How To Sell Home Decor Online: A Complete Guide
Table of Contents
Home decor is an industry that will remain relevant as long as we have to live in a home whether rented or owned.
The home decor industry market size is currently forecast to reach 202 billion dollars and will continue to grow at a rate of 3.09% CAGR until 2027.
If you love decorating and know how to transform a home from bland to fabulous, you may want to learn how to sell home decor online.
This is a business that can fetch you a lot of money especially if you deploy a business model that does not allow you to keep inventory.
Home decor will remain relevant for a long time, so starting a business in this niche will be the best way to tap into a burgeoning and growing market.
I love interior decor and have written several posts on how to start an interior decor business and even to start a home staging business
Today we will focus on how to sell home decor online. We will look at the many sides of this business and choose the best part to enable you to start your online business easily without stress and from your home.
Are you ready to learn how to sell home decor online? let’s go
Before I go ahead, however, I want to ask you if you have ever started a home business before? if you have not, this is your opportunity to learn how to start a home business
You can sign up to my email list to get a simple 5days email course that will teach you the fundamentals of starting a home business online.
Ready to sign up? hit the button below to sign up.
Once you are done, let’s get on to helping you start your home decor business online.
How to Start a Home Decor Business Online
1. Choose a Niche
Niching down in business is actually what helps you to define what you really want to focus on, the home decor business may look like a niche on its own, but you cannot do everything especially if you are just starting your new business.
Choosing a niche means that you select the type of products you want to sell in your home decor store and stick to them till you find traction before you start expanding.
For example, there are many niches in the home decor industry, here are some of them.
Home Decor Niches
- Funiture
- Soft furnishings
- Wall decor
- Window treatment
- Floor covers
- Lighting
You can also choose to niche down your store by themes, for example, you can choose to sell
- Minimalist themed decor
- African themed decor
- Zen/ Asian
- Rustic design
- Country themed decor
A niche actually helps you to focus on what aspect of a business value chain you want to start in, it also helps you to define who your ideal customer will look like, this is called a Bio persona.
Once you have identified and nailed your niche, the next thing to do is to build your Bio persona
2. Build a Bio Persona
A buyer persona is a fictitious description of what your ideal customer will look like, the idea of building a bio persona is to help bring to life what your ideal customer will look like.
When creating your bio persona, you can go as granular as determining what the income status of that customer will look like, where they are likely to live and where they hang out online.
For example, if you sell heavy furniture that runs into thousands of dollars, you are more likely to sell to a person that is working or at least has a sizeable income per month. This is because they are the ones that can afford your products.
But if your products are selling for just about $40 to $100 your ideal customer is likely to be the lower-income class earners who are decorating on a tight budget.
Knowing your bio person and correctly identifying them will save you a lot of marketing mistakes. you can Learn more about how to build a Bio persona.
3. Research your market
Once you have identified your niche and built your bio persona, it is time to research your market to know what products are selling in your niche.
A home decor store is usually made of different items but they can be from different makers or even designs.
To find products that are selling in your niche, you need to find out what your competitors are selling. ie competitor analysis. Here are tools that you can use
Google Find
For example, If you are using Shopify to sell (I will tell you in a bit why Shopify is the best online store to use to sell) and you are selling Placemats (keywords for your products), you can just go to Google and type: Site:myshopify.com placemats.
This will bring up all the sites that are selling placemats on Shopify and you can check to see what they are doing and how you can improve on it
See the screenshot below
Koala Inspector
This is is a Google Chrome addon that you can use to pull data from a competitor’s store. It will help you to get some information that you need for your own business analysis.
You can get information like traffic to the store, best-selling products, and also the retailers they are working with.
Koala inspector is free for some of its features but if you want more, you have to pay a subscription fee starting from 7.99 to 19.99
Tap the button below to get Koala Inspector
When you research your market, you are actually trying to find out the types of products that your bio persona is more likely to buy, you are also looking for that product that is currently trending so that you can get your first sales in.
Product Testing
Your research should also include testing products to see which one will be your point of entry product. Product testing can be done as a separate activity but I advise that you do it during your research period because Identifying the products that you want to sell will help you know where to source your suppliers from.
Product testing includes testing some products with Ads to see which of them will get orders.
If you notice a particular product is getting orders, you can funnel them through your email list and give them a launch date for your store when they will get their products.
The order must be sufficient for you to say that it is a good product, If you already have a social media following around your niche, you can also ask for their opinion about the product.
4. Identify Product Suppliers
Once you have found your winning product, the next step is to find suppliers. Your supplier management can make or break your new business, so it is important that you do a diligent search and also reach out to them to let them know you will be selling their products.
Depending on the business model you want to use, whether Dropshiping or keeping inventory, you want to ensure that your suppliers are aware of your changing needs and are able to meet them.
You also want to be sure that they are producing enough of the products you want to sell to not run short of supply when you start selling.
Examples of suppliers that you can use
- Aliexpress
- Walmart
- Faire.com
- Chinabrands
- CTW home collections
- Kaemingk.com
5. Write a Business Plan
At this point, it is time to create your home decor business plan, if you really want to sell home decor online, you need to be able to create a simple business plan that helps you put together all your ideas on paper.
A home decor business plan will help you organize all your business ideas, create a strategy and also organize how you want to start your home decor business online up until you launch your store online.
With a home decor business plan, you can identify your marketing strategy, identify your suppliers and even build your first email marketing strategy.
To help make this easy for you to do, I am creating a home decor business plan pdf that will make it easy for you to write your business plan in less than 2hours.
For some years now, I have been offering bespoke business plan pdf templates to my blog readers and they have found it quite useful to help them take action immediately they finish reading my blog post.
For example, when I wrote a blog post about starting a hot sauce business, I created a hot sauce business plan that has been selling like hot cake since it debuted.
I will be building this home decore business plan pdf in a few days, if you will like to get one as soon as it is ready, make payment to get it at the release price.
After the release price, I will usually move my price to the store price. Here is a snapshot of what the business plan will contain
- Business research on the home decor industry
- Best selling niches in the Home decor industry
- Cost analysis of starting a home decor business
- Pre-made Excelsheet– financial plan for home decor business
- Business plan template with step by step guide
- Business launch template
To purchase this home decor business start-up kit, tap the button below. You will be told when the business kit will be released after your purchase. On the day of release, you will be the first to get the kit.
6. Build your Home Decor Store
Once you have finished writing your business plan, it is time to start acting on your business by spending money to build out your online store.
An online store is the easiest way to start selling your home decor online, why is an online store better than all other options
Because building your online store will give you the opportunity to start early to create your brand and build loyalty for your products
An online store also enables you to build an email marketing list so that you can sell your products over and over again. This reduces your cost of marketing in the long run
I know a lot of people will like to start selling on Instagram or Facebook or other third-party online marketplaces, while this may look great, it is not your own platform and you could be kicked out or you can lose access to such a platform.
While social media is good for marketing it is not good to serve as a store. Most people who buy online want to know that you are serious enough to have an online store for the products you advertise on your social media
So now that you are ready to start building your store online, the best platform to use in building your online store is Shopify
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to build your online store complete with your unique business name.
It also offers functionalities such as Oberlo that enable you to dropship an item from Aliexpress to your online store with just a click of the button
To build your online store, I have created a Shopify course that will make it very easy to start and finish your online store in just a week
Why will it take a week? because I took time to create the video to make it simplified enough for any newbie to listen, implement and build your store.
With my Shopify course, you do not need to pay any fancy Shopify store designer to helo you build, you simply build your store by yourself and you can even get a little help from me if you have questions that need answers.
My Shopify course which is called Shopify Unbundled course will lead you from building your store to designing it with your brand colors to loading your products, adding a payment gateway, and even installing a drop shipper software to help you drop ship your products if you desire.
To get my Shopify Course, tap the button below
The next step after building your online store is to launch it.
7. How to Market Your Home Decor Business Online
Prelaunch marketing activities
Prelaunch marketing activities are activities that you undertake to build a buzz about your new business. It is a way of introducing your business to your customers and getting your first sales which ultimately helps you to build your first line of customers.
What are some things you can do to create pre-launch marketing activities, here is what you need to do
Create a prelaunch strategy
These are a series of activities coordinated to deliver the exact results of getting your business out there
If you want to learn how to sell home decor online then you should be ready to learn how to launch a business online.
Your strategy can include building a marketing funnel for attracting and retaining your first customers.
It should also include various activities like Giveaway, coupons, lucky dips, and also quizzes that help you to get the buzz going about your new business.
Use my Prelaunch template
I created a prelaunch template which is attached to my home decor business starter kit, this prelaunch template will guide you on how to launch your home decor store online.
It helps you to create a timeline for all your activities and to respond to the marketing data you are gathering as you launch your business
other ways you can market your home decor business online are
Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest with more than 400 million subscribers provides a very good opportunity for marketing your home decor business.
This is because Pinterest is a visual-based search engine and will help you attract traffic to your online store.
Pinterest also has a slightly high percentage of women followership, home decor is usually done by women, so when you put your business in a place where women congregate you are sure to sell.
Learn more about Pinterest Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Create social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter for your new business.
Instagram will be the go-to place for your home decor business, again this is because Instagram is a visual-based app and will give you the opportunity to showcase the beauty of your products hence attracting buyers.
Blogging
Blogging is a long-term content marketing strategy for your business but the sooner you start writing about your business, the better.
Why is this important? Because blogging will take your online store and put it on Google’s first page
One blog post well written with SEO optimization will attract your ideal readers to your online shop which will ultimately help you to build authority via email marketing and then result in sales.
Want to know the MVP of how to sell home decor online? let’s get to the last key part of marketing your home decor business online.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is called the MVP of online marketing because it helps you to coordinate all the aspects of marketing, your email list is where you keep all the people who come to your business so you can continuously write to them.
Statistics say that the ROI for a dollar spent on email marketing is about $45.
This means that as a new business owner, building an email list and learning how to create an effective email marketing strategy for your business should be paramount to you.
You can learn more about how to build an email marketing strategy for your new home decor business
Networking
In this case, you market your business by networking with industry professionals like Interior decorators and home stagers. This is important because they are the ones that constantly use your products. Networking with them will help you sell products.
How Much Does it Cost to Start an Online Home Decor Business?
There is no clear-cut amount that you can use to start a home decor business online because it really depends on your business model and the products you want to sell.
To make it easy for you, I will advise that you go by the dropshipping model and also sell home decor products that are not heavy.
If you stick to this strategy, here is an amount that you will need to start your home decor business within a reasonable estimate—$3000
Main costs that you will bear
You can reduce your advert cost if you already have a following online.
Other research online suggests that you can spend about $5000 to start up but my suggestion works for you if you are on a tight budget.
Key Takeaways
If you want to learn how to sell home decor online, you need to understand what niche you want to play in and do complete research on your niche to understand it before you go on to build your online store. Taking the time to premarket your home decor online store before you open it up will ensure that you make sales on launch day.
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