Launching an online beauty supply store is a great idea to proceed with if you like beauty products and feel ready to offer your own advice on them. Practically, investing in building a beauty store is a great idea because the beauty industry is growing tremendously, and might reach hundreds of billions by 2025. Moreover, with the COVID pandemic of last year, a lot of retailers moved online, and beauty products are one of the stores that needed to go online to maintain high revenues. However, there is a need to be aware of the steps that need to be taken to launch the beauty store successfully, and these steps are going to be discussed below.
Decide on your niche
When starting your business, think about what products you want to sell and what your target audience is. When aiming specifically, you are reducing competition with large cosmetic stores because you have a special audience to sell to, not just a broad category of people, determined by their gender and age. Moreover, building the inventory in a way to target a narrow audience is wiser in terms of financial investment and this move ensures higher conversion.
When thinking about your niche, be sure to select the product trending this year, so that the items that you want to sell are really demanded ones. Most often, doing research using a search engine might help to figure out the most popular trends. Do not buy the cliche such as eco-products are popular, but better stick with your own market research, that might need the use of Google Ads.
Establish your budget and business model
Before you launch, think about the amount of investment you are ready to make. Having established your budget, it is going to be easier to make decisions about your business. At this point, think about budgets for development, marketing, and design separately. What’s your ideal spending for marketing so that your customers know about you at a minimal cost? Are you going to have brick-and-mortar stores so that the customers might come and try your products?
Perhaps, setting up a giveaway to engage more people in trying your beauty products at your store is a good thing to promote your products. Also, think about creating your own label and dropshipping: do you want to buy in huge bulks or just trying with several products? Either way is fine, just make sure it fits your needs and brings your target audience to you.
Find a Supplier
Regardless of what you’ve chosen white label vs dropshipping, you will need to choose your suppliers anyway. If your financial resources are limited, dropshipping from several suppliers might be the best idea. With drop shipping, you are getting access to thousands of products without the need to buy and keep them as inventory. Instead, if you have a lump sum in money, you might buy the items in bulk and develop your own label, but in this case, you’d better do the research more specifically because you are practically relying on the only supplier.
Create your website for selling cosmetics
There are several ways to have your website for selling cosmetics developed. First of all, you might use WordPress with plugins. Second, you can get someone to develop an online store for you from scratch. Finally, you can use the SaaS solution, such as Shopify or BigCommerce to run the store for you on the monthly basis.
Of course, WordPress is the simplest and the quickest thing to go with. If you choose this way, you are going to have your store up and running in an hour or so, but you will not get any special design or convenient tools. The complete opposite thing is developing a website from scratch. It is the job that someone does for you, but it’s the longest and the most expensive way to have the beauty store up and running.
Finally, choosing the SaaS way allows you to have an individual design and a set of convenient tools for your business. In this case, you will need to choose between Shopify, BigCommerce, and others. It is an in-between solution that combines the benefits of custom website development and the WordPress approach. The cost of the SaaS store project is going to be in the wide range between $50 and $50,000 but in this case, you have plenty of decisions to make, and still, the development process is going to be quick.
Market your online beauty supply store
When developing your store, think about marketing as the most important thing. Marketing is crucial because your business is going to be valued only when your customers know about it. So, make sure you plan your marketing campaigns in advance and your customers are well aware of the products you are selling.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing is one of the most frequently used types of marketing, and it is also the most cost-effective one. With social media, you can reach out to many people, often the ones of the specific demographics. The texts, posts, and content of various types are going to cost something between $500 and $5000 per month.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is handy when designing your store. Think about the words that your customers search for when looking for beauty products, and include these words into product descriptions and other pages of your website. With proper use of SEO worlds, your online store is going to be better found in the search engines, such as Google, Baidu, or Yahoo. In addition to SEO words, make sure your website is crawler-friendly by adding a good structure to the text, and your customers are going to find your store easier and quicker.
Content marketing
Content is important for running successful promotional campaigns and attracting visitors to your website. Be prepared to have a new post or text written every several days because it is what increases your rating in search engines and brings customers to you.
Beauty influencer marketing
One of the ways to build credibility and attract more visitors and more customers is to use beauty influencer marketing. In this case, beauty bloggers are going to promote your products and combine them with advice. Practically, there is nothing better than having your target audience see influencers using and recommending your products.
Register a business
Importantly, when you start a business, you need to register your activity with the government. Depending on the area of your business, you will need specific permits and/or licenses to be able to sell the items to your customers. So, make sure you know what registrations you need to do, and get them.
For example, in the US, you need to register your business to pay taxes and comply with the laws of the state. Thus, the first step is to consult a lawyer. Perhaps, you will need a help of a registered agent to get help with registering your store and your brand name.
Probably for all states, you will need to register with the Internal Revenue Service or its analog (the IRS in the US) to pay your taxes. You might also do some more paperwork when it comes to operating agreements. Oftentimes you will need the official announcement or publication in a local newspaper when you start working. Potentially you will also be required to get some kind of merchant license and test results for the safety of your products.
Conclusion
So, if you are ready to start your business and launch your beauty store, you have a high chance to get a profitable business. We at SOFTLOFT worked with many beauty brands, helping them develop their websites and run their stores. Just contact us to get professional help.
