What if I have few things to sell?

Sometimes, being in a place where people need stuff helps a lot to do business or e-business. But for e-business, no need for you to open up a place for your stuff to sell. In this community where people need stuff such as the students in and around the campus, a forum was made to provide exchanging information and trade. You can also offer your things to buy or if you want to sell your old stuff as second-handed items, there are sections just for trading, buying or selling second-handed or new items.

Example: http://www.mymmu.net/v2/

A good presentation..

Talking about web blogs in e-business purpose for retail clothes online, a good presentation of websites/blogs is important to attract people to go to your page, which is the only purpose of making one. If people do not even have the interest to view your page, your business can't grow. Because providing a good presentation will give you back good feedback from users. A good,clear and presentable website is like as shown below..






The new updates/design is listed on top of the page to show the highlights of the main design. The rest are models dressed wih the clothes. Users can just click on the picture to know more about the detail of the item. Bottom part is the section for accessories and shoes that goes with the clothes so people can mix and match with other items as they can easily make comparison. Even the tonal color of the layout is easy on the eye where as other extra information are located at the side page.
Therefor good presentation is important in order for young e-entrepreneurs to start making e-business

Many skills learnt

I realise that to be a good entrepreneur you not only need a creative idea but creative marketing as well! i am talking in the scope of HANDMADE PRODUCTS here ranging from fashionable accessories to food. As an e-entrepreneur, having a keen business sense isnt enough, you need working skills, photography skills, good language/writing skills, basic IT skills and above all, a good sense of design. And if not, you may need good contacts to find people with the above skills.

Take these sites for example:

From: http://polkadotteboutique.blogspot.com/

This site showcases homemade bags. Obviously you need to know how to sew and design good looking and functional bags. Then there is the photo shooting of the bags in a nice environment. This site encourages people to go green and be eco-friendly. So what better way to show that these homemade bags are eco-friendly than choosing a natural landscape as the location for the photoshoot? As you can see, the owner also chooses Blogger for her website. It is the most convenient and easiest site to manage updates and posts. She may have even custom made her own website template or downloaded one to decorate her site. This gives the website its own identity and personality of the brand.

From: http://cookies-and-such.blogspot.com/

This site sells cookies and cupcakes. In the homepage, the chef behind the cute looking cupcakes is a motherly and gentle-looking woman. The theme of the site also shows a homely and cute design which relates suitably to the cupcakes. Well, its no wonder because this site is a mother-daughter venture. So I can assume that the target consumers are females since they like sweet desserts ;) and the mother-daughter relationship pulls people in because there is a warm homely feel to it. In this case, the photography may be average but the designs on the cupcake are enough to attract customers.

Plus, these 2 sites used catchy slogans and post titles to attract people to read or visit their site too. Just like magazine article titles, they have to be short and instantly eye-catching. PD Boutique even included some personal descriptions for her products. So to the least, these 2 entreprenuers have the skills in writing to up the level in interest of their products.

So it is evident that being an entrepreneur generally needs a lot of skills. If an undergraduate is to venture into this business, I believe they can learn a lot of extra skills that may come in handy for them in the future.

cloths and other products.

most of the time graduates choose cloths because its easy to handle. and easy to show to customers.
most of the time cloths are the high demanding object at the online. new generations like fashion more than past. so it automatically become so much important than other subjects. normally we have to go to shops to choose cloths . but when there is online shopping no need to go and wast the time. so when there is online shopping there are many models that you can choose. so no need to go and buy them.
as sri lankens we export cloths. its one of main exports we have. so many university students join to online business. they sell cloths. because its easy to find. they work as a middle man between customer and suppler. suppler also like to supply them good products. because with in short time they can introduce product to the world market.
i have few friends who doing online business . they do toys and cloths. people who do cloths have low risk then the people who do other things. because if some thing happen to the product it goes to the person who own the site. then goes to the person who supply. so it will be a lost to there e-business owner.

Home-made accessories

This is one of the way that undergraduates can earn extra money using their creativity. The blog shown above is managed by my friend. She uses blog as the platform to sell her clay-made accessories since it is free and easy to manage. This blog has received positive feedback from the viewers.

Source: http://www.colorss88.blogspot.com/

Clothes or no clothes

In the result of our survey, the most purchased items are clothes. Also, number of entrepreneur retailing of clothes ranked the highest as well. On top of it, retailing of clothes as well is the most preferred line by the majority of would-be entrepreneur to venture in.

Although there are high demand on clothes, the current supply is only slightly lower than demand. Should these would-be entrepreneurs be really venturing into the retailing of clothes, it could cause the circumstances of supply more than demand. This could cause high competition among entrepreneurs that could be detrimental to their business as in retail price; although it is beneficial to the consumers point of view as in the ability to buy clothes in a very economical price.

However, on the would-be entrepreneurs point of view, should they be desire to venture into clothing line, the clothes design have to be extraordinary and exclusive in order to compete with the current entrepreneur and gaining better profit.

Lone entreprenuer or Business partners?

Everyone, I found that from our questionnaires results that 62% of would-be entrepreneurs prefer to work alone. Their reasons being that they feel more secure working alone, problems of miscommunication can be avoided and they can be more self-reliant. Do all of you think that working alone is better or having business partners would be more efficient?

I think that working in a group of 3 would be good. That way, tasks can be divided and done efficiently plus less time would be consumed. When there are business decisions to be made, 2 heads are definitely better than 1. A 3 head system will always get fair results in voting for decisions. Sometimes doing an entrepreneurship alone can be stressful and too much of a burden for 1 individual, especially if their products are hand-made. The workload can be easily spread out among the 3 business partners and the probability of producing a well-made and top quality product will definitely increase.

Therefore, I think that doing an entrepreneurship with business partners is definitely better than being alone. The decision making will be easier, there is less workload on an individual and the products produced will be better in quality and quantity.

What are things that undergraduates sell online? (ques 2)

E-entrepreneurs are getting popular among undergraduates since they can sell their products, as well as their services to other users. For undergraduates who study in art/ creative field, they used to sell their artwork online. One of the most popular websites that enables artists to sell their products are www.devianart.com.
Other than that, undergraduates used to sell accessories, clothes and even mobiles online. Most of them like to use facebook as their platform since facebook is free and user-friendly.

The Culture of Undergraduates as E-Entrepreneurs

Number of online shops are increasing and seen as a norm these days. Most number of these online shops may actually belong to a person who are still undergraduates who operate their businesses during their free time. To ponder about this subject matter, discussion will be made based on the questions below.

1. Why do these undergraduates want to do e-business(es)?
2. What are the things they sell?
3. What are the problems that they could or have encountered?

Introduction of Members

Chaow Jen Hou (1081107852)
Gihan Baratha (1081107657)
Mahmood Bawian (1071118117)
Ngan Wei Yee (1081108156)
Siti Khodijah (1081107783)
Tang Chia Leh (1081107769)