After 10 years as an online retailer for party supplies and gift items, I've come up with a new business motto -- don't buy it until you sell it.
I spent thousands of dollars purchasing inventory to sell in my online store, and some things sold well. But the cost of my mistakes - the inventory sitting in my garage for years, unsold - really floored me. It stunned me to see how much money I had wasted if the public lost interest in the products I had selected.
That's when a wonderful mentor (big thank you to Sarah) nudged me to the print-on-demand suppliers, also known as PODs. At first I didn't see much value, thinking PODs were only good for two things: silk screening T shirts, and printing books for would-be authors. But my interst was piqued when I noticed other products. Winter scarves? Skateboards? Christmas tree ornaments? Who knew that these products could be produced one-at-a-time, just when I wanted it?
Flipped the switch in my mind from "print on demand" to "merchandise on demand." And boy did that open up a whole new world of potential revenue for me. Let's expand the term from POD to MOD, because it's gone way beyond typically printed products. It's all kinds of merchandise.
It's a whole new business model, too. But we'll get into that in later posts.
The MOD world is huge and navigating it is not easy. But if you spend some time learning the in's and out's, you really can make money using the MODs to produce just-in-time merchandise.
That's what this blog is all about. Meet me back here each day and we'll navigate together.
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