When selling online, a lot of folks focus on small items like mobile phone accessories, kids’ toys, clothing, and so on. However, selling online isn’t limited to small items alone. People sell heavy items online and make huge profits. Take furniture for an instance. Turns out that selling furniture is a huge market that a lot of retailers are already exploring. If you are a retailer, selling furniture is worth considering. You can learn more from this post as we introduce how to sell furniture online, how to ship heavy items, as well as other concerns about selling heavy items online.
How to Make Profit Online Selling Heavy Items Like Furniture
Can you make a profit selling furniture online? Yes. If you want to learn how to sell furniture online and make profits, there are a few ideas to implement.
1. Know what piece of furniture people want
Furniture comes in different sizes, shapes, and designs. Knowing what people want will help you sell faster. Many retailers focus on high-end furniture while some deal with smaller pieces of furniture. One thing you must know when shipping heavy items is brand recognition. Customers always want to buy furniture from recognized brands because of its durability and convenience. You can choose to sell aesthetic pieces of furniture for known brands – no matter the price, customers will purchase.
2. Determine the value of your furniture
After choosing a niche, you want to consider pricing. Before settling on a price tag, several factors need to be considered including brand, age, condition, and time of sale. A general rule for used furniture would be to list about 20% – 50% of the original retail price because they tend to lose value as a depreciable asset. Special or unique collections are exempted from this rule.
3. Prepare your furniture for sale early
Before listing your furniture, you want to get high-quality photos in a well-lit area. Customers want to see as many angles as possible before clicking on the “buy now” button. This practice gives you a customer service boost with minimal effort.
NB: It’s also great to include keywords in your title and description for SEO purposes.
4. Be honest about your furniture’s condition
If you sell used items, particularly furniture, it’s normal for it to suffer a bit of scratch, dent, chip, stain, or tear. That being stated, feel free to share some detailed photos of these flaws. Ensure not to hide any defects or damage so that potential buyers will know exactly what they want to spend their money on. Sharing photos of any damages foster trust, and this is what the sharing economy thrives on.
5. Know when to sell
Having known what to sell, a lot of people don’t know when to sell. Timing plays a crucial role in the furniture industry. If you are in a hurry to sell your furniture, get ready to lower your price. Remember that people are looking for good deals at a lower price. However, if you want to sell and make profits, consider selling your furniture towards the last quarter of the year. This is because people often move into a new home during summer.
6. Request reviews or feedback from your customers
Over 65% of shoppers check for reviews before buying an item. Whether you are selling new or old pieces of furniture, you will sell more when you upload feedback from previous buyers. If your customers are satisfied with your service, then you can be confident to request for their reviews. This will serve as proof that people are really buying from you.
7. Check your competition
Check what your competitors are doing; study their marketing & price strategies and implement or improve on them to make your brand more attractive and competitive than the rest.
8. You can't sell everything
Just because you are selling furniture doesn’t mean you can sell all kinds of furniture. Like I previously stated, buyers are looking for certain kinds of furniture. Use Google Trends to discover what kind of furniture is in demand before selling online.
Steps to Selling Furniture Online
Before you get started shipping heavy items, there are a few steps you need to take. These are important due to the competition in this niche, especially if you are offering a product that is high-end, unique, trending, or custom.
1. Decide on how you want to get the furniture for sell
Are you going to build, design, manufacture, or resell furniture? There are various ways to sell furniture online. Your choice will depend on the startup budget, storage availability, and skill level. In this post, I will review five different furniture business models.
- Furniture designer: You can create a design and give it to a manufacturer to create the furniture for you. This requires certain skill sets like understanding materials.
- Furniture manufacturer: In this type of business model, you will design and build furniture in your own workspace. Since you own the workshop, you can build, take photos & upload, and sell a limited number of designs online. This requires certain technical skill sets like understanding how to use specialized tools. It requires a workshop space too.
- Reseller: You can sell an unlimited number of furniture from different brands and ship them directly to customers. In this business model, you will need to perform order fulfillment yourself
- Vintage reseller: Become a retailer that sells vintage or antique pieces.
- Dropshipper: In this business model, you don’t need to stock an inventory nor do you need to fulfill orders. You can partner with a furniture manufacturer, supplier, or brands that are willing to ship to your customers. Once you get an order, your supplier will handle everything in between. Aliexpress and SaleYee.com are reputable dropship partners to deal with.
NB: In this post, we will focus on the dropshipping aspect of selling furniture online.
2. Determine the condition of your furniture
You want to make sure the furniture is in good shape. You also want to ensure the description of the furniture matches the images. Does it have any crack or blemish? Do the colors match with what is on the photos? Don’t get carried away by what you see, ensure everything aligns before selling on your store.
3. Financing your furniture business
Consider your budget to know which furniture business model [we listed some above] you want to choose. How much upfront investment do you have and would you need to start your desired furniture business online? So far, only the dropshipping business model will save you the cost of the space, shipping partner, inventory, tools & equipment.
4. Building your online furniture brand
Selling furniture online is a long-term enterprise so savvy retailers build their brand at the early stage. It starts by choosing a furniture niche and then deciding on what platform to sell online. Consider the following when picking a niche (with examples):
Product: nursery, sofa beds, dining tables
Category/use: office furniture, home accents, outdoor living
Niche: “smart” furniture, modular pieces, furniture made from recycled materials
Style: minimal, midcentury modern, rustic
Customer: students, cottage owners, apartment dwellers
Cause: sustainable, handmade locally, fair trade
There are different platforms to sell furniture including Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and SaleYee.com.
5. Source furniture suppliers or manufacturers
Since you will be dropshipping furniture, you want to choose a reliable and reputable dropship supplier or manufacturer. The right dropship supplier offers the cheapest shipping for heavy items. There are several marketplaces and directories available for furniture dropshippers. You can explore the following to find the right furniture supplier:
- Online marketplaces and classified ads
- Auctions
- Estate sales
- Collectors
- Flea or outdoor markets
To ease your research endeavor, we are recommending the SaleYee platform because they offer:
- Reliability – they are trustworthy, thanks to their enormous years of experience
- High-quality furniture with large profit margins
- A wide array of furniture
- Fast delivery thanks to local warehouses around the world
- No membership fee; no monthly charges; no hidden fees
To get started with the SaleYee platform is completely free. Upon registration, you will get instant access to local furniture manufacturers.
6. Get ready to upload quality pictures of your furniture to improve customer experience
Pictures matter a great deal when listing furniture. Before uploading a product, keep in mind that your potential customers will be making decisions without seeing the item in person. Fortunately, there is sophisticated software that can make your furniture looks like real-life images – clean and perfect. That means taking a 360-degree view of your product in motion. For example, you can use AR and 3D apps to provide a full glimpse of the furniture to help potential buyers make informed decisions about their purchases. Meanwhile, AR and 3D models have been shown to increase conversion rates by up to 250%.
7. Be proactive when marketing for your furniture
For every business, there are different marketing strategies to attract customers. You can try a lot of things but some things are consistent when it comes to marketing online and that is:
- Providing quality products
- Offering impeccable customer service
- Offering fast delivery
Having said that, you can try advertising using the following media:
- Email marketing
- Social media channel
- Google PPC and Facebook PPC
- Blogging
- Influencer marketing
- Forum posts
- YouTube videos
Instagram and YouTube are great tools for marketing furniture since the video is the best form of engagement.
8. Be prepared in case of shipping, returns, and customer service
No business owner prays for a return or refund but when things go south, what will you fall back to? Ensure you have shipping, return, and refund policy pages, stating how your business will handle any of those. If you do the above-listed things right, you may not need a refund or return. In the event of any, what you’ve stated on your return or refund policy page will determine your next action.
Things Need to Be Concerned While Selling Furniture Online
Now that you know how to sell furniture online, ensure to put the following into consideration.
1. Logistics
Packaging and shipping are crucial in dropshipping. First, you must ensure your dropship supply partners with the right shipping company. After this, you should send your customers photos and details of their package before and during shipping. This will give them the idea of the size of what they are about to receive. This can actually help you prevent returns & refunds and also boost your customer service.
2. Package
Before shipping to your customers, you want to ensure that the packaging is intact to minimize risks while on the road. During packaging, furniture is prone to do damage in its crates or boxes. The bad practice would be to use standard shipping materials such as cardboard. Don’t let low-quality materials disrupt your sales, customers, or reputation. As such, you may request photographs from your suppliers to see what the packaging looks like and if they can make necessary adjustments.
3. Different materials of products need to be packaged in different ways
Boxes can work for some furniture while heavy-duty cardboards can work for others. You want to be sure to use the right packaging for the right product. Ensure your suppliers’ carrier test and assess the package before shipping heavy items.
4. Others – using tools
The cheapest way to ship heavy items is to use tools and software that can help streamline the shipping process. For instance, a DIM (Dimension) weight calculator can help you determine the best price based on the box’s billable weight and its final destination. Other tools can help you view and manage costs across a range of delivery speeds and carriers.
Conclusion
Do you still want to sell furniture online? The best way to ship heavy items online is to partner with a reliable dropship supplier. It is recommended to choose a reputable supplier like SaleYee who can support the products and fulfillment services.
