My first e-commerce venture

Decisions to make

[hamish mcgowan]

Hi,

I am looking at starting my first e-commerce website. Although I am from the UK, I have lived in Asia in a region renowned for its arts and crafts. It's early days as yet but I have plenty of local contacts, so my plan is to:

1. Set up a shopping cart (I have decided upon oscommerce, although other suggestions are welcome!) offering a variety of these items for sale.

2. Ship the goods from Asia to the customer using national couriers, or UPS, depending on what the customer decides.

3. Offer one of these as a payment method:
a. Worldpay
b. HSBC
c. Protx + some mercant a/c
However, I'm looking to minimise my initial outlay, so any recommendations wrt to these?

4. Base my company in the UK (as a sole trader), since I suspect my customers would prefer to give their CC details to a UK business. I will host the site in the US (with lunarpages), while living in Asia. Does this seem reasonable?

5. What do I have to know wrt UK taxes etc. since I'll be out of the country most of the time? I realise that this is an area where I'll need an accountant, but I'd prefer to sound this here.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer me.

Best wishes,

Hamish

[Essex_boy]

OSC is fine but not overly spiderable you may end up having to PPC your site, use HSBC they will settle quicker with you, speak to accountant.

that was easy now

[Joop]

will you be selling to individuals or retailers?

[Filipe]

If you're going to use osCommerce, please please PLEASE take some time to customize the look of the site (which can often be the most annoying thing to do with osC). osCommerce sites are starting to become the cookie-cutter Frontpage sites of the eCommerce world.

[hamish mcgowan]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Joop: B2C to begin with, then once I've established myself, B2B.

Cheers,

Hamish

[Joop]

I think to a certain extent it depends on the product but a customer places an order with you and then they bear the costs of it being shipped from Asia, to them?

Notwithstanding the problems in ensuring the items are posted etc... the lead time alone could be a problem?

I'm trying to think of something that I would order, knowing it would come from Asia, knowing I would have to wait for it and knowing the shipping costs...

[derekwong28]

Hi Hamish

It is entirely feasible, we do this from Hong Kong. Unless you are very technically competent, you should look at platforms other than OSC such as litecommerce, cubecart and x-cart. We use Worldpay and it has been fine so far. But there are other solutions that do not take a monthly fee which may be better for start-ups.

If you base your company in the UK, you may be liable for UK taxes which are higher than those in Asia. Since you generate your income in an Asian country, you will probably have to pay taxes in that country as well. You should think this out carefully before you proceed.

If your target customers are in the US, they would have the same issue with shipping times whether you are based in UK or Asia. Although I know it does conversions, our rate is still pretty good.

To <Essex_Boy> I stickied you a few days ago but have not received a reply. Is it possible that your mail box is full? Please sticky me back

[hamish mcgowan]

Hi all,

Thanks for your responses.

I understand that there might be concerns for customers about having their items shipped from so far away, but I don't see this as being so different from a customer ordering something from *any* overseas company.

Derek: You mention other options for accepting payment; are there any that you'd particularly recommend? I had been considering PayPal because it seemed like a good way to test the waters without too much exposure, but I rejected this on the grounds that:
1. It may appear unprofessional to some customers, and
2. A lot of merchants have reported having bad experiences with their accounts and receiving inadequate customer service.

Once again, many thanks for all of your feedback so far.

Hamish

[hfwd]

What about custom duties? You should be clear about this: every once in a while, we would get packages that we shipped to other countries returned to us because of custom issues.

This is probably not a concern if you ship with UPS/FedEx, since they include custom clearance in their service - however, they charge an arm & a leg for it.

[fhaws]

I like x-cart over OSC. It has an HTML generator that creates an HTML calatlog of all the dynamically generated pages. And as you know, searchspiders like HTML over the dynamically generated pages.

[babushka99]

If you're living in Asia and selling in UK, you can (if posisble) have your income diverted back to you from UK to Asia and you might qualify for export-based tax relief. Essentially lets say you're based out of Thailand, since you are essentially exporting from Thailand, and if you bring your income (Dollar based/Euro-based) back to Thailand, you would qualify for what is called Export Proceed Realization, you would have to surrender your Dollars/Euros and get the local currency equivalent, and usually such income is exempt from Income tax. You might want to check with the local export promotion body in the asian country you're living in.