Editor’s Note: The first panel discussion during the 2021 NCA Success Summit featured Courtland Hickey of Chicago Costume and Terry Sinopoli of Arlene’s Costumes in Rochester, NY discussing their experiences selling products online. Here are five key take-aways from that event. This just scratches the surface of what was covered in the panel discussion. If you’d like to watch the entire panel discussion, click here.
Take-Away #1: Don’t limit your online sales to just your web site
Courtland: We sell our own website but we also sell a lot on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and most importantly, Etsy, which is one of the newest places to sell on. As soon as the pandemic hit, we started making face masks and face masks sales really got us through the early part of the pandemic because they're so simple to make….. Now we're just selling fabric [on Etsy]. By the half yard, by the quarter yard. People are paying $20 for a fat quarter of some old stuff I've had sitting around for 20 or 30 years. So if you're looking for a good place to get rid of some stuff you’re not sure if anybody ever is going to want, Etsy is the place to do it. And, Etsy…has a very user friendly process. It doesn't require a lot of technical expertise, you don't have to write code or anything like that. You take a picture, you fill in the details, you figure out the shipping, you make up a price and you start selling it. They make it really simple…. Etsy is the place for the stuff that we make that is one of the kind. Whether it's face masks or materials or Ruth Bader Ginsburg collars or something like that.
Take-Away #2: Even if you don’t sell online, people find you there
Courtland: The reality is, the customers find our retail stores through the internet and they use our website to base their in-person buying decisions on what they've seen digitally. So while we may not sell every product through our website, it's really important to maintain a huge inventory of available products online because [maybe] customers are looking at them and saying, "I saw that you had this on your website so I thought, let me just come in. Even though I didn't call, I didn't email, I didn't Facebook message you, I saw that you had it so now I'm here." And so it provides a real direct conduit to in person sales even though it's digital.
Take-Away #3: You don’t always need to discount stuff when you sell it online
Courtland: Pricing is a big part of online sales. I think a lot of people are intimidated by Amazon Marketplace because they see these guys have free shipping, or they're selling it below cost, but we're in a big industry with a lot of different products from a lot of different places and you just got to find out what you've got that nobody else has. Sometimes it's a timing issue. The prices for products skyrocket in the final 10 days of October or around Christmas. Then you can make a lot of money selling the same products that you're selling every day….. The way I handle it is I basically limit the amount of product. So if I have 100 of something and I put it on there, I don't put 100 available at any time, I put maybe 10 or 12. And then as soon as they sell out, I'm like, "Oh man, I've got 50 of those in the back. What's the price going for?"
Take-Away #4: Promote your web site on social media
Terry: We do so much with our social media. I post multiple times a day from different sites referring to not just our products but also cultural references, movies, recipes, holidays, it just depends. The posts refer people back to our site. …. This time of year, of course, we're looking at a lot of Easter Bunnies, but I don't want every single post to be Easter Bunny, Easter Bunny, Easter Bunny. So I mix it up, I just posted a recipe from one of my favorite pages that's an Easter recipe. But then I'll go back a little bit later today and post another Easter Bunny. The more that you can draw people to your page from unique sites and not be just having people logged directly into your website, you're going to get more action and you're going to actually move up on Google, you're going to move up on all those searches too. You've got to mention your website every couple of posts, you really have to keep it going.
Courtland: A big part of your organic search is how much you're doing, how often you update your website, the amount of products you have on your website, the terminology you use on that website and how much you participate in things like social media that are updated often. That shows that you're active and so, when somebody who's never been to your store before goes into Google and says, “Halloween costumes” or “costumes near me,” Google's taking all of that information and using it to determine what the best result for that customer is. And that information that you input into the internet about your store, your social media, all of that stuff will relate to that customer who's making a search online and you come up first or you come up as highly rated. And they are going to say, "Well, that's the place I want to go to."
Take-Away #5: Don’t worry about getting returns
Terry: As far as from our own website, we don't get returns that often and when we do, it's typically a size issue. They bought the wrong size, can I exchange this? So, it just depends on what marketplace you're using. You just have to know what your limits are, you have to be realistic.
Courtland: You have to take returns and you just got to get over it. It's a part of it and it's all a numbers game and you just got to not take it personally, right? It's less than 1% of all the orders. And you just downcycle. So somebody took that costume, they wore it, they returned it, they got their money back or they broke it or it got broken in shipping and they sent it back. Well, you just move it to eBay, you put it on discount to get rid of it. You write it off, that's life. Every situation is a little different but I don't lay awake at night worrying about customers using my costumes and returning them. It's a part of the world we live in and I accept that.