How I've made my first €260 in two weeks with my first store

Few weeks ago, I've decided to test my own platform to see if it works well, and if I could sell anything from myself.

I'd a friend who sold parfumes by her own, during live events on meetup. To resume her products, it's the real "essences" of the parfumes like Hugo Boss, but not the ones sold by the great trade marks (Guerlain, Chanel...). So it's parfumes "inspired" by the real references.

During an event I've met her, tried one of the parfumes (she had a briefcase with a lot of samples). I've been so surprised that her parfum was exactly the same as Boss, that I paid her immediatly (she's really smart, so had a sumup SME in her briefcase 😅).

I asked her : "If I create a website to sell these parfumes, could you be my supplier".
She kindly accepted the offer.

So it was decided ! I'd create my own store to sell parfumes !

Open the store and choose my style

The first thing, I had to decide what kind of online store I wanted to show to the rest of the world.
Something cool, with a lot of images ? ... Nah... Don't have the time to look for models online, or be too esthetic. I'm a software engineer, so imagine my level in webdesign 😂
I know how to make dashboards, not beautiful marketing websites.

So I started with a preconfigured theme on magazengo, and chose to use the famous two colors of the luxury referencial : dark, and gold.

Done.

Same for the typography, I've taken the first typos in serif available on the studio for my store.

The name

It was the fastest part. I had no inspiration.
So I named it "inspirationparfum.fr" .
And also because I've seen that the domain was available on Hostinger !

So I buyed the domain on Hostinger, and configured my store directly on magazengo.

The products

So I had the store and the name deployed in minutes.
But now I had to create 145 references of products to start selling.

By chance, the catalog of my friend was very clear, in a PDF.

So I downloaded the template XLS in the products part.
I gave it to Claude, and gave the PDF with all the products.

Then I asked him to fill the template file with all the data from the PDF.

But first problem : how to put an image url dedicated for each product, without having to upload it one by one after creating the products. (I would be so boring...)

Another chance : all the parfumes have the same bottle / packaging (as it's "inspired" by the real parfumes, the supplier cannot use the trademarks bottles, or the trademark names at all). So I found an image of the bottle online (Google Images), and gave it to Claude.
Then I asked him to create one image by reference, with the "inspired by" and the name of the inspired parfum. And I asked to name each image with the SKU (unique reference) of each product.

It was done in 1 minute : 145 images created, well named.

I uploaded all the images under the "Media" part in the store dashboard. And then downloaded the Excel file with all the image names, and urls 😉

I gave it to Claude, and asked him to use the URLs in function of the name of the product.
So it was done : the xls template file was filled in 10 seconds with all the products, and one image per product.

I uploaded it into the "Products" part of the store, and all the products were created.

The categories

At the beginning, I had only a "General" category for all the products. So I decided to make it simple : a category "Woman", and a category "Man".

I selected all the concerned products, and changed the category in one time.

Connect the store to Stripe

I didn't think about it, but my store was not connected to a payment system yet.
And I didn't know if I could connect it to an existing Stripe account.

By chance again, I've gone to the "Configuration" part of the store, clicked on "Connect to Stripe", and gave my company's Stripe account. Bingo ! The account was connected, and so the store ready to received my first command.

The "street" marketing

Here was the tuff part : find my first customers.
So many ways to do it :

• Make some ads online ? (Too expensive...)

• Organize some meetings to meet people interested in parfumes ? (why not but I didn't have the time for this...)

• Call some people who has parfumes ? ... Why not !

But calling to sell parfumes directly it seemed... a cheap strategy. Why not telling to my contacts that I'd found a good way to have "real inspired parfumes" and that I started to sell it ?

So during a meeting with one of my clients (for a software), I discreetly brought up in the conversation that I've started my store.

And I've made it for each of my clients ^^ Hoping that one of them would be interested.

Two weeks past, and nothing appeared on the dashboard.
And then, one morning, I open the dashboard of my store and see the Holy Grail : an order of €260 !

This is not a €1M business, for sure. But I was so happy to see that Magazengo worked perfectly, and that I would be able to pay a part of my bills with this money !

So thanks to my first client for his order ! I hope the parfumes have the quality he expected 😊
(He was one of my clients I've told about the store during meeting 😄)

If you have a similar story with your first order, I'd be happy to read it too !