Being a massive Beatles fan, for years I had wanted a copy of the old circus poster that inspired the song, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!". Without almost maniacal attention to detail, I set about recreating this poster from scratch using the same methods used to make the original – wood engraving and letterpress printing. My fastidiousness extended to my choice of ecommerce solution too.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
I really believed that there were others out there who would love what I had done and I was lucky to find that many well-known sites picked up on my story and posted the short film that was made about me making the poster. The first few weeks were insane – and I was glad to have chosen Shopify, otherwise I would have been worried about my site failing under heavy traffic (definitely not the time you want it to go down). Twitter and Facebook are great for driving traffic.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
We rely heavily on most of the Shopify default systems but enhance the customer invoicing with the OrderlyPrint App that allows us to print shipping labels on the same sheet as our customer invoices. Our prints have to be handled carefully so we do all the packaging and shipping despatch ourselves.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
Build a subscription to a newsletter by entering all subscribers into a regular draw to win one of the products you offer – this has really worked for us. We use Mailchimp, which integrates nicely with Shopify.