Starting a reseller business always seems like a cakewalk from a distance. But most people eventually find out that it requires work and commitment. Fortunately, you can avoid a huge chunk of the work with the right tools. And one such tool is a Shopify store.

Now, you probably have multiple doubts in mind. Why a Shopify store? I don’t have the skills to set up a Shopify store for reselling. Will a reseller business even work on Shopify? 

We understand your initial scepticism, they’re reasonable, and you probably think you have better options. 

But before you consider those, let’s show you how to start a reseller business and why you should take the Shopify route to success.

Why Shopify?

New entrepreneurs starting a business often fall into two main categories. First, some are excited about owning their ventures and can’t wait to get into them. And then, some are sceptical, confused, and unsure of what to do next.

Those in the first group often have the motivation and a cheerful disposition to the business. Those in the second group are often more calculative and prudent.

But it doesn’t matter which group you fall into; you need the right tools to go far. First, the easiest approach to start a retail business is to go ecommerce. It costs less, takes little time and is easier to set up, especially on a platform like Shopify.

Shopify is the first SaaS to offer ecommerce services to allow resellers to do business on their platform. Of course, it has a bunch of competitors, but very few come close to the trailblazer for retailing businesses. 

So, Shopify remains the biggest and arguably the best SaaS ecommerce platform in the UK. It currently has over 173,000 stores running on it in the UK alone. 

Additionally, Shopify provides one of the easiest, most affordable and most versatile online store options for online retailers. We daresay the creators designed it specifically to help beginners in the business find their feet. It’s perfect for you in the early stages of your ecommerce entrepreneurship journey.

Reseller business ideas to try on Shopify 

The reselling industry is full of opportunities for veterans and new entrants. You can sell anything online if the law doesn’t oppose it. 

Combining that advantage with Shopify’s functionality allows you to run a successful reselling venture without owning a physical store.

Below are five ideas to get you started in the ecommerce business.

Footwear Retail

Fashion items are some of the biggest sellers in the ecommerce industry, and footwear sales contribute a lot to that. People will always buy shoes for their utility or to satisfy their fashion preferences. So, shoes have an ever-active market.

The market is versatile, as you can pick from a wide range of shoe categories. You may pick a few footwear categories that appeal to you and curate a market that wants them. For example, you can decide to specialise in athletic shoes, which involves selling all kinds of sports boots and sneakers.

The best part about the shoe reselling business is how you can get creative with your sales strategy, even on Spotify. For example, you can launch seasonal designs to sell certain products in or out of season. And you can make a tidy profit doing so.

Vintage Boutique

Still in the fashion industry, setting up a classic store for reselling vintage clothing on Shopify is also a brilliant idea. Only a few physical boutiques exclusively offer vintage-style clothing. So you can take advantage of that market gap.

That way, you can structure your store around vintage fashion items, notably clothing. Then again, many people are okay with buying used clothing that is still in good condition. So, in this line of business, you can resell vintage clothing. Or you can deal in second-hand clothes.

But of course, you can also combine the two. So you can sell both vintage and more recent but used fashion items.

Sport and Fitness Gears Shop

Another good reseller business you can start on Shopify is a sports and fitness shop. More people are taking an interest in sports and fitness nowadays. The market for recreational items is growing, and you have a good chance of profiting in the industry.

However, there’s a little caveat in this niche. It requires you to have a significant interest in recreational activities and goods to run it well. You need more than just your desire to run a successful business in this niche. Hence, being a sportsman or fitness buff is an advantage here.

Why? You’ll find it easier to relate with your customers and serve them better. Additionally, people may not take you seriously if they find out you barely use the items you sell.

Toy and Children’s Items 

Children’s toys are a brilliant product idea for starting a reseller store on Shopify. These goods are often readily available (children grow up and often lose interest in their old toys). And they also sell quickly — babies are being born daily.

The best part is you can quickly make a tidy profit in this niche if you can get your hands on some vintage high-demand items. Occasionally, some old toy design from several years ago suddenly draws widespread interest and high demand, which drives its prices up. If you have such a toy in your store, that’s an excellent opportunity for your business.

Consignment

Consignment is thrift selling but for high-end items. Running a consignment store on Shopify means reselling used high-end items, such as expensive designer clothes, shoes, and bags, for more affordable prices.

This business is quite profitable because many people love to get quality products at cheaper rates than the original price. However, the items will typically cost more than those in an ordinary thrift shop because they’re high-end goods. 

Step-by-step Guide to Start an Online Reseller Business on Shopify 

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set up and resell with a Shopify outlet online. 

Signup to Shopify

This point is self-explanatory; you must first create your Shopify account if you don’t already have one. Shopify will require your email and a password for your login credentials. 

Fortunately, Shopify won’t ask you to confirm your email account immediately after opening the account. So, you can skip the time-wasting stuff and set up your Shopify store for reselling.

Name Your Store

The typical business starting process often begins with picking a name. This idea also applies to setting up a Shopify store. As you set up the Shopify account for your reseller business, you’ll encounter a prompt for naming your store. 

Of course, you should already have a proper name in mind for the business by now. So, you shouldn’t have a problem here. However, if you don’t have a name, you can use the Shopify business name generator to get ideas.

That said, Shopify will give you a free subdomain when you set up your account. As a result, the name you choose for your business will have the subdomain suffix in the URL. For example, if you name your shop “The Shoe Place,” the store URL will look like this.

The-shoe-place.myshopify.com

After naming your Shopify store, you’ll have to choose whether you’re running a new or existing business. This section ends with you submitting a few personal details and clicking “Next” on the page. 

Choose a Unique Theme

After creating their business accounts on Shopify, most resellers skip right to creating the key pages. That’s okay, but it’s often easier to choose a theme and add it to your considerations while setting up your pages.

This bottom-up approach allows you to plan your pages and overall store structure around your selected theme. So, choose the theme you want to use before creating your key pages.

Create Your Key Pages

After selecting a store name and submitting all the necessary personal information, you’ll primarily have an empty shop setup. Then, you’ll get a prompt on the page to do a quick setup and fill up your store. 

However, don’t rush into that just yet. It’s often easier to finish with the basics first before adding products. 

You want to add all the necessary pages for your reseller business on the Shopify store before other things. These will include the: 

• Home page
• Collections
• Contact
• About us
• Privacy Policy pages.

Google mandates all websites to have a privacy policy page to run AdSense Ads. Thankfully, Shopify has a free content generator that can help write a privacy policy page content and send it to your email.

To create a privacy policy page, go to the “Sales Channels” label on the admin panel and select “Online Shop,” then select “Pages”. Create a new page and name it “Privacy Policy.” Then copy and paste the privacy policy message on the page and click “Save”.

Ensure to copy the page URL before leaving; you’ll need it when creating the navigational system. 

Next, you want to make the page show in the footer bar. So, go to the Footer bar and click ‘Add Menu Item.” 

Name the menu item “Privacy Policy” and paste the URL in the prompt. That should add the page to the footer. You can repeat the process for the Contact and About us Pages.

Add your Products. 

With the pages done, you’re past the boring sessions. Now you can start adding your products and set up a proper reseller store on Shopify. Use the following steps to add products.

• Go to the Home page and click “Add Product.”
• On the prompt that appears, specify the product name and add a description. Try to make the description as detailed as possible. Also, you want to optimise it for a good ranking in SERP. So you should do some research and add some keywords to the text.
• Next, add the product’s photos. It’s best if you use high-quality images of the actual product. Don’t just use pictures from the web. It’s best to let the customers see the products as they are.
• After that, set up pricing by typing in the amount you intend to sell the goods.
• The last action in this session is to create variants of the products. This is for goods that come in different specifications, for example, shoes of different colours or sizes. You only need to add categories to the product and then specify the quantity and price.
• With that done, change the status from “Draft” to “Active” and click save to upload your first product to your Shopify store.

Add Collections

After putting up all your wares in the store, the next thing is to group similar products into collections. Collections help customers find commodities and alternatives easily on the same page.

• To do that, go to “Products” and click “Collections.”
• You can set the collection to add products automatically or let you do it manually. But we’ll recommend you leave it on automatic function.
• Next, choose a product tag to facilitate automated product addition. You’ll also add tags to the products.
• Repeat the step as often as necessary until you’ve distributed all the products into appropriate collections.

Create a Navigation System

Users can’t access the product categories in your store without an appropriate navigational system. The collections already exist in your store, but they won’t be visible unless you add them to a navigation bar. 

Here’s how to add a navigation bar to your Shopify store. 

• To do that, go to “Online Store”, then click the “Navigation” option. After that, click “Main Menu” and add a new menu item.
• Next, add a category to the menu item and save it. 
• The space on your navigation menu is limited, so you can’t add too many items. However, you can create drop-down lists in menus to display everything you want. 
• To do that, select the Main menu tab in the admin panel, then create a new item.
• After that, drag and drop the new item into an existing menu. Doing that will automatically create the drop-down list.

Create the Checkout Page

After setting up all the product display pages, the next step is to add a checkout page. To do that, go to “Theme Settings” and select “Checkout”. That will open the checkout page in the edit, and you can customise it to your preference. 

Tweak the general theme on the page to fit your overall store theme. You probably won’t need to implement complex scripts for the system since you’re not handling many orders yet. You can finish up by enabling tipping and checkout via email. 

Connect Payment Gateways

You’re ready to start your reseller business on your Shopify store. However, You need to take care of this last aspect to ensure everything eventually translates into profit. 

• To add your payment gateways, go to settings and select payments. 
• Once there, click on “Complete account set up.” 
• In the prompt that opens, add the required details about yourself and the business. 
• Lastly, connect the third-party payment processors you use or a crypto gateway if you accept cryptocurrency.
• Ensure to test the system by going to the home page and placing an order. If it works fine, then you’re all set for business.

Set Up Shipping and Logistics

Your Shopify store setup is complete once you customise the checkout page and commence marketing for your reseller business. However, your ecommerce setup is incomplete without accounting for how you’ll get the items to the customer after they complete the purchase.

So, you need to set up your shipping and logistic options for getting goods to the buyers. Fortunately, Shopify has also made provisions available for this. 

• Go to settings and choose “shipping.”
• Then, include all the third-party logistics companies you use.
• Lastly, specify the dimensions for your custom packaging requirements.
• If you offer local delivery, then go to “Delivery Area” and select either “Use Zip Codes” or “Set delivery radius” and edit it to what works for you.

Add Your Sales Channels

You can also link the other platforms you use for your reseller business, like Facebook or Instagram shops, to your Shopify store. 

Go to the admin panel and click on the plus icon beside the Sales Channels label. The pop-up will let you integrate all your social media outlets into the setup. 

Register a Domain

Your setup will bear the free domain that Shopify provides for businesses. So, it’ll initially take your store name with the .myshopify.com prefix. However, you can change it to a domain name of your preference. 

Change the domain name by following this sequence “Sales Channels”>” Online Store”> “Domains”. If you don’t own a domain yet, you can buy a new one by clicking the “Buy” button on the page.

Launch Your Store

Congratulations, you’re ready to start your reseller business on Shopify. You only need to launch formally and let the world know you’re up and running. Of course, it helps that you do some promotions to increase your reach and visibility.

General tips to Run a Successful Ecommerce Store on Shopify

Now that you know how to start it, the entire Shopify reseller business store should take you less than an hour to set up. However, it takes more to make a business succeed. 

At the very least, you need the three factors discussed below.

A Business Plan

A plan is crucial to a business’s success. You can hardly run a profitable venture without a proper plan. In fact, a business plan is one of the first things you must create before you start working on your Shopify store. 

Your business plan should include a detailed outline of your projections and strategies towards profitability. It should account for your target audience and marketing channels to promote the business. Essentially, it must include every consideration for making the business profitable. 

Register Your Business and Get the Necessary Licences

Depending on the region you’re setting up in and the kind of goods you intend to resell, you’ll likely need to register your business to commence operation. Registering your business is often a smart move, even if there’s no specific requirement for you to do so. It’ll save you trouble in the long run.

Market Your Store

You’re just starting the business. So you’ll still be in relative obscurity for a while. The fastest way to pull yourself out is through marketing and advertisement.

So, you must up your publicity strategy and do everything possible to get your store in your target audiences’ faces. They can’t buy from your store if they don’t know it exists. So ensure your target customers learn about you.

Your Reseller Business Can Succeed On Shopy

Starting a reseller business on Shopify is as straightforward as it gets. You can complete the entire setup in under an hour without technical knowledge. 

That said, following this guide and starting your reseller business on Shopify is not enough to guarantee your success in the ecommerce industry. You must play the business game right. That involves doing promotions and ensuring customer satisfaction.

And we can help. Here at Crep Chief Notify, we provide industry-leading tools to help resellers grow their business. We’ll also tell you what to sell, when to stock it and what prices to set. 

Join our reseller platform today!