What To Do When Your Business Partner Has Burn Out?
By Desty on Jul 9, 2007 in Offline Business
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Our most successful off-line business is a coffee and various mixes (cakes, dips, chili, etc) distributorship. We currently have 2-3 affiliates working with us and it does a moderate business. Our problem is that while the product is great, in its current state, the business is rather labor intensive. My wife and I book tables at various craft fairs, and other summer events to pass around free samples of tea, flavored coffees, a little bit of chips and dip, and make a nice profit. Well its finally gotten to my wife. You see, I generally handle the business end: the books, business planning, future expansion. My wife is the operations person; she sells the products, networks with stay-at-home moms, and does the general people-person type stuff.
Friday evening we had a talk about the business. Normally I’m the one who brings up business, so I knew something was up when she started talking about business. She was tired of it; we hadn’t done much with it over the last few weeks, and she was just tired of the whole thing. I didn’t push. When we started this last year, I told her that I would give my full support and help out with what I do best. I’m not the best person to smile and hand people a sample; I’m a paper pusher.
I’d like to continue the business; it’s doing well and the products sell well. My thoughts are to go online and get automated with a virtual store. eBay doesn’t feel like an option. There are too many people there already and we’d be lost in a sea of categories with other coffee related items. So, my thoughts are to get a domain and setup either a website or blog along with some shopping cart software. I’ve been looking around trying to weigh my options and came upon Ashop Commerce. Ashop isn’t just shopping cart software, they’re a fully integrated ecommerce software support center. They provide hosting, domain registration, and all the support services for your virtual storefront. It’s a one stop for all online store needs.
I need to do further research to see what type of online competition exists for online bought coffees and mixes. Something that might sell well off-line may not sell as well online.
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I followed the link to that ecommerce service, and it looks pretty good, but I wonder if being based in Australia would be an issue. Too bad about your business partner getting burned out. It happens.
When it comes to setting this business up, I’m wanting to automate everything as much as possible. Ashop seems to have everything I need to make this happen. I could set a domain to the server space I’m using for Desty Online, I got the space, but I would have to do everything myself. I don’t see the server being in Australia as an issue; the Internet is everywhere!
Great post! some really indepth content/thinking there. I have a couple of friends who are partnered in running a small local coffee chain in New York.
I’ve been reading your blog for about a week now, great stuff. Will be back for more.
Thanks for the visits and comments Leonid! I’m thinking of having a contest in the near future with prizes. Make sure to stay tuned!
That is the single best sponsored post I have ever read. There was value, content, thought, effort, and creativity.
I hardly noticed the plug. In fact, without the declaration of sponsorship at the bottom, I probably wouldn’t have realized it.
Nice job.
Thank you. My personal policy about sponsored posts is that unless the sponsored product or service can be worked into something I would already talk about and actual be a help to the reader, I won’t take it. I have several offers I just can’t / won’t take because I don’t have anything related to write about. When this one came up a month ago, I didn’t see anyway I would be able to write about a virtual store, but now I’m having to look into it if I want to keep a majority of my business income going.