What Can You Sell?

Regardless of size, all businesses sell something. There is virtually no limit to the products and services that a small business can sell. At one extreme, people such as artists and craftspeople can produce and sell their own work. At the other end, sales agents and representatives will sell products manufactured by others. Today most businesses supply services, either to families and individuals or to other businesses and organizations.

The production of unique specialty items, on the other hand, is ideally suited to small businesses. This would include such traditional artisan-type work as the design, production, and sale of clothes, jewellery, pottery, and other unique items. In each of these businesses, the quality of the work produced, and not the price, would be the unique selling feature. With effective marketing strategies, producers of these high-quality goods can be very successful.

Advantages of Selling Your Own Product
The big advantage to selling your own product is that you have total control over every step of the process, from design, through production and marketing, to delivery and the ultimate purchaser. This means that you can customize your product to meet your customers’ needs and wants, and that you can do this at almost any stage of the process. It also ensures a higher level of consistency between a product’s actual features and how the product is promoted to customers. Since you are producing and selling your work, the potential discrepancy between promotional claims and real-life features is eliminated.

Disadvantages of Selling Your Own Product

There are three major disadvantages of selling goods that you produce yourself. First, because time is limited, there is a limit to the number of items that you can produce. This in turn restricts your sales and revenue potential. It is, of course, possible to hire help and expand your operation. This involves assuming supervisory and management tasks, responsibilities that might not be a welcome addition to your burden. Further, when other people are involved in the production of your work, some aspects will become standardized in the interests of efficiency. This can reduce the uniqueness of your work.

Selling Items That Other People Produce
Many successful independent businesses distribute products manufactured by others. Typical businesses fit into the distribution chain in a variety of stages
of the process, from purchasing directly from the manufacturer to purchasing from subdistributors and selling to the consumer. Examples of the items produced in these businesses include cosmetics, jewellery, cleaning supplies, and a great variety of
other products. A business can distribute products produced by others through a variety of operating formats. Wholesalers, distributors, and retailers purchase goods for resale. By selling goods at a higher price than their purchase price they generate revenue to cover the cost of goods purchased and to make a profit from their own work.

Advantages of Selling Items Produced by Others

By selling goods produced by others, you can avoid all of the manufacturing, and many marketing, responsibilities. Also, depending upon the agreement with the manufacturer, it might be possible to avoid responsibility for actually handling the goods. Manufactured goods come with a guarantee. At the very least, the manufacturer
guarantees that those goods are suitable for the purposes for which they are intended. Many manufacturers also guarantee the quality and performance of their products. In practice this means that if the goods are defective, they will be repaired or replaced at the manufacturer’s expense. Thus, as reseller of the goods your role is to involve the manufacturer in the process of correcting the defect.

Disadvantages of Selling Items Produced by Others

Although selling goods produced by someone else might free you of legal responsibility for defective or unsuitable products, you will not be totally free of responsibility. If and when there are difficulties with any products that you sell, your customers will look to you for help in correcting the problem. After all, they don’t know the manufacturer; they know you. Not surprisingly, you can find yourself caught in a dispute between your supplier and your customer. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, this could well be a no-win position for you.

What Business Should You Start?

There really is no single business good for everyone. When considering what business is best for you, consider your interests and abilities. The most successful businesses emerge when customers pay you for what you love to do.

You Need to Know
➤ To succeed in selling goods that you produce yourself, make sure that they are
unique and, whenever possible, personalized for your customers.
➤ If you sell goods produced by others make sure that they are of good quality
and that they carry a suitable manufacturer’s guarantee.
➤ Small businesses can offer more personal, and often better-quality, services
than large business organizations.
➤ To succeed in your business, you must love what you are doing.
➤ Don’t limit yourself to this idea, now when is so much information available you must take someone else’s ideas an improve them, I due the same, I take, improve and create new ideas so that other persons benefit as wheel and create, thing hear are not everlasting, so why shouldn’t take every thing why can and kip it for our self’s. So be free to take the information from where ever can you find it, because you are not the only one.