Hi there, new to the site and am searching for some opinions. I recently got together with a company just started producing a new all natural dog chew. They sell wholesale and have had major success so far, and we just got the retail ready to go within the last three weeks.
Turns out, their parent company wants me to produce an e-commerce site for them as well. The problem with all of this is that they do not have anyone with any sort of technical background there to support any of this. I really feel uncomfortable setting up systems with no one there to run them.
The parent company sells their product to over 250 wholesalers, but the owner told me that the strength of the relationships are dwindling. He says he does good business, but I don't know actual numbers.
The parent company produces custom rustic furniture, has taxidermy items/is a taxidermy service. They have all sort of items, and I believe their biggest items are antler chandeliers. They have tried the web before, and it went no where. (Got to the shopping cart part and it was a "coming soon" type thing)
I met with the owner the other day and offered him one of two options. The first being to just setup the site and let them have it, the other being to work full-time at getting their site off the ground and making money.
We have decided to market the rustic furniture and taxidermy as separate entities, so all in all there would most likely be three different shops to manage/support. I gave him a list of typical things I would do during a normal workday.
- Build/maintain website/web presence.
- Check and respond to any e-mails from customers or potential customers.
- Process any orders.
- Cross reference in-store inventory with online inventory.
- Online marketing / high-end client marketing. (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc)
- Continuously build inventory. Store 500+ items.
- Take quality images of products.
- Product image editing.
- Loading/removing inventory from the websites.
- Take care of any support issues.
They also have a normal store front and the owner has told me that he just doesn't have the time or the knowledge to do anything online. *The economy has made it's mark on them, make no mistake. He wants to take his business online and I warned him that it's pretty much all or nothing to make it work online.
There is competition online but I figure since each piece is unique there is still marketability. They are all about quality, and the nice thing about big ticket items is that they can be purchased and shipped without sales tax.
I have never done this type of thing before. (Just outright asking a company to create a "new" position.) He did make me fill out an app though so maybe that is a good sign?
My question at the end of all this is really do you guys think that this is a good idea? I don't want to sound arrogant, but I have a knack for online marketing and believe I could produce them money. I explained the whole process of building things, but I'm really tired of selling myself short. (As a designer, webmaster, marketer, etc.) I meet with him Monday morning to go over the site details.
I told him just setting up the store + branding and tweaks would be $1200 (I'm thinking this is without the 500+ inventory items), or that I would work for him fulltime doing the list above + more for $32k starting out. We then started talking about quickbooks so maybe he is interested?
So, do you guys think I'm crazy for asking to join them full-time in this troubled economy? I believe I can do the job, but is that payment justified? Looking for advice, thankyou for reading this if you made it all the way through.
Take care.
