Bush Marketing and Branding

Words: Greg Cromwell
Editing: Kaleigh Wisman (note it has not been edited yet)
Images: Nighean O'Brien/Jon Sturge (waiting for some)
Embellishment: Andrew Bleakley (coming soon)

After a decade of selling online you forget just how much you know and have learned about ecommerce. It all started back in the mid 90's with a little boot company that sold slip on boots from Australia: blundstone and R.M. Williams. My partner Ian had a friend who was very clever with computers and he built us a custom shopping cart for our boot retailing business, thanks Brad Sellors from Infinite Media (caution this website has loud music that automatically starts when you got to their website) for getting us started and sorry for being such a Bad Client Brad.

One of my other partners at the time was excited about the prospect of actually making money from the internet. I remember his comment "the only net I want is one out in front of our shop to catch customers in." Well Jimbo the dream has come true and our ten years of selling online has almost brought in as much money as a bricks and mortar store in small town anywhere would have and at a fraction of the cost of opening and operating a physical store.

After 10 years and over $1,000,000 dollars in online sales here is a list of a few things we have learned:

1) Start with a spreadsheet: get your products, prices and descriptions sorted before you even think about the technology you are going to use to sell online. Heck scrap the spreadsheet and write it all down on a piece of graph paper.

2) Remember mail order? Selling online is just like running a mail order business the only difference is you don't have to print out and mail out catalogues. And just like mail order you will most often be putting your product in the mail to get it to your customer.

3) Break your budget into 3 equal parts: design, technology and promotion.

4) Keep it simple to start and start selling as quick as you can so you know what you are getting into.

5) Price. Price. Price. Research what you have to offer online to see if anyone else is selling what you have and if they are whats' the price. Suggest you check on ebay too.

6) Speaking of ebay. Start your online selling with an ebay shop. Cheap. Easy to setup and you have instant access to potential customers.

7) Paypal is your pal. Getting set up to take credit cards gets expensive and complicated. With paypal you can take peoples money online safely, securely and almost instantly.

8) Melt some plastic and write it off as research. Buy from other online shops that are selling what you intend to sell or something similar. This will give you an idea of the sort of shopping experience you want and in many cases don't want.

9) Be friendly.

10) Whatever your time frame and budget are triple it and then divide by 3 to get your preliminary shop up and running. Keep the rest in the bank for further investment once you are convinced that your shopping cart is going to provide you with a return on your investment.


Links to some of the carts we have designed, developed and promoted

australianboot.com
elnaturalista.ca
presso.com
greencauldron.com
heartofthebay.com.au
heartoftheearth.com.au

Other Shopping Cart Resource Links

paypal.com
xcart.com
shopify.com
interspire.com
magento

Labels: ecommerce, selling online, shopping carts

More presso work in progress. Here is the latest from the Bush Young Guns, Jon and Kaleigh.



If clients would stop giving us more work we might be able to get this video out of post.

The Bush team has been busy pressing out great work over the last week for our home grown client--Presso. Here is a sample of the welcome video we are rolling out to our suite of presso sites. Congratulations to Jon Sturge on another WoW job.

Labels: Jon Sturge, presso

The Bush Team had another great Sydney experience last week. We flew into town for a two day photo-shoot at Rockpool, Rockpool Bar & Grill, and Spice Temple. Our Bush Photographer, Jon Sturge, shot the food, the people, and the settings of these fantastic restaurants as our General, Greg, kept everybody laughing and relaxed (as you can see in this photo of Greg hamming it up with Tom, the maître d' at Rockpool Bar & Grill).

In between photo shoots we had a moment to catch up with Bush client, Tom Taverner. We just helped Tom launch a holding page for his new business venture Crowd Dynamics.

It was great to leave the farm for a few days and spend some productive hours in one of our favourite cities. Sydney, we have a feeling you will be seeing a lot more of us in the future.