The purpose of this blog is to document my unexpected journey through entrepreneurship. It will be about pitfalls, achievements and what keeps me going further (so basically food and music).

My current project is pretty clear, yet probably dumb. I have different start-up ideas but I know nothing about how to set up a company, especially in Belgium. Thus, my plan is to come up with something I can handle quite easily at a low cost (I will try to minimize the investment) with at least some potential for growth. In some IT jargon, I would call it a Proof of Concept done in order to validate and learn before taking the next step.

Whatever I start with, it has to be based on what I know and what I can do on my own. Having been raised in a jewelry store and being still involved in it, it seemed logical to go that way. Moreover, being a marketing specialist with experience in B2C, selling stuff on the web sounded great.

My first project will then be an e-commerce platform to sell watches and jewelry. This might seem the silliest idea ever but it’s actually quite convenient for the following reasons :

  • I know the market, obviously. I’ve been living in this environment since I was born. I know the suppliers I will work with and I understand the customers’ needs.
  • Competition doesn’t scare me as it is still fragmented, (mostly) old-fashioned and not locally managed. I’ve highlighted those two categories of competitors :
    • Bricks & mortars jewellery shops: they account for the biggest part of the competition. They can provide a tailor-made service to their customers, a significant part of their revenue comes especially from repairs, but are limited in terms of exposure. The range of brands they offer is also limited (local exclusivities provided by suppliers). If some of them try to be active online, mostly on Facebook, none is selling professionally their goods online.
    • Online stores: I’ve not been the first one to have this idea, the online stores selling watches and jewellery are of two kinds :
      • Specialists : you can find websites such as http://www.horloges.be or www.maty.be that focus on one kind of product, respectively watches and jewellery, with a large inventory of products. They are not belgian at all. Horloges.be is from the Netherlands and Maty.be is french. There is NO belgian-owned online store selling watches and/or jewellery. For customers buying that kind of stuff online it can be quite important to rely on some local expertise.
      • Generalists : those are the big players such as Amazon or Zalando. They do sell watches and jewellery, sometimes at a really low cost, but they don’t offer such a service as a traditional shop.
  • Low investment. This is key. It’s my first venture and I’m quite aware this will fail (it’s the purpose of this project to discover all the pitfalls). The challenge here is to be able to offer, on a decent website, some product variety while not having too much inventory. My solution :
    • A scalable website : I will use Shopify which seemed the best way to have something up and running quickly at a low cost. Moreover, it provides a lot of plugins that can help improve the user experience and the marketing possibilities. Those factors are quite important to me as I want to try using an agile method (I will come back to this in another post).
    • High quality pictures : I pick brands and suppliers that can provide me decent quality pictures as well as metadata for their products. I do not want to spend hours taking pictures of all the stuff I will sell.
    • Low stock : Yes, watches and jewellery, even for a retailer, do cost a lot and I can’t afford spending thousands of euros to build one. As I want to stay lean, the best plan is, on the one hand, to lean on (no pun intended) my parents’ store. We have a small but diversified inventory. On the other hand, to work with suppliers that can send me the goods in one or two days. Customers will pull the supply #dotheToyota.