Hello Grasshoppa,
Recently, I have successfully launched my e-commerce store Black Belt Tape during the MCO. It took me more than 6 months of planning, sourcing, testing & launching the product. To be honest, it is harder than what I expected it to be but the result of the website & product are pretty satisfying. The MCO period has allowed me to sit & focus on setting up website to my desired level. So it is really not a bad thing to be in this MCO situation except for the limitation of travelling around, training and time with friends & family.
Since I was young, I have always been known to be the person that will be trying anything & everything to start my own business. Prior launching Black Belt Millionaire blog, I started a food blog & a workout blog. Aside from starting this e-commerce store, I have also tried multiple business ideas & websites but it was either not launched or it was just not well launched. Too many ideas with trial & error. In my early days, I find that many ideas of mine were not followed through because I basically killed my ideas or just gave myself too much excuses why it will fail. It may not be the best mindset that I used to have but for the past few years I learned that it is better to try & fail rather than not trying at all. At least I know I’ve tried.
When I started Black Belt Tape idea, I started to look at it as a personal need for me as I need to use it for my training & competition. You can read more details about How Did Black Belt Tape Come About. Long story short, it is a need for me & the existing tapes in the market are costly. I started to source around for a cheaper option or maybe buying in a larger quantity. While doing my research, I stumbled across a few medical companies that manufactures tape. The next part is challenging as I needed to discuss with them on pricing, production capabilities among other things
Narrowing down from 6 companies to 3 companies involve pricing & their production capabilities. After narrowing down to 3 possible business partner, I started to order some sample from them. First batch of sample arrived & I used around 1-2 weeks to test several types of materials & the quality of each materials. From there, I continued my discussion with 2 companies instead of 3. Upon my continuation of discussion with those 2 companies, I picked my current business partner as they are proven to be more accommodating than another supplier. Testing each samples requires longer time as I need to ensure those samples qualities are good. It took me around 4 months to test several batches of tape for me before I finalized my first batch of order for Black Belt Tape.
In addition to this, I was also surveying a few e-commerce platforms to host my website and I ended up choosing EasyStore instead of Shopify. You may read the comparison of EasyStore vs Shopify. I chose EasyStore Standard Package which cost around RM199 per month. I paid RM1194 for their yearly package. Setting up accounts in other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter is also important. Building a website may look easy but it requires a huge amount of effort to make it attractive to potential customers. A good website involves a good interface & nice picture.
A successful brand will always come with a presentable logo. Not all brand logos are costly. If you are looking to save some cost on logo or if you are good with design, you may use platform like Canva for your design. Since I have no talent in designing, I sourced my logo designer from Fiverr. It cost me RM535.16 to get my logo done with the source file. It is important to have your source file for your logo design.
With the finalization of the sample, I placed my first batch of order for my tapes. As Covid-19 situation in China was bad in February, the production was delayed to almost a month before they could continue with the manufacturing. The production itself took them around 3 weeks to fulfill my purchase order. Later on, Covid-19 situation has caused cancellation of many passenger flights which resulted space congestion & increase of demand for courier companies. It took me 2 weeks to get my shipment in from China. The tapes have finally arrived & it is ready for sale. With the MCO situation, I am expecting low demand in sales as there won’t be any demand for finger tape at this moment. Nevertheless, if you plan to buy it once the MCO is over, feel free to head over to theblackbelttape.com to make your first order. As a welcome gift, Black Belt Tape will be offering 15% Off for your first purchase.
OSS!
