop shipping business started.
My partner S.R was trying to convince me. “The biggest advantage is that it’s low-risk and low-cost: because we don’t need to invest in inventory or worry about shipping costs.” and so he told me several advantages of dropshipping.
However, the most significant downside that I saw at the time was that we were going to have less control over the quality of the products we were selling, as we were relying on our suppliers to provide good quality products. were This could have been a particular problem because we were selling a product that people bought because of the brand name
And after some time it happened. Because we were relying on suppliers to ship products directly to our customers, we had no way to control the quality of those products or how quickly they're shipped. This led to unhappy customers and a lot of headaches for us as the store owner.
Another downside to drop shipping was that it was almost difficult to scale our business. Because we were only ordering products as needed, it was hard to take advantage of bulk discounts or economies of scale. This was making it tough to compete with larger physical shops who are able to buy products at a lower cost.
Dropshipping is certainly a great way to get started in e-commerce with little upfront investment, but it's not advisable to completely convert a growing business to the dropshipping model. It also has some downsides that you should be aware of before you start. Overall, drop shipping is a low-risk and relatively easy way to start selling online, and can be a great option for those looking to set up their business with minimal costs. However, it's important to be aware of the potential pitfalls of drop shipping so you can make an informed decision about whether it's the right option for you.
Disclaimer
As I mentioned in my intro, from the last 2 decades I have been active on social media, google mapping and reviews, youtube and thatsup. I will share my own past interesting content from these channels, but all my upcoming content I will share on hive.blog first.