The online retailers, particular those giant names like Amazon and Ebay, have revolutionised the way we buy things word wide. Taking the idea of selling to 'The Long Tail' is what has made these companies so successful.

No physical shop would ever be able to compete with the sheer variety of product lines available from these online stores.  However niche your requirement, chances on you will be able to buy it on Ebay or Amazon.

The huge presence of these stores in our lives over recent years has created a whole new breed of entrepreneurial online sellers using the huge reach that these online site have to their advantage.  There are over 200,000 UK businesses selling on Ebay daily.

Some Ebay businesses start out quite small, managing to find room for stock in their spare bedroom, garden shed or garage.  Once you start to get more established and add more product lines the need for space increases.

A solution which many people adopt is to take on extra storage in a lock up or storage container.  

Setting up the space you have taken on is a key part of being able to successfully run your Ebay business. 

Organise your space

If you are going to run your Ebay business effectively from a storage unit, you will need to set aside some of the space as an office.   You should therefore factor this in when you are deciding how much storage space you need.  Having room to allocate part of your storage unit to an an office area will help you to maintain your Ebay storefront as well as managing orders, returns and buyer queries.   You should also set aside some space for packaging and wrapping items.

One of the keys to successful selling on Ebay is good photography. The quality of Photos is often the difference between amateur and professional sellers.  A storage unit can be a good place to set up a little studio area to get some good shots of your products.  A table, a white backdrop and perhaps some good, directional lighting is ideal.

Divide and rule

Separate your products into separate containers or crates and label everything well so that you can easily pick the items you require. Clear, stacking boxes and racking are a good idea to maximise storage space.  This will also help you keep on top of your inventory and stock levels and re-ordering schedule.

Inventory and Insurance

An accurate inventory leads into another important consideration – Insurance cover.  Store Insure offers self storage insurance for business goods in storage and a number of our customers utilise their storage units for retail stock.   

The recommendation is that you insure your items for their full placement cost.  In the case of fluctuating stock you, of course, don’t want to be constantly updating your sum assured to reflect small reductions or increases in items.  In this case, it would be worth thinking about insuring for what you believe your maximum stock value to be, as well as the value of any equipment or fixtures you are using.  It is better to be a little over-insured than under-insured should anything happen which causes you to need to make a claim.  

If you need some advice on your sum insured, or any other aspect of storage insurance – try our online chat.  You will always be in touch with a member of our experienced office staff when you contact us – we don’t operate a call centre.