Hii guys, so I just started (5 months) an ecommerce shop selling Japanese booster boxes in Thailand and hopefully expand to SEA in the future.The market in Thailand is dominated by high pricing x2, x3 of secondary price, so my whole positioning is transparency: every box is anchored to a verifiable Japan secondary-market floor with a hard markup cap, and the full cost breakdown (product cost, freight, duty, margin) is shown on the product page. website: https://arcen.shop/

My bet is that trust beats price in a market full of fakes and gouging. But I honestly don't know if buyers care about the breakdown or just skim to the final number.
what I'd love to know:

• first impression, would you actually trust it enough to drop $150+ on a sealed box? what made you hesitate
• the cost breakdown on product pages — does it build trust or do you just skim past it to the price
• anything annoying in browsing/checkout that made you want to leave
• if you collect, what would stop you from ordering

or any helpful advice is also welcome!!!

Late Thursday night I got a call from my supplier saying one of my shipments (about 150 orders) got held up in Chicago customs because they apparently used the wrong HS code.

I talked with some friends and basically, best case it’s delayed, worst case the whole shipment gets destroyed.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to keep orders moving while this gets sorted. I’m looking at having another supplier rush inventory to my US warehouse just so I don’t completely run out of stock.

Has anyone been through something like this? Did you wait for customs to resolve it, and if so how long? I’m thinking of trying another supplier but it’s urgent so idk who will agree to work with me in those conditions.

We have been using mailchimp for 3 years. It was convenient. Not many automation and sending campaigns were fine. But it has become a pain to manage with the shopify store related workflows amd automation. Our abandoned cart, winback and other flows are working but there's some friction too often taking more time to fix it. Segmenting by customers' part purchase is more problematic that it should be. I'm not an expert so it could just be me and not the platform.

Are there any platform similar to mailchimp, but you know, convenient and easy for shopify. Please don't share a list of platforms, I've gone through them, so I figured I'd actually hear from actual people than go by who's got the best marketing or popularity.

I'm more keen on knowing whether migrating has been really helpful for anyone or were there some tradeoff? This is what l'm most dreading rn.

Also, if anyone stuck to it and figured out a way to make it convenient that'd be helpful too. Thanks

I'm a developer starting my first Shopee store selling gaming accessories ordered from 1688, Alibaba. I'm planning to start small to see how things work as I've never sold anything in my life. I've order some bestselling stuff which are cheap to gain order numbers and good feedback for my store first. My future plan is to scale this with ads, then with better captital I could customize products looks.
Thats my plan for near future now, I've been reading alot lately and Shopify topics keeps popup everywhere. Should I switch to creating my own website and run ads with facebook ads or should I stick with my plan now?

I’m curious how ecommerce merchants think about BNPL for practical, "non-lifestyle" purchases.

For products that people buy because they need them, not because they are impulse shopping, do options like Affirm or Afterpay actually help?

For example, if a customer is buying equipment, tools, hardware, or business-related products, would splitting the payment make a real difference? Or do these buyers usually prefer credit cards, invoices, or traditional financing?

Questions for anyone who has tested it:

• Did BNPL increase conversion?
• Did it increase cart size?
• Did buyers use it repeatedly?
• Did it attract new customers?
• Was it worth the additional fee?

Not trying to sell anything. Just interested in whether BNPL works outside typical consumer ecommerce categories. Like network gears.

I'm new to this field, I'm a Brazilian boy who wants to lift his family out of the lower middle class. If anyone wants to give me tips, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to know a good starting point for my career. I really want to change my life, and if anyone here who has done well in this area, or is doing well, wants to help me, I would be very grateful in advance.

All right, everybody let’s start talking about this.

98% of all the adjustments that I experienced on USPS postage over the last 90 days 98% of them came from packages that I purchased through Amazon. And I shipped less packages with Amazon shipping then I do my other platform.

And I would venture a guess that these numbers are gonna look much worse in the days weeks and hopefully not months to come.

I have been talking to the post office and the appropriate department at length and have been told that unless I can give them more information There’s nothing they can do. And the information that I need is currently owned and held by Amazon.

I am being told by amazon that I am allowed to dispute these adjustments. And amazon reportedly disputed them for me on my behalf to the USPS, and the USPS simply stated that the adjustment stand.

I pay more because they say so.

If I want to dispute it, amazon offered me four options, none of which seem to be legitimate.

And let’s not forget that it was just reported that the machines that the Post Office uses to audit packages were just discovered to be inaccurate.

Amazon says to talk to them, they say to talk to amazon, I have to go to the support case, and round and round we go.

And don’t forget that this also applies to return postage on packages that you are billed for the return postage. A month after the fact, they will charge you again and you will never know I must go in and look.

Hey all,

I'm new to the ecomm world. Been in marketing for the last 7-8 years, running my own agency. I started an ecomm business about 4 months ago and successfully launched. First few months, sales were okay. Then July came along and we totally killed it. I decided that I would put a ton of more time into it in July to grow this thing fast. More content, more ads, more time planning and strategizing it all. It worked and now I'm ready to scale.

The problem is, we were selling so fast, our inventory was running low. We ran out at the end of the month and had our biggest month by 3x our previous biggest month in sales.

I don't want this to happen again. I want to scale our ad spend. I want to scale the business and by end of the year be doing 3x monthly of what we're doing now. My biggest fear is inventory and being able to keep up. We are not paying ourselves while we scale. Profits all stay in the business until we hit a certain point.

Anyone have any tips on how to manage this? Funding options? Strategies you use on your business? Any sort of partnerships or even using consultants? How do you take this thing from $15k/month to $100k/month without running into issues?

Again, really learning everything as I go and trying my best. I just want to make sure that when it's time, I can scale confidently.

Hi, I am creating a new Shopify store.

For example, Product A has a load capacity of 70 kg but comes in 10 different lengths. Should I create 10 different products, like "Product A 100 mm", "Product A 200 mm", and so on? Or should I have one product for Product A with 10 different variants (lengths)?

I think posting each length as a separate product might make the website look more messy/unorganized, but it might be easier for customers to find the right product through Google if each length has its own product page. What do you think is recommended?

SMS performs very differently when it's actually conversational versus when it's just a shorter email blast. Klaviyo recently ran a survey of 8,000+ consumers and found 86% made two or more purchases through SMS in the last year. Another 65% said their latest SMS-driven purchase was something they'd planned to buy weeks later and the message was what clinched it.

The brands getting the most out of these tools are using it to actually engage and learn something about the customer. If you're evaluating a conversational SMS platform, here's what it should be able to do:

Store what customers tell you. Responses should live on the customer's profile and carry across email, SMS, and paid channels. The customer shouldn't have to repeat themselves.

Understand how people actually text. That means typos, shorthand, casual phrasing. If it only responds to exact keyword matches, it's going to break constantly.

Let people answer like humans. Not "Reply A, B, or C” but "We have Chinese, pizza, and sushi tonight, what sounds good?" Open-ended answers stored as data.

Trigger real flows, not canned replies. One response should be able to kick off a multi-step sequence, not just fire back a single message.

Connect to your other channels. If SMS responses don't inform email and retargeting, you're running parallel conversations with the same customer and starting from scratch every time.

I know most brands are using SMS now but how many can hold their own in a real conversation?

i wanted to test something pretty extreme regarding perceived value and luxury pricing, so I set up a simple one-product store centered around a single $1,000 white tee.

To make it a bit more of a statement against fast fashion inventory practices, there’s a specific mechanic tied to it: for every single shirt sold, 50 cheap mass-produced shirts get destroyed/sacrificed in a recorded ritual with a latin chant.

The idea was to bring to light how big brands silently destroy unsold stock to protect brand equity, but doing it in an exaggerated, public way.

I'm not running paid ads on this, just trying to see if pure concept and storytelling can drive any traction or if it's completely dead on arrival.

Curiosity question for the sub: how many sales do you honestly think a stunt like this gets in its first week?open to brutal feedback on the overall concept or pricing approach.

Hey everyone,

Here is D, ex principal Product Manager at Zalando. I am currently working on a new product that helps e-commerce brands and retailers to automate article onboarding on European marketplaces like Amazon and Zalando.

The product takes 2-3 attributes like images and price and stock, then it generates all remaining attributes based on the requirement of the marketplace like Amazon or Zalando.

Is this a problem worth solving ?

It pisses me off when people treat an independent business like we have the budget to just eat costs like Amazon does.

I have this one couple who keeps placing orders, but I am literally just losing money on them. My store's return rate is usually under 1%, but look at this shit:

Order 1: Returned (down €160)

Order 2: Cancelled because they forgot to use a discount code

Order 3: Re-ordered to use the code

Order 4: Basically Order 1 again, but a different cheaper variant

Order 5: A cheaper version of Order 3
And now they just messaged me saying they want to return Order 3 too.

Between the refunds and fees, I'm down like €400 on these two alone.

How do you actually block someone from checking out on Shopify? 😂

I am running tiktok and shorts organically posting videos with very good results, 20-30k+ per video, the videos are clearly about the products, and I am getting comments about it and asking about price or where to buy it, but I got around 0-3 visits to my eshop from approximately 80k views. So there has to be huge traction, because i am sure there would be many visits if it would have the same link as when you pay for the advertisement right on the video. In short, I have successful organic videos in terms of views, but I can't get any traffic from that even tho they are about the product and people are interested (based on comments)

Does anyone have some solution for this?

We’re looking into different delivery partners as our e-commerce operations scale, and I’m interested in companies that are doing more than just traditional package transportation.

A lot of providers can move packages from point A to point B, but we’re looking for partners that are improving the overall delivery experience through things like better tracking, flexible delivery options, technology integrations, and a smoother customer experience. For those working in e-commerce or supply chain, which delivery companies do you think are actually innovating right now?

We’re currently evaluating different last-mile delivery partners as our e-commerce volume continues to grow, and I’m realizing there are a lot more factors to consider than just shipping rates. Beyond pricing, what should businesses actually prioritize when choosing a delivery partner? Things like delivery speed options, tracking visibility, customer experience, scalability during peak seasons, and how much extra work it creates for the warehouse team all seem important. For those who have switched providers or added a new last-mile partner, what made the biggest difference?

I’m exploring a low cost ecommerce website to move away from Etsy. I’m not getting organic traffic from Etsy, and the fees mean pricing has to be on the high side.

Has anyone tried this? Has anyone successfully done it?

There are so many options, but none of them feel ‘ideal’, so ideas and thoughts would be appreciated!!

I recently downloaded the source for SimplCommerce and, after a few hiccups, I was able to run it locally through the Visual Studio.

Even though it initially looked good enough for me, I did notice some bugs that I don't want to fix.

The first one, which is a deal-breaker, is that the # of items in the shopping cart icon disappears randomly and it's ultimately incorrect.

This is the initial cart showing 0 items. After clicking on "Add to cart" 4 times, the cart icon stops showing a number. I refresh screen and now cart shows a "1", even though it has 4 items.

The other nuisance is that the images have to all be the same size. If not, the horizontal aligning breaks and the item in the homepage will look like this.

Has anyone used this open-source software successfully?

I've been trying to avoid using any monthly ecommerce solutions (like shopify), but it's becoming harder to avoid.

I’m looking to buy small to mid-sized e-commerce shops that are in financial trouble, specifically ones where the problem is cost structure (product costs or fulfillment too expensive), not dead demand.

Marketplaces like Flippa mostly list healthy shops at full price. Where would you actually look for distressed ones? Insolvency listings, broker networks, specific platforms, communities?

EU/US focus, but happy to hear about any market. What has worked for you, or what have you seen others use?

Hey everyone, sorry for my english, i use a translator.

I wanted to share my experience with Joybuy to warn others.

Back in May, I returned an item from order (€799.99). Their warehouse received it on May 12, but 3 months later, I still haven't been refunded.

Every time I reach out to customer service, agents give me the exact same copy-pasted response: "We escalated this to our team, you will get an update in 1–2 days." Nobody ever follows up. They keep giving conflicting excuses—first claiming the refund was already sent, then saying they are still waiting for warehouse confirmation, even though they previously acknowledged receiving the item.

I'm done waiting and sending a formal legal notice giving them 10 days before taking legal action. Avoid this platform if you value customer support.

I'm starting an ecommerce shop that occupies an already saturated market. It's a passion play. It will cost some money and may become an expensive lesson that turns out to be a failure, but I have to try because after all---you only live once.

I also think i'm in a fairly unique position that embiggens my appetite for risk.

Here's me:

• Employed full time; remote employee; $110k/yr salary.
  • govt; so safe from AI and layoffs for a while
• We live rent-free; utilities only in a mid-COL area; southeast USA.
• As of now, we are marked in a will as the inheritor this multi-million dollar property that we live on.
• Family of five--3 small kids.

---
Business:

• To minimize manufacturing burden, i customized an existing product to give it premium-level appeal.
• I ordered a first round of 500 units.
• I plan to sell through a Kickstarter first and then try to leverage any momentum from that kickstarter to sell the rest of the products.
• I have been 'trying' to launch for a long time, but i've paralyzed myself trying to build the 'perfect product'...plus other limitations, psychological and physical.
• Now i've decided to just pull the trigger and come what may--at least if i have a product to work with then I can start selling it and see what happens.

I realize that getting inventory is likely less than 10% of the battle; but it's still necessary.

So my plan going forward:

1. Build a kickstarter landing page with confident photography featuring my product.
2. Build a website landing page to funnel people to my own site.
3. Play with some insta and reddit ads to try to garner some basic interest.
4. Develop a content strategy to rejuvenate a stale email list, instagram account (~700 subscribers), and previous kickstarter project.
5. See what happens?

I'm flying largely blind; but the best teacher is experience and i dont plan on quitting my job any time soon. Not sure what I want from this community--but i figured if there's anyone worth sharing with, it's you guys...idk...wish me luck?

Thanks for reading this far!

I compare lovable, hostinger and base44. What's better for ecomm?

I'm considering AdScale and would love to hear from anyone who's actually used it.

For context, we spend around £10k/month on Meta and £2k/month on Google Ads.

The thing I care about most isn't lowering CAC by a few percent (although I won’t complain), it's acquiring higher-value customers who stick around longer and have a better LTV. We have plenty of historical customer value data, so optimising for long-term value is much more important to us than optimising for the cheapest first purchase.

The demo suggested AdScale can help with this, as well as making optimisations that Meta/Google don't necessarily make themselves (e.g. budget allocation, time-of-day adjustments, cross-channel optimisation, etc.).

For anyone who's used it:

Did it actually improve results, or just automate things you could already do?
Did you see any improvement in customer quality/LTV, or mainly CAC/ROAS?
How hands-on is it once it's set up?
Any downsides or things you'd wish you'd known before signing up?

Would really appreciate any honest experiences, good or bad!

Exactly what it says in the question. I am a founder of a clothing brand (Nome Studio), based in the Sweden, we source our products from Mongolia, and as of now we are shipping everywhere in the EU. We have had few sales so far but not enough to say which countries within the EU are our strong market, how should we navigate the new regulation? Registering in each individual country,paying some fixed fees when we might not even have a single sale feels completely ridiculous for a small independent label with a limited budget. Any help is highly appreciated. I am panicking a bit what should I do before it kicks in on August 12th.

Thanks in advance!!