We have been selling the model Lap Cozy for 3 years now and its been a good challenge with lots of exciting moments. We wanted to share with you or anyone thinking about starting a business what hurdles or good experiences we have had.
This year we passed the 1,000 sold mark. Btw, huge props to the recent influx of buyers from Virginia!
Featured on TV was both a highlight and a bummer as we did not know the Lap Cozy was going to be featured so we did not have stock prepared and were out on travel when it happened.
We started using a smaller boxes to pass savings on to customers from our site, Etsy and Amazon Non Prime. This meant rolling the beds and sealing in a bag. Feedback from folks has been good that the beds unfold with only temporary effects. We will start testing similar with Amazon Prime this Fall.
We are now selling Replacement Covers only on the Lap Cozy Site shop, this is based on folks letting us know that they have worn them out (hard to believe!) and they want backups!
A few things happened the past year that have made a few challenges for us.
Amazon keeps raising their storage rates. The Lap Cozy takes up space in their warehouses. Even though we keep a rotational stock nationally at Prime warehouses of only 12 to 18 units at any given time, if we sell 100 of them Amazon charges us for storage of 100 units. but that is how they make money, but this means we have to keep raising our prices on their sites.
The Amazon box issue. We dropped using our own box, this is because Amazon stuffs even our smaller box into a GIANT box and charges us for it. They use a slightly smaller one now that we leave out the cardboard of our own.
Etsy has introduced a new feature that if you give free shipping you get ranked higher in their searches. What other businesses are doing is just raising their prices to match their average national shipping rates. We did this for a while, but it was hard to charge someone for a delivery cost of $20 when they were only 100 miles away. So that is why we are sticking with the lower price and using shipping calculation costs.
We are starting to run low on inventory and now considering when to order the next batch. This is a much harder year to plan for than previous ones due to changes in our lives and moving to less storage space.
Shipping of the base units from our manufacturer have gone WAY up, this is partially because our Lap Cozy base is extremely light for its size. 1000 units weighs under a 1000 pounds and takes less than a truckload. To get the best shipping rates, we would need to fill a truck and that would take almost 3000 units.
Fake Lap Cozy sales. There have been many sites (which appears to be mostly coming from China) or Ebay sellers who are selling the Lap Cozy and placing direct orders for them through Amazon. These are hard to keep up with but we are hoping that buyers are able to search out the lower cost items themselves.
With all these things and challenges, we still would do it again and greatly appreciate our customers and the feedback we get from customers who get to love their pet, their fur baby or even their constant companion.
