Q4 Incoming! Let’s Get Ready….
In this post I’ll go over what was happening with our UK fulfilment store in the 2nd half of August, and moving into September, 2022.
Q4 incoming… (The matching YouTube for this blog post was shot on September 19th, 2022)
Excitement was high, payment processors were sorted, and we were starting to scale up again. 🤗
As I mentioned in my previous post, I only have access to screenshots from my YouTube case study for Shopify stats from this period.
Please forgive the poor quality of screenshots in this post.
Second half of August 2022 Shopify stats – £27.66k:
August Progress 16th-31st
– Started to scale up again
- Got payment processor issues sorted.
- Began to scale up again towards £3k a day.
- A 2nd winner started taking off! (great news)
- Unfortunately had to reduce adspend on original winner due to stock issues.
- Had chosen to order latest batch via sea instead of air so they were taking longer.
- This did however bring costs of the original winner right down.
– Took in more and more samples and tester boxes of Q4 products
- More and more samples of products have been arriving from China.
- At least half of them are always unsuitable and/or low quality.
- Still, if you don’t order them you don’t know.
- Sample 100 boxes of our potential Christmas winners (toys – see images above and below) arrived to test ads with.
- Spent £2500 on a professional video/photo shoot with our in-house editor for the toys.
- Also ordered new video ads from several editors for the toys. More ads to test the better.
- We got several 500 and 1000 quantity boxes of yet more new products to start testing.
- Got to keep the machine running!
- ABT (always be testing)
September Progress 16th-31st
- Month started off well but dipped down in week 2 as you can see below.
- This was due to 8000 units of our main winner being held up by customs. 😭
- Meaning, we had to reduce adspend for this as we had no stock left!
- Regardless, it is now confirmed as a high-level evergreen winner.
- The 2nd winner also began to get better and better.
- Currently in the process of getting it branded.
- Once that happens, we can scale it up hard now as well.
- Overall, we are in a much better place with stock levels of other products.
- These are ideal for cross-sells and up-sells.
- Residual sales from Klaviyo emailing is going from strength to strength.
- Not only that, people buy extra products when they order others via ads.
- Via testing we have found 1 Christmas winner for sure, possibly 2.
- Ordered 15,000 units of the 1st Christmas winner and 5000 of the 2nd, which are all on the way from China.
- Q4 Incoming – you can bet your boots on that!
September 1st-19th 2022 Shopify stats – £31.69k:
Liverpool Inbound Yet Again!
By this point I was spending about a week of every month up in Liverpool and enjoying every second.
After doing dropshipping from home for such a long time, working in ecom at such a big scale was a whole lot of fun.
The day after I shot the matching YouTube for this blog post, I was due to leave my desk in Bristol….
… and head up North once again to work in the office/warehouse with all my new mates.
After a lot of deliberation, I’ve decided to make the move up there permanently towards the end of the year.
We are moving to a new, much bigger unit in the warehouse at the start of 2023 and I want to be a part of it all.
Exciting times!
Miscellaneous
– Had so many new video ads made by multiple editors
- With 2 winners on the go and Q4 incoming, we need a LOT of ads.
- Guys have been churning them out for us from multiple sources.
– Taken on more staff with more hires to come
- As the company grows we are needing more and more staff.
- Hired a social media manager and another fulfilment guy.
- For sure we’ll need more bodies as we get into Q4.
- Expansion seems fast and frantic a lot of the time.
- Making some things up as we go along. 😂
– Klaviyo install continues to expand
- As more products arrive it’s a constant battle to add them all into Klaviyo.
- Email templates need to be made for new products.
- These then need adding to existing flows, plus…
- New flows need creating all the time.
- BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) is coming up.
- Started thrashing out Q4 email strategy. (only in my head currently)
– Testing Gem Pages app
- Trialing a new long form sales pages app.
- Means you can showcase products way more than on normal Shopify product pages.
- Trialling first page now on our main winner and it looks to be performing well.
- Once we work it out some more we can make more pages for other products.
– Q4 is almost here…
- 2 weeks before the madness begins!
- Prime opportunity to make a LOT of money.
Alright people that’s it for this blog post about Q4 incoming!
Other parts from this series are available here part 1 – part 2 – part 3– part 4 – part 5 – part 6 – part 7 – part 8
The corresponding YouTube to this blog post can be found here.
I put all the YouTubes about this store in a playlist. Click here to watch it.
Part 9 will drop soon… please check back to see when.