In the beginning we printed all of our GunSkins in house. Demand for our products has grown quickly and we are now able to mass produce using state of the art print and cut technology. A gun skin is a vinyl wrap used to protect both the gun and the user in the field.
We are gun and hunting enthusiast and we felt there was a need to match our guns to our other camouflage. In the beginning we started printing our very own wraps from home and have now outsourced our printing to a full scale printer.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Our first sale was manual. We've produced some kits and been showing them to interested parties and gun shows before our website was launched. Now, however, our major channels include Amazon, eBay, and of course our homepage.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
Within Shopify, the most important app we use is the variant images app. Without it, our customers would not be able to click on a camouflage swatch and see what it looks like on a firearm or accessory before deciding to purchase. Other apps we use include Product Reviews, Customer Pricing, Product Upsell, Google Shopping App, and more.
Also important to run our business is the Ship Station app. We download all orders from our channels into a single app to print, fulfill, and ship our orders. It's so nice to have complete integration.
What are your top recommendations for new ecommerce entrepreneurs?
It was vital for us to have someone take the templates and apps that Shopify offers, and customize them to meet our needs. The way the website functions to the user is so important. Even with the color swatches documentation and variant images app, we still needed quite of bit of customizations to our templates.
The Shopify user forums are worth their weight in gold. Many of the hurdles we came across were also experienced by other users. Their input and suggestions helped us fix the bugs and design questions we experienced prior to launching our website. It's really nice how our website really stands out from other Shopify sites because of the customization we invested in.