In the 80's my mom turned her membership over to me so that I could try to make a business out of it. Though I'd already done fairly well doing it on my own already. The best part of selling to other students was the fact all I had to do was show up with a catalog, the item samples and the orders flew in. Overhead was zilch and I had plenty of help bringing in the boxes to pass out orders. Cash up front was always the rule. As an adult, things got more complicated.
I did fairly well, I had a small thrift shop that I stocked with some items, but mostly I had donated things. But the SMC stuff did bring people in when I put stuff in the window display area. But overhead was high and I really wasn't into pushing sales.
I eventually sold the business to a friend who'd been helping me. She got her own SMC membership and took over the business. She was a sales person...and a good one.
Later in the 90's I got in with a tech pal that helped me to get a system hooked up online. My first online business. I had other people who wanted their own business send me $10 for the business kit. (I had to pay the cost for the kit and the shipping from that.)
They would be free to sell the products any way they wanted. They were distributors - getting near my cost for the products.
They could in turn hire party hostesses who would get a cut of the profits made by the distributors.
Me, I would get emails telling me what to order and after making sure that everything was filled out right - I'd have them deposit the funds into my bank branch. (lucky they were nationwide) After confirming the deposit, I would order the items, pay with my credit card and have it shipped to them. They would get the orders to their hostesses or clients on their own.
That worked out for a while and then I sold the whole thing to my tech pal who'd gotten a membership with SMC so he could take over. He was another sales person who was good at the job.
But then after a big move, I didn't do too much more with the whole SMC thing. I kept my membership, but didn't do much with it.
I noticed in early 2000 that eBay was flooded with SMC products and that most were taking a loss on sales. So I decided against joining them and just used the catalogs to allow friends and family to purchase at cost to help extend their limited funds.
Few pals even ordered flea market items from me so that they could start up or add to their business marketing stock. I got a little profit off of the sales, but not much.
I guess I'm not much of a sales person, I love finding bargains and buying wholesale whenever I can. But I've never been one to want to hard sell or pitch to people.
Some told me that I didn't charge enough for my websites, which is why I didn't make it through the economic storm that hit. I often wondered how other designers got thousands for jobs, while I got a lot less and did more work.
I was thinking of putting up a website to offer the SMC products to those that wanted to buy them. To make a membership site that charged only a few dollars to have access to all the items. I figured that some people would be able to make a business out of it.
Of course the only reason for the membership fee would be to pay for the hosting. I can't seem to find a way to set up a database on my free hosting acct. - my provider expects me to pay up front first.
So I'm going to mull it over, see if I can find anyone that can help me with setting it up while I see if anyone would be interested in the idea.
I'm already trying to get up funds up for my daughter's hosting, the food/recipe site that I'll be setting up for her needs a database too. So I need to be sure that that will be paid, so I'm trying to set that up as a membership site too.
Well, that's all I've got for now. If anyone is interested in the sort of product that SMC has then click on this link.
http://viewecatalog.siteforshop.com/catalog_select.asp
If anyone is interested in getting anything let me know. I'm able to check availability, cost and unit packaging. I can also work through paypal or alertpay. SMC does dropshipping so that's not a problem.
If anyone knows of some freelance work online let me know, still need to cover as many possible opportunities as possible to keep afloat.
Don't ever put your hopes on the eggs in just one basket. Make sure you have as many baskets as you can filling with eggs...lol you never know when one might stop being productive. Take care and good luck
Hope this is of some use to anyone that might find it useful.
