Tips and inspiration for an online children's book store

Question

Books

Good day!

I (on my own initiative) undertook to help a friend whose (regular, indoor) shop for children's books is closing. I have a clear vision of how I envision the "perfect" online store for children's books. But, I thought, what if I'm the only one like that, and everyone else will turn back the mouse from such a mouse? (There is nothing to show yet, and this is not the question).

And the question is this. Have you seen "niche" (specialized) online bookstores? As small as you like. Which are not inflated by stationery and multimedia, but clearly bend their line? Or is it hopeless?

Clarifications - audience - Irkutsk, delivery within the city, deportation within the region, cash payment, we start small. The fact that commercial success is unlikely, I guess :-) But I will do it anyway.

Thank you!

Answer 1

somehow I stumbled upon the information that ozon.ru is generally unprofitable in terms of books, and leaves only at the expense of household appliances, etc. I also advise you to study the history of amazon.com, which initially positioned themselves as a bookstore that has absolutely all the books in the world - due to this they grew up ( there is a little bit about Amazon here).

Answer 2

Do not collect dust on the remaining books in the warehouse. A niche small store has a right to exist. Moreover, in my subjective opinion, a book is one of the easiest products to buy via the Internet (not a high price, no need to guess sizes, etc.).
What you need to pay attention to is, of course, convenience (recently I had to buy a highly specialized book on such a terrible site that if it were not for the urgent need, I would have closed the tab immediately). With this item, by the way, I can help, write in a personal.
And the second point, a good promotion aimed at your audience (women from 22-35, living in Irkutsk and its environs).

Answer 3

You don't have to create a "perfect" store. Make a stupid template, launch Direct, test the niche. Sales will go - you will make "ideal".

Answer 4

I have been running an online store for about 7 years, but the categories of goods are different. I can say one thing: never limit yourself to far-fetched bans: if there is a postal delivery, do it all over Russia - it's not difficult at all. I am in Moscow, I have only about 5% of orders from Moscow.
As for the goods, I myself thought about selling books, but the fact is that there is a lot of competition in this area, and strictly on prices. Most books are sold for amounts of 100-200 rubles, in general, I can hardly imagine how you can make money on such goods. Of course, you can try to sell books that cost 100 rubles to 400 rubles from competitors (I'm not kidding, this technique also works in some cases - people will think that your product is better if it is more expensive), but again, I'm not sure that this will work with books.
Also, in no case should you limit yourself in the repertoire. The choice should be as wide as possible, the price should be as large as possible - it will be corny indexed in search engines better.
Scans? Well, if it is designed for people who, when coming to the site, do not yet know what they are going to buy ... I am used to working with a product that is exhaustively described by the text: this gives good visits from search engines, and everyone who comes from there is potential buyers. If you are going to promote a product through images, how will you attract people? Through a partnership with sites on the topic "Motherhood and childhood"? Well, maybe so ...
If the goal is simply to sell the remnants of the warehouse, in my opinion, the easiest way to do this is through Avito, or offer to buy books in bulk to a competitor ...

Answer 5

I think that now the time has come for niche stores that understand what the client needs. Finding a flea market with a million and one items is the easiest, and finding a good store with niche products that are hard to find becomes a problem. For example, I thought for a very long time about opening a niche store exclusively for business literature, but I ran into difficulties in agreements with publishers and shelved the idea.
Books for children are generally a sore subject of our time. It is enough to go to any store and see what they offer. If you manage to properly organize the idea and make a store of books that can be given to children without preliminary and exhaustive verification (which they don’t try to sell to children), then you will have your own buyer. And not only in your region.