“Concentrate On Customer Service, The Customer Always Comes First” Tony From Paws To Your Door

Hi everyone, Ellen from Paws to Your Door shares her incredible journey on SellingOnlineToday!Listen online: Listen on iTunes: Some thoughts from the interview“We got into the business really we were a small food delivery company locally. We were going to our suppliers and we were walking past other stock, and I met my partner around about the same time and came with us to the wholesaler at the time and said “why don’t you sell some of this online?” So we put some of the things online and that’s how we started.”“I was a sort of stay at home husband looking after my little boy, I was at home looking after him so I just put a few items online and it grew from there. Things have grown very well since then.”“I was a sort of stay at home husband looking after my little boy, so I was at home looking after him so I just put a few items online and it grew from there. Things have grown very well since then.”“There has been a lot of changes in the type of business we compete against. Back then the business weren’t quite the same back then. We actually get a lot of businesses crop up now that compete against you.”“The problem within the first phase was that we found a niche market but a lot of people would complain that they couldn’t get the product fast enough. The niche market was get the product to the customer quick. So now we have competition as everyone is doing that. So we have had to find another niche which is customer service and getting the product to the customer on time.”“We started on eBay, then we had the website in the background but it wasn’t really doing a lot. Then we moved on to amazon probably quite late on probably about 5 years after.”“We have moved on to the FBA side of things to amazon in that we send our products up to them and they dispatch from their warehouses. The FBA side of amazon is where we have grown in the last year and a half”“(FBA) works for us because we have got quite a small warehouse and amazon has a lot bigger warehouses than we have. So if we can use their space it works for us. Plus you sit and watch it sell really you just have to watch stock levels”“We are still doing (stock management) manually mainly because we sell quite a lot internationally and on eBay it does not pick up the listing on the foreign websites so some of our stock is not being taken account within those programmes.”“We work with web interpret to translate the listing we do in foreign countries. They work for both Amazon and eBay.”“At the moment we sell to all country. One thing we have to watch the laws in the country we are selling to for the products we are selling whether we can send certain products like the medicine and that sort of thing we have to be careful.”“The furthest place is New Zealand. We do sell all over the world.”“America is a big market.”“We have just started to get online on amazon.com.”“It’s a time factor. We are busy on Amazon and eBay which gives us enough work and enough income at the moment. Yes, we should put more into our website and try to build it up but it’s debateable whether it is the way to go, whether we really need it and whether working on Amazon and eBay is going to give us just enough anyway.”“Ebay and Amazon they control the sale but they don’t control the parcel. The parcel is controlled by us. We can put whatever we like, we can put paper work which gives information about ourselves.”“The problem is also with the website, is that it’s almost like if you haven’t got a website people tend to look down on you a little bit. You don’t have the same status because you are just selling on eBay and amazon you don’t have the website that gives you the credibility.”“(My biggest strength is) the team behind me, the people I work with, my other half she is a great support. The people who work with me who are constantly pushing the business forward.”“The team that I work with is what makes the company.”Best advice: “Concentrate on customer service, the customer always comes first… Concentrate on getting the parcel to them as quick as you can and treat the customer as well as you can.”What do they offer?With their sights firmly set on the future as an online retailer, Paws to Your Door has now added its own website to our portfolio selling even more great products and accessories for the pet in your life, be that canine, feline, small and furry or reptilian.