Our guest speaker today was Alberto Torron Rodriguez of Todotaladros.com. This was an interesting story of a man who had no intention of making a large business out of online sales but instead got into it for other personal reasons....to pay taxes. I know from living in Canada this would seem very strange. Most people are trying to find ways to lower their taxes or even to not pay anything at all. But here is a guy who went against the norm, the way i know it at least.
Todotaladros is an online business that sells power tools to clients in Spain. They began simply by selling on ebay and made their first sale August 2009. Three months later they had a store on ebay and the following month they had their own website, www.herramientassincable.com. This, in my opinion, is an amazing story of an idea that was slowly watered to grow into a strong tree. They began with a base capital of 40,000 euros and now they are making sales of 1000 euros/day. Not bad for a part-time job! That's right both partners still hold their jobs which has given them the flexibility to grow one-step at a time.
So how did they do it?
- They have EXCELLENT customer service
- They are open to suggestions
- They give the client what they want
- They KISS: Keep it simple, stupid!
- They are risk adverse
- They outsource their processes
- They have a strong partnership with their logistics company
- They used Google Adwords to increase sales
=> VALUE PROPOSITION: They are fast, reliable and secure
Now with sales of 150K per year they have proved that growing slowly is a key driver to creating lasting clients and sales. They began with personal investments and proved that it is important to be careful how you spend your money. I have heard of many companies who have grown too fast with venture capital and in the end they found themselves in a bad position as expenses grew out of control and sales did not grow with it. In growing slowly there is less chance of wasting resources. However the problem with growing slowly is that bills do not wait on nobody. That is why I like Todotaladros because it is a part-time business.
In all, I thank Alberto for his enlightening journey as i know that it has given many of my classmates the encouragement to start a small online business and ensures that we can still be risk adverse while doing so.
Until next time :)
What I liked the most in this session was the opportunity he saw. I've been to some ferreterÃas here in Spain and they are indeed really expensive and have a very poor customer service even the Chinese stores close to them that are not specialists in the sort of stuff they sell most times are a way more price competitive in some items.
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