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Comment by gboss | Hacker News Reader

My second job out of college, back in 2011, was as the only employee for a drop-shipper who sold fabric for upholstery, lighting, and all kinds of home furnishings. Her website was an off the shelf .NET ecommerce app she probably paid a few thousand for. I was the customer service rep and web dev for the company. She did surprisingly well, grossing $120-160k a month. Her margin was around 20% I believe. I made a pretty small salary but it was a great way to kickstart my dev career.

Edit: For clarity.

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Did she say how long it took to get to those sales? Did she have any exclusive distribution deals?

She used to have her own store in Marin County. Too much overhead. I think she lost it in 2008ish and went purely online then.

So she built up knowledge, customer base, sales and reputation offline and was able to carry it over online?

Her biggest success was upholstery fabric. Forgot to mention she did a decent amount of wallpaper, probably 15% of her business. Furniture was a very very small portion. I don't think there was much overlap other then both businesses being designy but her store was a furniture showroom. Her sales were nationwide. I think she took a lot of business from interior designers who would sell at a high markup to customers.

Thanks for clearing that up.

As a frequent importer I think the most important thing she built was a relationship with her supply chain in China which was likely unique and an understanding of prices and quality in the industry. Her intimate product knowledge is the biggest difference between her and a normal dropshipper.

It was early days and I think she just had about 200k different fabrics and wallpapers and ruled SEO or at least got a decent chunk. She probably did well because of the bulk import of products. I am not sure but I think all of the warehouses were in the US. We didn't talk to anyone in China. We placed orders through distributors that sold to retail stores. The brands I remember were Duralee, F.S. Schumacher, Ralph Lauren, and others I forget. Customers knew what they wanted, usually from an interior designers recommendation. We could just send them a swatch of a specific run of fabric or wallpaper. It was always messy though because it was almost impossible to guarantee the swatch would match the actual product delivered. Every run of a product is slightly different. It's why people buy extra carpet or wallpaper for high traffic corridors to be replaced early.

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