The More Moving Parts, the More Time Required to Manage Them

It’s simple math really, the more moving parts you place into your eCommerce business the more complex things become and the more time required for you to manage everything.  This isn’t rocket science however I fear very few eCommerce sellers spend enough time understanding this principle so I want to bring it to your attention as a friendly reminder.

Are you selling on multiple marketplaces and websites? Are you managing your SEO, PPC and email campaigns.  Are you posting things on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest?  Are you buying, warehousing and shipping your orders?  Are you answering emails, instant chat and phone calls from customers? Are you taking product photos, building titles and descriptions?  I have a feeling you’re doing all of the above and more.  One of the reasons you’re working so hard is because your business has too many moving parts for you to manage.

What happens when you add more SKU’s to the mix?  It multiplies all these steps x-fold by the number of SKU’s you are adding.  That means more photos, more descriptions and more titles.

I have 3 business model scenarios for you to consider.

Scenario 1: You’re selling a product mix that’s very wide and shallow where you have 1,000’s of SKU’s but only sell a small quantity of each, should you be making a high margin or low margin?

Scenario 2: You’re selling a product mix that’s very narrow and very deep were you have a limited number of SKU’s and you sell the same models over and over, should you be making a high margin or low margin In this scenario?

Scenario 3: You’re selling a product mix that’s very narrow and very shallow where you have a limited number of SKU’s and you only sell a small quantity over and over, should you be making a high margin or low margin in this scenario?

Which scenario has the least moving parts?  Scenario 3 of course.  You have the lowest number of SKU’s so you have less time spent on photos, descriptions and titles and you also have less volume of sales so you also have less emails, less customer chats and less phone calls as well as less boxes to receive, pack and ship as well.

I watch so many sellers enter the eCommerce space and they focus their energy on adding as many SKU’s to their mix as they can either deep or shallow trapping themselves into scenario 1 or 2. They work super hard at descriptions, photos and product titles.  They spread their inventory offering across multiple websites and marketplaces and worry about having accurate inventory control across all the sales channels.  They stress themselves out about technology, massive data management, tons of moving parts to find themselves eventually in the high volume / low margin business.  Ultimately, working very hard for very little.

Cheers to selling smarter!

Brandon